I’m writing from Louisville (still here) where the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board is meeting. This is my cream in the Oreo cookie between the Annual Event of the Association of Christian Educators (last week) and the selection of General Assembly Committee Leadership (next week.) But in the throes of Church World, can we talk about Lady Doritos?
When I first heard that Pepsi Cola (the good people who make Doritos) is marketing a snack chip that saves women from 1) making unladylike crunch sounds in public and 2) licking our manicured fingers to clean off the nacho dust, my mind went – surprisingly – to Dr. King. One of his sermons was featured in last Sunday night’s Dodge Ram commercial, displaying once again that usurping theological content for secular promotion is an unfortunate idea. His actual sermon – based on Mark 10:35-45 – was about the problem with marketing.
I imagined Dr. King’s Drum Major Instinct sermon going something like this at next year’s Super Bowl:
You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love, you must eat this kind of snack chip.”
Alas, PepsiCo does not, in fact, plan to create and market Lady Doritos. “We already have Doritos for women,” the company reported yesterday. “They’re called Doritos.”
Thanks be to God.
Just when you think the whole world has lost every speck of sanity, PepsiCo redeems itself. There will be no Lady Doritos.
May we also redeem ourselves by spending our precious energy creating what truly inspires and transforms the world for good. Some of us try to do this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Image of some of the tweets that made me laugh out loud yesterday as #LadyDoritos was trending.
A Church for Starving Artists 