Jason Mustian
If there’s one thing the internet is known for its understanding of and tolerance for nuance — which is why an International Women’s Day tweet from Burger King UK reading “women belong in the kitchen” is being applauded and celebrated for its intended purpose.
Just kidding, obviously, it’s being flame-broiled like a Whopper.
For context, here’s what happened. (Some details are speculation, but probably correct)…
A meeting was held. Someone pitched the idea of Tweeting “Women belong in the kitchen” as a way to get blogs (just like this one) to give them free press.
Someone at the meeting said “Uhh, what? Are you crazy?”
Then someone explained that they’d follow it up by Tweeting about how only 20% of chef jobs belong to women and use that as a jumping-off point for promoting their culinary scholarships for women.
Then probably 100 more meetings and pointless emails, then they launched the campaign today.
And all of this transpired with no one chiming in and saying “Maybe we could try something else? Or just not Tweet anything about International Women’s Day at all cause we’re a burger restaurant?”
Here’s the full thread:
So yes, it has some context to it, which is all well and good, but as you can imagine, people aren’t exactly reacting the way Burger King probably wanted.
First, there are the people who think they should just delete it.
But BKUK (that’s what I’m calling them) is doubling down:
But more and more people are chiming in, and it ain’t looking good for the King:
But the former personality behind the hilarious Wendy’s Twitter account, Amy Brown, did the most damage, converting her entire account to a fake Burger King account:
I don’t know, maybe next time they can just donate some money to a scholarship fund for women without making a big thing about it? Just at thought.
