The Metropolis

Second-Tier Fast Food CEO Calls British Women “Not Very Attractive”

Chuck Ansbacher | Tuesday 15 March, 2011 14:32

The Whopper.

When I say those two words out loud in that order, a very vivid memory pops into my head. It isn’t a fond memory. It isn’t even a memory relating to food, the way it tastes, the way I like it or the way I’ll have it. And it isn’t really a memory that I find fit to write about, seeing as how it’s disgusting, involves a toilet, and consumed about 12 hours of my life that I would rather not re-live.

But that’s me. That’s my association with The Whopper. Maybe you are different! Maybe you love Whoppers. That’s cool — I don’t want to ruin that for you. But maybe we can all agree that regardless of your feelings towards that particular fast food sandwich, it is not, to say the least, riding high atop the gastronomic food chain.

With that in mind, it is funny that the CEO of the fast food chain that sells it would feel it within his area of expertise to criticise an entire nation’s culture of food… and women.

In unguarded comments, Burger King’s chief executive, Bernardo Hees, offered a none too fond account of his younger days studying for an MBA at the University of Warwick, recalling that there were few distractions to put him off his studies. “The food is terrible and the women are not very attractive,” said Hees, who quickly switched to flattery to charm his audience in Chicago. “Here in Chicago, the food is good and you are known for your good-looking women.”

What is the most absurd part of this story? I think it is that British food and women have been so successfully stigmatised abroad that no number of Kate Mosses or Marcus Wareings have been able to alter this perception; CEOs of shoddy food producing Fortune 500 companies find them to be easy and probably consequence free targets ripe for ribbing, and the stereotypes run so deep that even American audiences are expected to laugh at them.

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