PepsiCo chief executive Indra Nooyi told the Freakonomics in a recent podcast that Doritos, which is owned by PepsiCo, is developing a chip for women. “As you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag, they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavour. ... Women would love to do the same, but they don’t. They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public,” she said. The company’s future chip for women will be “low-crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavour stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse.”

Hello, Doritos product development team! It is I, a Lady, and I’m here to participate in your focus group about Lady snacking habits. OMG so excited!

How often do I eat chips? Well, I only eat them when I am alone, laugh-crying while wearing fuzzy slippers and watching The Bachelor, and there are no men nearby to see my shame. I sure wish I could eat chips more often, but it’s so difficult to avoid the embarrassment of being a Lady who eats chips. I know I’m only supposed to eat salad, but the Doritos tempt me so. Now you know my terrible secret.

Doritos is developing lady-friendly chips because, apparently, you should never hear a woman crunch

What do I like about chips? Hmm, I guess I like how they are small and petite, like me! I like how the bags are shiny and have bright colours. Though I know that chips are not technically meant for ladies like me because their bags are never pink. If only there were chips that came in a pink bag, so that I would know that gentle Ladies like myself could consume them with dignity!

What do I not like about chips? Well, it’s awfully hard to find a man willing to marry me when I eat chips and make all of these grotesque crunching noises. Goodness, gracious: the horrible, unnatural, unladylike sounds of mastication — a man should never have to endure those noises coming from a female human. I’m sure they can hardly bear it.

And the dust! Oh, the dust. I get a manicure every single day — sometimes twice a day —and the orange dust of Doritos just sullies my pristine fingertips. Perhaps you could invent some disposable lace gloves for chip-eating? I mean, I know women aren’t supposed to be eating chips in the first place. Forgive me. It’s probably a bad idea, like all other ideas that come out of my little Lady brain!

Have I ever eaten dust directly out of the bag? Heavens, no. What kind of a girl do you think I am? I’m not a trollop, a strumpet. How dare you assume.

Anyway, sirs. On the rare occasions that I do shame-eat chips while sobbing uncontrollably, there is one problem. The bags are just so terribly big. They don’t fit in my purse, what with all the lipsticks and tampons and perfumes and hair ties and teacup Pomeranians and pumpkin spice lattes that have to fit in there already. They are so hard to open, those bags — I have the grip strength of a newborn puppy. I would ask a man to open the bag for me — men open most containers for me — but then he would know I eat chips, and he would never marry me. The bags are also so heavy. I am frail, like a baby bird, and I fear that carrying a Doritos bag for too long would shatter all of my toothpick bones.

How often do I eat chips? Well, I only eat them when I am alone, laugh-crying while wearing fuzzy slippers and watching The Bachelor, and there are no men nearby to see my shame. I sure wish I could eat chips more often, but it’s so difficult to avoid the embarrassment of being a Lady who eats chips.

In fact, it would be better to have chips that didn’t need to be eaten at all. Maybe you could invent some chip-scented air that I could just breathe? It would give me all the flavours of chips and none of the calories! I probably don’t need to tell you that I’m always on a diet. I want to lose three pounds.

Well, it sure is nice to get away from the constant cooking and cleaning and nurturing I do to talk to you gentlemen. No one has ever listened to me prattle on for this long before. I hope that my comments will be of some use to you as you work on developing new snacks that women can eat in private until they trick men into marrying them and have to give up eating forever. Good luck!

By arrangement with The Washington Post

Maura Judkis is reporter for The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 11th, 2018