feminized meat and other unicorns by Ro Reddick

In season one, episode six of the Real Housewives of New York, Bethenny Frankel, an upwardly mobile natural food chef, is having drinks with fellow housewife, Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, when she declares that they won’t be having cocktails tonight, they’ll be having tequila! Frankel then orders: “Patron Silver on the rocks. Fresh lime juice. A splash of Triple Sec. I only drink one drink. I call it the skinny girl’s margarita.” The Countess, intrigued, (and not one to be left out of the category “skinny”), promptly orders the same thing for herself – and in a Bravo TV minute a new drink is born. Now here’s where you might raise a skeptical eyebrow: hasn’t Frankel simply listed the ingredients that makes up nearly every margarita on the face of the Earth? Yes, but she’s also given it a name, Skinny Girl, and imbued it with the power of her own attractiveness and thinness to make not just a drink, but a multimillion dollar food and beverage brand. 

And it is in the lineage of our first great Real Housewife that we meet Georgina and Lisa in Milo Cramer’s sharp and funny Business Ideas, a play that follows a mother, Georgina who has dragged her daughter Lisa to the local coffee shop in an effort to spitball their way back to the middle class. Armed with all the accoutrement of a hackathon, they brainstorm a litany of absurd and hilarious ideas, obvious gimmicks. 

Sianne Ngai’s Theory of the Gimmick, defines gimmicks as, “overrated devices that strike us as working too little (labor saving tricks) but also as working too hard (strained efforts to get our attention)… a contrivance.” But what a delight they can be! Ngai acknowledges the gimmick’s “irritating yet strangely attractive…” qualities, which are on display as we watch the duo’s ideas evolve from gimmicky products to gimmicky brands.

GEORGINA

butch artichoke, killer romaine,

LISA

or feminized meat

GEORGINA

wow if we could somehow

feminize meat

LISA

and then charge ten percent more. and then retire early.

…

GEORGINA

so the battle becomes: branding. everyone “has” artichoke.

but only our artichoke. Means sex

A brand is first and foremost a promise. The power of that promise lies in the brand’s ability to deliver on it again and again and again… It is inside this loop of a repeatable consumer experience that we find the elusive brand premium. Georgina and Lisa know what Bethenny knows, that the brand premium they seek has a cheat code: gender. Turning a neutral object (or playing off of people’s gendered perceptions of a neutral object) is a bit of a branding magic trick. A labor saving device for the entrepreneur; a gimmick, if you will. A magic wand that when waived will meet the needs of an underserved market: women seeking a high protein meal without getting all that machismo stuck in their teeth. Lip steak, hip steak, slim steak, please!

Ngai tells us, we are in relation to one another when we encounter the gimmick. For every smartypants that spots the gimmick, declares it deficient, laughs at its folly, there is a sucker right beside them thinking, say, that’s a pretty good idea! The communal space of the coffee shop becomes essential here, allowing “suckers” and “smarties” to float through the play and drop their assessments –  but we, the audience, are also in relation. We sit in judgement (or wonder), watching from the house as the duo rattle off ideas like man salads and butch artichokes and laugh and laugh – or take notes… 

We also take note of Emmie Finckel’s elegant set design complete with accents like “Stressed, blessed, and coffee obsessed” painted above the tables, pointing our attention towards yet another gimmick: the coffee shop. 

GEORGINA

this is the kinda place people Start Businesses.

LISA

…this place?

A hallowed space, a fount of entrepreneurial energy. The brick and mortar icon of millennial hustle culture. The very structure itself a cheat code: a liminal space where artisanal beverages and gendered commodities meet to turn ideas into unicorns. 

A space where Buisness ideas?? 

becomes Bu$ine$$ Idea$

becomes Biz-nas Ideaz

becomes BUSINESS IDEAS.