Gender Stereotypes within Coffee Shops

A girl with a hat and a backpack stands in front of a coffee bar waiting for her coffee to be made with two people behind the bar making coffee and another person next to her also waiting for her order.

Analysis:

Until coming to college, I did not know that coffee shops were an important part of doing homework and being a part of a college town. I would go to coffee shops during high school and I thought I was so cool to be doing homework outside of my house. However, it was such a hassle to actually gather all of my books and notes and drive to the coffee shop just to do something that I could do at home. It is much less of a hassle now, but still interesting to think about the motivation of people who go to coffee shops and how these locations accommodate a certain type of person. I think that coffee shops in Holland are mainly targeted at young female non-disabled college students, because it gives them a different for doing homework, or they can choose to socialize (which is what many females do at these coffee shops).

Most coffee shops were mainly filled with women and these women were usually talking to other women or engaged in a conversation with a man. However, whenever a man was spotted, then he was often alone on a computer with head phones in. This eliminates social interaction with other people, whereas females are much more open to interaction. This could be because the main purpose of the females that I observed were there to interact with others. The exception with men in this context would be the baristas. At Lemonjello’s, there were two males working and one female. However, being at college for almost two years, I could tell the certain kind of man that they hire. They were stereotypical hipster coffee shop baristas; that means that they wear tight skinny jeans, a button down short-sleeve shirt, sometimes wearing a hat (beanie or flat-billed), and they usually have a beard. The ratio was somewhat similar at the 205 Coffee Bar. There was one male working and one female that I could see. Just from looking around each coffee shop, however, it seems that Lemonjello’s is much more accommodating to men or not specifically stereotypical to women. This could just be due to the 205 coffee bar only being open for less than a year. Both shops had men and women at the time that I was there, but I noticed a larger proportion of men at Lemonjello’s.

There are can be many explanations to this, but most of them stem back to social constructions of a coffee shop being tied back to women and more accommodating to women. One explanation is that the interior design of each shop could be more targeted for females. They had smaller seats, paintings all over the walls, many different plants, and a lot of windows.  This could be accidental, but the vibe and the roles of the shop appeal to mainly women in this aspect. The 205 Coffee Bar does try to appeal to males by incorporating the industrial design through the garage door window. In relation to the design characteristics, Judith Lorber discusses the social constructions of gender and the emphasis that we put on performance, “Personality characteristics, feelings, motivations, and ambitions flow from these different life experiences so that the members of these different groups become different kinds of people” (21). Because gender roles are so engrained in our society, we believe that life experiences or the ability to enjoy certain design characteristics stem from what gender you are. This can be displayed by females being more inclined to appreciate the windows and feel more comfortable in a place with many plants and comfortable seating. This also assumes that males cannot connect to these things in the same way. This is not a bad thing, it just means that the design of these coffee shops may be more accommodating to the feelings and comfort of females rather than males. This can also be due to the fact that there is higher ratio of females to males at the nearby college and the owners of the coffee shops want to appeal to the majority of those students.

Another thing that I noticed about these shops is the way that it relates to a certain kind of female. Specifically, these places are targeted at young college students to do homework. An older woman would not necessarily feel uncomfortable about spending time in these places, because I did notice a group of older females in fellowship with each other at Lemonjello’s.  Also when I was there, I did not bring any homework, so I did not have a bag or anything to carry. This made me feel somewhat out of place, because most people had something to get done there. The presence of my coffee did help to lessen this insecurity. Through the contrast between men and women, females were mostly talking to other people, so when my friend arrived, my feelings about being an outsider were extinguished. These feelings usually develop at a very young age and it all depends on the expectations of gender performance and how we are exposed to that. Jo B. Paoletti discusses how the  expectations of children are reinforced by these social constructions, “At the same time, however, they are the subjects of sophisticated and pervasive advertising that tends to reinforce social conventions. ‘So they think, for example, that what makes someone female is having long hair and a dress’” (Qtd. in Maglaty). Because I thought I had to perform a certain way at this coffee shop, I felt uncomfortable until I was completing that task. These expectations start at a very young age and they can cause anxiety if we are not performing them “perfectly.”

These places are also obviously targeting non-disabled people because of the layout of these coffee shops and how much space there is throughout the location. Something that I noticed was that the path to the counter from the door at each coffee shop was very wide and accommodating to people of all shapes and sizes. However, after that, there is very little space for people to maneuver around in. Even a female of medium height and weight, like myself, can have a hard time weaving in and out of these tables and chairs, even harder if I had a backpack. This layout reminds me of Elizabeth Barnes’ The Minority Body and her ideas about the mere-difference view versus the bad-difference view of disability: “our culture assumes that disability is a bad thing, and does not do a particularly good job of accommodating or accepting people with disabilities” (56). This design can also rely on the assumption that people with disabilities just want to get coffee and then leave and not stay to accomplish something or talk with anyone. This is definitely just an assumption and obviously narrow-minded, but it could be an interpretation to the design of these places. I thought this was an interesting observation and that it further emphasizes who these places are meant for.

In conclusion, it is quite clear who the coffee shops in Holland are targeting and how they go about doing this. The majority of people who go to these places are young non-disabled female college students. This is not a bad thing, because those who organized these coffee shops were doing so with the majority of the population in mind in order to increase revenue and foot traffic for their own shops. It is important to note the design, structure, seating, and even the types of drinks that these places offer in order to determine who they are meant for. Some of the explanations are based on stereotypes, which relates to the social construction of gender and how that also plays into the majority of people who go to these places. Mainly these coffee shops are targeting female college students, who seek to do homework or engage in fellowship with another person.

Discussion Questions:

Can you think of any other aspects about a coffee shop that could target females?

In what ways could a coffee shop reach out to a wider audience of people?

Works Cited:

“Bad-Difference and Mere-Difference.” The Minority Body: a Theory of Disability, by Elizabeth B. Barnes, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 54–77.

Lorber, Judith. “‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender.” Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight Reader, Bedford/St. Martins, 2014, pp. 19–30.

Maglaty, Jeanne. “When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 7 Apr. 2011.