Bethenny Frankel, reality TV star and former Real Housewives cast member, is launching a Skinnygirl Wine to follow her madly successful Skinnygirl Margarita mix. Pandering to women’s incessant need to lose weight, these are touted as low-calorie. To me, it’s like the diet coke of wine.
Skinnygirl will offer three low-calorie wines hailing from California grapes – a Syrah blend, a Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio blend and a Grenache/Syrah rosé blend ($15). Because Bethenny wants the wine to be ‘drinkable’ and have uniformity, they are sourcing grapes from all over California to erase any sense of terroir.
Do we really need a separate wine for women? Think someone will launch the SkinnyDude wine label or the MachoMan wine label? I think not. The Skinnygirl brand is pure terrorism on the already distorted US female body image consciousness.
I do like the lower alcohol content of Skinnygirl wine at 12% alcohol (so many wines now are being engineered with higher alcohol percentages resulting in those awful wine headaches), but I don’t buy the low-calorie bit.
Skinnygirl Wines are 100 calories per 5 ounce serving. A glass of exquisite French Romanee Conti or two-buck Chuck for that matter is only 128 calories per 5 ounce serving according to the USDA.
Ladies, do yourself a favor and don’t get sucked into the diet marketing ploy of Skinnygirl Wine. Want a glass of wine while trying to lose weight? Have ONE great glass of wine rich with terroir instead of four glasses of engineered, soulless diet coke wine.
For more evidence that you can be thin and eat well, read French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.
PS. Whole Foods pulled SkinnyGirl Margarita mix from their shelves based on it containing potentially carcinogenic ingredients.
More on the Skinny Scam: Read Still the Lovely’s article 6 Negative Body Image Ads.