Hey Aldi, women can't be duped.
Language can change, but sex can't.
I am a keen Aldi shopper, and their dupes make me and my family laugh on a regular basis. Most famously, there’s Cuthbert, the knock-off version of the M&S Colin the Caterpillar cake. But search their aisles and the whole place is full of products that presumably keep their legal department busy 24-7: the Titan bars (Mars) and Racers (Snickers - a lovely nod back to when they were called Marathon), the Nutoka spread (Nutella), the Ballycastle liqueur (Bailey’s), Bubbly bars (Aero), Seal bars (Penguins)…basically every shelf is full of products whose name or branding lets you know somehow that they are pretending to be something that they’re actually not.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that this week Aldi have come out swinging for gender ideology, and the erasure of women from language. Why wouldn’t the people who brought us hyperbolic-paraboloid-shaped crisps in a tube and called them ‘Stackers’, subscribe to the belief that a man in a dress is a woman if he says he is?
Yesterday these douchebag dupe doyennes posted on social media to let everyone know they would be providing free pads and tampons in their in-store toilets for ‘people who menstruate’, so they would be available to ‘the people who need them’.
The word ‘woman’ was missing entirely.
Readers responding to the post were quick to point out that many Aldi stores don’t actually have a customer toilet (I’m pretty sure mine doesn’t). I guess that wasn't thought to be relevant in a world where wishes are horses and £4.99 candles are Jo Malone. Who knows, perhaps their stock room is a toilet dupe? Surely a stock room is a toilet if it has bog roll? It’s time we deconstructed the concept of ‘toilet’ anyway. A room is not born, but becomes a toilet, after all. To say it’s simply a matter of plumbing is deeply problematic.