Bodies, Brands and Bananas; gender and race in the marketing of Chiquita Bananas

Chiquita Banana, a product of the Boston-based United Fruit Company (UFC), now Chiquita Brands International, was the world’s first branded fruit. The brand’s mascot, Miss Chiquita Banana was inspired by Hollywood’s Carmen Miranda and quickly inherited the actress’s popularity through her catchy jingles and sexy dance moves. Representations of Miss Chiquita in UFC commercials from the mid to the late 1900s emphasized the exoticness of the fruit’s Latin American origins and took advantage of gendered ideas that were popular in U.S. culture. [1] This essay will explore how and why Miss Chiquita Banana was gendered and made exotic for its market of American consumers. By examining how race and gender were manipulated in three of the company’s commercials, this essay shows the transformation of Miss Chiquita from a racialized and sexualized animated banana into a racialized and sexualized woman. This transformation of the Chiquita mascotreflects a change in the UFC’s focus in its advertising campaigns. Instead of trying to familiarize U.S. consumers with the Latin American fruit as it did through its earlier mascot, the UFC used the gender and race of its new Miss Chiquita mascotto define the features of its newly branded fruit. [1] For images of the changing Miss Chiquita see: “Miss Chiquita – Get to Know our First Lady of Fruit,” Chiquita Brands International, http://www.chiquita.com/Our-Company/The-Chiquita-Story/Miss-Chiquita.aspx.