Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Porn star martini Pizza Express

591 replies

Flour8977 · 31/03/2022 16:47

Why are Pizza Express advertising 'Porn Star Martinis' on every table at their restaurants? AIBU to find this disgusting for a family restaurant? I don't really wish to explain to my 6 year old what it is.

OP posts:
I8toys · 31/03/2022 19:06

Its a Pizza restaurant. Not everyone who goes there is a family with small children. Why would it register with a small child that its an adult topic? Distract the child move the menu - done.

Nanny0gg · 31/03/2022 19:07

@MrsGHarrison87

That's a compelling argument

Waxonwaxoff0 · 31/03/2022 19:07

Why do you need to explain what it is to a 6 year old? I drink pornstar martinis, my 8yo has no idea what porn is, to him it's just the name of a drink. YABU.

Nanny0gg · 31/03/2022 19:08

@I8toys

Its a Pizza restaurant. Not everyone who goes there is a family with small children. Why would it register with a small child that its an adult topic? Distract the child move the menu - done.
Small child?

Don't want to discuss that with my 8 year old DGC who asks about everything

CapMarvel · 31/03/2022 19:11

What's to discuss?

"Mummy, what's a pornstar martini?"

"It's the name of a drink".

Job done.

1forAll74 · 31/03/2022 19:12

I have heard of these of course, but never had one, but why are they called porn star martini's., are they supposed to be glamorous drinks, and only drunk when people are naked and prancing around.

tigerbird · 31/03/2022 19:12

@MrsGHarrison87 — what a lovely, mature response: “gEt a LiFe”

Perhaps you could add a rolly eye emoji and a “Whatevs”?

I guess you are just totes cool with the sex industry - no problem at all for preteen girls to learn about porn.

Whatalovelydaffodil · 31/03/2022 19:18

@BeforeGodAndAllTheFish

Pizza Express didnt invent that drink. Someone else did and that's the name of it. That is what theyll call it in their menu so people recognise it.
But why do you think they are promoting that particular drink? There are plenty other drinks with less controversial names that they could promote
BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation · 31/03/2022 19:18

Tell the kids it's a typo and it's meant to be 'popstar'?

MrsGHarrison87 · 31/03/2022 19:19

tigerbird, considering I've worked in it, yes.

AllSo · 31/03/2022 19:19

'What's a porn star Mum? It's a person who has sex on camera for other people to watch. Now come on eat your food before it gets cold.

This, nasty that it's being promoted on tables. But Pizza Express is shit anyway. I've never taken my kids there.

MrsGHarrison87 · 31/03/2022 19:20

The money was amazing!

Whatalovelydaffodil · 31/03/2022 19:21

[quote Unsureaboutit9]@Whatalovelydaffodil she could also just take the piece of card advertising the drink off her table.[/quote]
She'd have to get there quickly then before her children see it! Not very easy.

carefullycourageous · 31/03/2022 19:23

I think this is weird of Pizza Express, I wonder if it is because they are expecting families to be badly affected by the cost of living issue and are trying to appeal to different customers. I think it is inappropriate in a family restaurant and am surprised at the decision.

I also do not think the name 'porn star' can be compared to the name 'sex on the beach' as porn =/= sex.

HedgehogToes · 31/03/2022 19:26

It blows my mind that women don't see the correlation between a porn star drink being ok to advertise in a family restaurant and why we live in a society that's dangerous to women.

The drink isn't porn, but it's making porn, or talking about porn, using the word, normal. It's a fruity, sweet "girly" drink.

Pornography is the abuse of women, it's paid rape, you can't buy consent. It's not something I think is ok to be advertised on a pizza restaurant table.

Porn as mainstream makes it seem ok for teenage boys to choke their girlfriends, or why 18 yr old girls are creating only fans accounts as soon as they are able to and selling access to their bodies for as little as a few pounds. It's why women and girl children are abducted, trafficked and sold.

GoodJanetBadJanet · 31/03/2022 19:26

We should all complain - having heard this I won’t be taking my 9 y o DD to Pizza Express any more, because I don’t feel like paying my own money out to legitimise porn and the normalisation of women as commercial sex objects

Oh good grief
We're all presumably adults here, and some of us like a good cocktail.
Really cannot get worked up about the name of one of them.

DearlyBeloathed · 31/03/2022 19:27

We should all complain

I'm good.

IvorCutler · 31/03/2022 19:28

YANBU. It’s a bit ick in a family restaurant. My son is autistic and inquisitive about everything, he’d definitely ask me what it meant if he saw an ad for it at the table. Wouldn’t bother me if it was written on the menu though- my children wouldn’t be looking at that section.

tigerbird · 31/03/2022 19:29

@MrsGHarrison87

tigerbird, considering I've worked in it, yes.
Presumably as an adult, no? Not a 9 y old visiting a pizza restaurant?

I don’t want the sex industry or porn normalised for my daughter. Today’s porn culture? Women being slapped, choked, anal, fetish, dubious consent and violence normalised on the front page of every porn site.

You do you hun, but others are also within their rights to say it’s a culture which is deeply misogynist, violent, exploitative and just down right nasty, corrosive and wrong for women — and for men tbh.

Hayisforhorse · 31/03/2022 19:30

Where we were recently it was all over a brightly coloured additional flyer, so not just within the alcoholic drinks list, which would be ok, but a whole A5 spread on it, the kind of thing the children pick up when waiting.

I have two curious children and I answer all their sex-related questions frankly and scientifically, but I was not happy to see that flyer.

tigerbird · 31/03/2022 19:31

@MrsGHarrison87

The money was amazing!
Nice priorities, I see. Cash for you is great then, misogyny for the rest of us also fine. No ethics at all.
WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll · 31/03/2022 19:33

In Germany, they used to have a very popular mallow chocolate treat - kind of like a tall Tunnock's teacake - named either 'M's Head' or 'N Kiss' - the M and N each standing for a very outdated, offensive racist term.

These treats are still just as popular, but for the last 25 years, they've been known as 'choco kisses' or 'foam kisses'. Even so, I'll bet there were still plenty of people moaning about 'snowflakes' or 'political correctness gone mad' and beseeching people to get a grip or stop clutching their pearls - much like some of the people on this thread.

Similarly, it would hurt absolutely nobody to universally rename this cocktail as a passion fruit martini or a popstar martini. The gigglers could still use its old name in an adult setting, if they really want to. What a shame that so many adults seem to be deliberately keen to maintain the status quo of potentially exposing children (your own or others') to the concept of porn when out for a family meal, rather than being grown-up about it and accepting that it should have an appropriate name.

Also, it might only seem a small thing, but how would you square it if you caught your son on a porn website and told him that it was a bad thing and not appropriate, if he then says "But, Mum, you always order a pornstar martini when we go to Pizza Express". Do you then have to get into the whole 'porn is not for children, but it's perfectly fine for adults' or try to backtrack that it's a very bad thing for everybody, even though you freely invoke it every time you order a drink? Just pointless awkwardness for the sake of it.

GoodJanetBadJanet · 31/03/2022 19:40

Yes, because porn stars are completely comparable with racism HmmBiscuit
FFS

girlmom21 · 31/03/2022 19:45

@IBelieveInBiology

I don't think pornstar martinis are fast creeping. They're 20 years old

But the product placement of them in prime position on the table in a so-called family restaurant is a new thing. Would not have happened a few years ago. So it is normalising the phrase and language.

It absolutely has happened for a good few years now
Gonnagetgoing · 31/03/2022 19:51

@Everydaydayisaschoolday

And I bet it's horrible. Their Negronis are and you wouldn't think it was possible to mess up such a simple drink.
@Everydaydayisaschoolday - when they’re made properly Pornstar Martinis are delicious - I’ve liked them years before they became trendy! But trust Pizza Express to ruin them. Mustn’t say anything else rude!