Women Now Free to Eat Hamburgers

Oh, the dilemmas of womanhood! Say you want to eat a burger — a big, messy, delicious burger — yet you also want to be a lady. Impossible! We all know ladies must never let on that they do normal human things like eat. Well, rejoice, burger-starved ladies of the universe! A Japanese company has come along to liberate us from this paradox, with smiley-faced 'liberation wrappers' that you can hide behind while you chow.

The "liberation wrappers" were designed by popular Japanese burger chain Freshness Burger. The company discovered that female customers were shy about ordering its classic burger because they didn't want to open their mouths wide to eat it in public. "Having 'Ochobo' — a small and modest mouth — has long been the trend for Japan’s female population, as it’s regarded as being cute and attractive," notes FoodBeast. But small and modest bites do not a burger-eater make.

One would think a fork could help in this situation, but why cut your food into manageable bites when you could just hide your face behind a paper mask while eating? That certainly doesn't look batshit insane. And it really must not in Japan, where women are actually using the liberation wrappers. Freshness Burger reports that it has seen a 213 percent increase in women ordering classic burgers since the wrapper switch.

"It may seem absurd and a little bit backwards to people in the West where women are much freer to eat whatever they want and however they want in public," writes Ida Toress at Japan Daily Press, "but this is still a reality for women in Japan, who are mostly still expected to adhere to some of these cultural norms."

I guess it's good that Japanese women feel empowered to enjoy any old burger a man would with this innovation. It's just kind of sad that the solution involves literally hiding themselves from view while they eat.

Image: Spikes Asia