If you’ve been a social-media-using lady on the internet during the past month or so, you’ve probably come across Kristi Coulter’s provocative opinion piece, Giving up alcohol opened my eyes to the infuriating truth about why women drink. In a nutshell, Coulter believes that systemic factors like good-old-fashioned sexism (e.g. mansplaining at work), combined with societal expectations and a culture that claims that “women can have it all” (i.e. the career and the kids, the house and the travel, the husband and the party friends) set women up to fail, creating a perpetual sense of disappointment, frustration, and anger that women both choose to, and are encouraged to, numb with alcohol.
Of course, not everyone is on board with Coulter’s version of events. Some women will argue that they just like to party. Some men still don’t believe the patriarchy is real (or that it’s harmful). And others rightly point out that North American men, in general, also consume large quantities of alcohol, and wonder if perhaps it’s not sexism per se, but the pressures and stress of living in a neo-liberal capitalist society (in which the rich get richer and the rest of us have to work ever harder only to end up worse off than our parents were) that has us reaching for the bottle. Valid points (except that one about the patriarchy–systemic and cultural patriarchy is real and it hurts both women and men; that’s just a fact).
Still, something about Coulter’s article rang true. Alcohol has always been a part of many (if not most) of my evening and weekend social activities as an adult, but it wasn’t until recently that my Facebook and Twitter feeds started filling up with memes celebrating day-drinking, drinking alone, drinking to excess, and drinking to escape the frustrations of parenting. All jokes, right? Because we women deserve a laugh, right? Because it’s wine o’clock, ammirite??? Around the same time that I first encountered Coulter’s article, there were so many pro-wine memes in my feed, I started to wonder if I’d missed something–Really? Is EVERYONE getting day-drunk secretly at work? Did all my friends become alcoholics and I didn’t notice? Is this REALLY the only way we know how to achieve a sense of equilibrium in our lives?
It’s kind of, well..it’s sad. Not sad that women like to party, or that they like to drink with their friends or even pour themselves a glass of wine and watch Netflix alone in their PJs once in a while. There really isn’t anything wrong with this. But sad, because underneath the glee of cavalierly celebrating constant intoxication and irresponsibility, a lot of the women in my life must be pretty stressed. They must be pretty frustrated. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t smiling–Look! Wine! Fun! Party party party!
Obviously, it’s unhealthy to normalize getting wasted as a solution for life’s problems. But what I find even more problematic about these memes is the normalization of misery. LOL, say the memes, kids are assholes, ammirite? And your husband’s USELESS around the house; just a glorified babysitter, ammirite? And your job is not rewarding, never will be, you slave all day and no one appreciates you and you’re STILL poor! You’ll NEVER measure up! Ha ha ha! WINE!
Recent films like Bad Moms and Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck have been celebrated as “feminist” by some for demonstrating that women can indeed get smashed and misbehave (just like the boys!). They even spend a little time paying lip service to the idea that modern women’s lives aren’t all they’re cracked up to be (the same “women can have it all” lie that Coulter takes issue with). But as Broadly’s Liza Batkin points out, the message (assuming there is one, somewhere) is lost in the mayhem:
Bad Moms, like Sisters, exaggerates a common fantasy: Just one wild night, with the right people, music, and substances, can help us not only forget, but actually resolve, all of our biggest problems. On the other end of the hangover lies romance for the lonely, money for the financially unstable, and empowerment for women the world over. While this is a small improvement on the makeover regime on offer in many chick flicks, Sisters and Bad Moms suggest that their characters’ problems—poverty, unemployment, and a sexist distribution of domestic responsibility—will disappear practically overnight, just as soon as the afflicted women adjust their attitudes by way of vodka and junk food.
Women aren’t idiots. We know, deep down, when our lives are not satisfying. But dealing with the root causes of our anger or frustration requires self-awareness, honesty, and potentially, confrontation. In short, hard work. It’s so much easier to make jokes about how your home life is driving you up the wall than it is to have a frank discussion with your partner about whether or not the distribution of home and childcare duties is really fair, or to talk about whether or not you can afford to bring in some outside help. It’s so much easier to have a drink and complain to your girlfriends about how that (male) professor shot down your point in class, but when a male classmate made the same point ten minutes later, it was not only accepted as valid, but as a totally new idea. Should you talk to the professor, mention that this kind of action belittled you? Maybe. But you have to see him every week all term, and that would be awkward.
And it’s SO much easier, much much easier, when you have been hurt, harassed, insulted, ignored for that promotion, disbelieved when you try to advocate for yourself, or picked apart by the other women at work or the PAC or your kids’ dance class, or when you hate the way you look and think and are and everything you do feels like failure…to just suck it up, have a drink, and laugh it off.
Because, hey, everyone’s miserable, ammirite? Bottom’s up!
P.S. Another common feature of the “women-drinking” meme culture that I find disturbing is one that often appears with food as well–the notion that when we drink/eat, we “deserve” it for good behaviour, or that we are “indulging” or “treating” ourselves, or “cheating”, giving in to a “guilty pleasure”. As if we don’t naturally, by virtue of being human beings, have the right to put whatever the hell we want into our bodies without needing the permission of society at large. But maybe that’s a post for another time.
niftynotcool 