Yesterday study results were announced that confirmed women are now drinking as much as men.
Yay us.
Specifically, young people — those under 30 — are closing the alcohol gender gap. From Slate: “Men and women born in the late ’80s and after are almost equally likely to drink, exhibit excess-drinking behavior like binging, and experience problems related to alcohol dependence, though men still have a slight edge.”
From The Atlantic:
“Today’s results have implications for targeting alcohol-abuse prevention and intervention. The researchers note that “alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders have historically been viewed as a male phenomenon,” but this study challenges such assumptions and suggests that young women in particular should be the target of concerted efforts to reduce the impact of substance use and related harm, calling particular attention to people born in the 1990s.”
What’s lead to the change? Is it a matter of data or self-reporting? I don’t know — I’m not a scientist.
But, here is my non-scientific, life and experience-tested perspective. (Granted, I’m just one woman with one perspective, and here it is.)
Being a woman in your 20s is hard as hell — in many cases you’re still trying to figure out what to do with your life, are you doing enough, how to pay the power bill. Things ramp up even more in your 30s — you know more, but the pressure increases in every single area of life. If you’re lucky enough to live in a first world culture, you live in a culture that expects you to be “on” all the time, posting carefully curated Instagrams of how great you’re doing. How great you’re doing at work, in relationships, at home, at life! (See: Who Is Louise Delage?)
You may feel empowered that you can keep up with the guys in every aspect of life (Sarah Hepola examines this in her brilliant book, “Blackout”). You’re a boss in the boardroom, why not at the bar?
You live in a world that celebrates the artfully styled cocktail in these photos, that encourages young women (and all women — people for that matter) that it’s wine o’clock somewhere! You live in a culture where social events revolve around drinking, where it’s a celebrated, glamorized privilege. And it is fun.
Except.
That thing in the glass? It’s still a drug. I know, downer. Wa wa.
You might recall this on a morning where you are hungover and your body screams in revolt. You might read a story that talks about the risks. But risks can seem far away when you’ve worked a long day, and are trying to figure out if you are where you should be in life, and maybe you have to get home to kids. Maybe not. You say screw the risks. You block them from your mind because you deserve a drink.
Maybe this isn’t you. Maybe you can have your glass of wine with dinner, and will have your glass of wine with dinner until you are a lovely old woman.
But there are a whole lot of us for whom this will not be the case.
I do hope that these findings will fuel researchers to look at drinking behaviors in this next generation. The good news is that there are huge groups of women who are already ahead of the scientists, and are examining their relationships to alcohol.
They’re taking a deeper look at the motivations behind picking up a drink. Some will decide that alcohol doesn’t have a place in their life. Some will decide that it does. That’s for every woman to decide.
As for me, I didn’t take that deeper look in my 20s or early 30s. I have now though, and life is so much better for it. But it was hell first. And it doesn’t have to be.
We don’t have enough data to draw firm conclusions from this study. But out in the real world, where this next generation of women is emerging as a strong one, let’s do what we can to support them. Women in our 30s, 40s, and 50s, let’s be honest about our lives, our drinking, our not drinking. Our everything.
Cheers.
