Drink - Shane Watson ditches the idea that drink is the new fat
Published 10 October 2005
Self-restraint and responsibility? It's enough to drive us back to drink
You have probably seen the headlines. According to the latest survey commissioned by the Portman Group, women in the 18-30 age group are more likely than men to get into trouble when under the influence of alcohol. They are 10 per cent more likely to have unprotected sex and 5 per cent more likely to get injured than their male counterparts. It's enough to make us midlifers rather smug about our capacity for self-restraint. Though, of course, we aren't. We may be past throwing up in the back of a cab. It may be 20 years since we were last in A&E with pavement burns. But after the "contributory negligence" phase of drinking, women go straight to the "still drinking and guilty" phase.
The fact is, in the five or so years that it has taken young girls to become reckless binge drinkers, the rest of us have become as neurotic about alcohol as we are about our health and the texture of our thighs. This is an entirely new phenomenon, as unfamiliar to previous generations as Ayia Napa slappers. We obsess about drink and when we are going to get around to doing less of it. We agonise about how much we should be having, and liver recovery days, and whether tequila is worse for our skin than Pinot Grigio.
Women feel racked with guilt that they're not all Catherine Deneuves in the drink stakes - happy to have the odd glass, but conscious that a woman's first priority is her health, her looks and her productivity. We do our best: we're permanently cutting back, giving up during the first half of the week (unless we're out) and quitting spirits altogether. But responsible adult drinking, after half a lifetime of irresponsible drinking, is an ongoing struggle. Every social arrangement women make is prefaced with conditions, typically: "I've got quite a heavy week, so I can't drink much." The equivalent, in food terms, is "I had a big lunch, so I only need a starter" or "I'm allergic to dairy". This is all woman-code for "I feel guilty". Occasionally we might have a heavy week ahead, but the other excuses are so many ways of saying that we are continuously anxious about our bodies, both the shape they are in and their shape, period.
Listen in to a couple of late-thirtysomething women having a drink after work and you will hear something like the following: "Shall we have another? These glasses are huge, though. Apparently they're twice the size they used to be. But it's organic, isn't it? And red, which is better. Well, for God's sake, don't let me have one after this, whatever happens." Guilty before, during and after is the norm. Drink is the new fat. And alcohol, like doughnuts, has no place in the snake-hipped, line-free, white-toothed world that awaits the ageing woman.
Of course, all this anxiety will, inevitably, drive you to drink.
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