The XX Factor: What women really think.

Do Women Really Aspire To Drink Men "Under The Table"?

If there is a cultural phenomenon about which I can really do without the expertise contained within the average weekly magazine feature on the subject, it is the one about women who live in New York and drink more than they ought. Still, I am a female contributor to a female-centric blog, and women have savored women-getting-wasted stories at least since Anne of Green Gables got Diana sloshed on that raspberry cordial, so I dutifully began to read it this afternoon for possible posting purposes and indeed found myself snickering in recognition over this passage:

FEMINIST ONE: You would be proud of me. I drank alone last night!

FEMINIST TWO: I am proud! I should have called you. I was too drunk.

FEMINIST ONE: I opened a bottle of wine—a good bottle that I had been saving—poured some into a juice glass, and watched The Age of Love. My dad called, and he was like, “You know that drinking doesn’t solve things long-term?” And I was like, um, that’s a lie.

FEMINIST TWO: Hahahaha!

FEMINIST ONE: I know. I was so serious too.

FEMINIST TWO: Yeah, it solves things long-term, as long as you commit to drinking.

FEMINIST ONE: I told him booze was no different from Klonopin and it’s cheaper!

That's so funny! I thought upon reading the first few lines. I have had IMs exaclty like…

Oh ha, indeed, the IM had originally appeared in a July 2007 post on Jezebel, a women's site I co-founded which the New York story dubs "very pro-alcohol." (I am "Feminist Two," and for the record I have never tried Klonopin.) But more importantly I really don't think of myself, or anyone else on the site, as "pro-alcohol." Pro-pleasure, sure, pro-"honesty" or "candid examination of the human condition as experienced by women at this particular cultural moment," maybe. And insofar as our treatment of women and alcohol ab/use during my tenure was concerned, I think the site was probably best described "very pro-jokes," as one might glean from, say, my posts chronicling my adventures with alcohol-cessation drugs.

But no: the author illustrates me and certain of my former colleagues as "misguided" budding alcoholics drinking to reach some warped form of boozer parity with the men in our life men by a rationale "akin to the type of reasoning that paints Girls Gone Wild participants as sexually liberated."

I think this is unfair. Women make mistakes. Women do embarrassing stuff. Women regret that stuff sometimes. Women cope with it by joking about it, growing out of it, getting pregnant, getting help, or in lieu of all that, drinking more. That is the problem with alcohol: it can be a vicious cycle -- the way you drink too much, stay out too late, get too little sleep, wear yourself out the next day working late, blow off steam getting drunk all over again. But that's how it is for guys too. Sure, our bodies are different, and while drinking certainly has an added appeal to anyone who is experiencing menstrual cramps, what woman with a drinking problem would lay the blame on all the societal pressure to match the ounce-per-ounce consumption of our male drinking buddies? (Because that woman probably has bigger problems than her drinking problem, just saying.) Because I personally drink a lot -- less than I used to, more than I'd like -- and I can't even approach what my male companions can regularly put down, and I'm not trying to pretend that is good news. In other words, yes, New York, we have a drinking problem, but just like so many other problems it seems to be affecting all of us.