Wednesday, November 30, 2011
I don’t think anyone wants to be labeled as “that girl” at the party. By that girl, I mean the one who has had so many tequila shots that she actually thinks she is in Mexico. I mean the girl who is dancing alone in a provocative fashion in the middle of what used to be the dance floor a couple hours earlier, but the only person watching her is an angry host who wishes she would just leave already. “That girl” is the subject of ridicule, pity, and shame (when she remembers how much she fit the “that girl” stereotype).
For a recent Jayplay article I wrote a story on how turning 21is a night where binge drinking is the obvious and expected way to celebrate. I interviewed Keith Durkin, a criminologist at Ohio Northern University who has studied binge drinking for 20 years, and he shocked me with fairly recent medical research that women actually metabolize alcohol a lot faster than men. I have always known that women can’t drink as much as men because of their body size, but I never considered that our metabolism played a role.
According to alcoholjustice.org, women reach higher blood alcohol peaks than men. This means a man and woman of the same weight and height could drink the same amount and the woman could end up “that girl” while the guy might be just fine. That sounds like just another thing that woman have the right to complain about (along with childbirth, menopause, and the untimely time of the month). The women who drink regularly are also more quickly addicted to alcohol than men according to alcoholinjustice.org. They can end up with liver disease after drinking substantially lower amounts of alcohol in a shorter period of time than men. I don’t want to be the girl who says this isn’t fair, we should be able to have just as much fun as men without risking our health, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s fair. And at least I’m being the girl, and not “that girl”.
By no means am I advocating binge drinking among men or women. I think more college students should think of their health before they follow the crowd in the 21 shots “rite of passage”. I am saying that the next time you go to a party and see “that girl,” give her at least one free pass from ridicule. Maybe she didn’t need to drink those last few shots of tequila, but the guy standing right next to her who is only slightly intoxicated could have had many more, and no one is judging him.
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