Make Mine a Double: Why Women Like Us Like to Drink (Or Not)

An Aperitif

฀ t An Aperitif there I was, standing with a group of distinguished women at a Modern Language Association party a few years back, and I couldn’t help but notice that our male colleagues all seemed to be holding martinis. It was quite a sight: two hundred men in blue blazers and tan trousers, all holding triangular glasses. Surveying the room, one of my colleagues wondered aloud why a man with a drink thinks he looks like Sean Connery from Dr. No, whereas a woman with a drink fears she looks like Elizabeth Taylor from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That said, she sipped her Chardonnay in silence. Not one of us could come up with a snappy answer. Why does the cultural cork pop when we put women together with the grape and grain? Why are there still raised eyebrows , pursed lips, and hand placed over the glass as if to signal “enough”? Forthemostpart,booksaboutdrinkcelebratethesocialdrinking of workingmen or guys in blue blazers. The titles for such books include words such as “jaunty,” “urbane,” and “beer pong.” In contrast, the titles for books about women who drink include words like “depraved,” “licentious,” and “ignoring risks for the unborn child.” Older whiskey and younger women still symbolize an accomplished man, whereas the iconic drinking woman is memorialized in Hogarth’s engraving Gin Lane. Shamelessly inebriated, the drunken central figure helps herself to tobacco from a snuffbox, blissfully unaware that her baby is slipping over the staircase banister. viii t g i n a b a r r e c a Women have been raised and praised to make decisions based on what’s best for other people. Drinking—any amount—does not pair well with this mission of selflessness. Gin Lane’s wench, besotted by alcohol, neglects her doomed child. And so will we all, if we drink. A woman is always teetering on the edge, about to fall into the abyss of self-indulgence. One glass too many—even just one glass—could push her right over. We were taught to fear the loss of control that comes from too much drink. The seduction of liquor leads to other temptations, red and juicy like an apple, and it’s a downhill spiral from there. Susan Campbell writes: “If I had been a drinker in high school, I would have gone home with the first guy who asked, borne three or four woods colts (that’s what we called children born outside of wedlock then), and ended up for life in a trailer just outside of town. That’s all from that first sip of Bud.” We see how easy it is to go from a teen’s first sip of beer to Elizabeth Taylor’s drunken floozy Martha, a woman so fueled by drink that she humiliates her husband by sleeping with their guest—or worse, the soused mom of bastard children. These—and so many other—cautionary tales about the woman who drinks always have unhappy endings. She ends up sad, fat, abandoned, and poor. Or she ends up debauched, her looks gone, her reputation and liver in equal shades of graying disintegration. Drunk, she is a bad wife and worse mother. The glue that cements the family, she herself has become unglued, and everything falls apart. We were also taught to bear up, button up, and deny ourselves pleasure. We must master the art of self-denial and role modeling . We should live smug and petulant lives, the lives of those who merely inflict virtue on others. We should give ourselves up, like Joan of Arc to the flames, to our passion for abstinence. Actually, Joan of Arc, the sainted warrior, was no teetotaler; in her diaries she records her taste for “sops,” or bowls of bread soaked in wine. Perhaps the fear is this: if a woman is permitted An Aperitif t ix happiness, she might also pursue delight—and what will happen to her if she becomes too accustomed to pleasure? She might seek it on her own, without asking for permission or benediction. Since a woman ordering a drink is the quintessential embodiment of a woman pleasing nobody but herself, it’s not surprising that she’s potentially a pariah. A woman with corkscrew in hand is indulging an appetite with no benefit to anyone else; she’s also vaguely threatening. She drinks the way a cat purrs, not to please or...