a few things from the papers ... my thanks to lexis-nexis academic universe
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  Copyright 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited

  The Observer

  October 14, 2001

SECTION: Observer News Pages, Pg. 31

LENGTH: 842 words

HEADLINE: Comment: It's her shout: British women are drinking too
much in a bid to out-macho men

BYLINE: Cristina Odone

BODY:

  'GIVE ME A whisky And don't be stingy, baby!' Greta Garbo drawled
her first spoken lines in Anna Christie ('Garbo speaks!' thrilled the
adverts for the 1930 film). The titillating spectacle of the
glamorous diva downing her dram must have proved too much for puritan
Hollywood: within the year, studio heads were enforcing the Hay's
Code, which portrayed a celluloid never-never land where there was no
nookie between unmarried couples (or, for that matter, married ones,
who always slept in separate beds), and only men drank alcohol.

  The studio censorship lasted for four years. Then Myrna Loy, playing
a thinly disguised Lillian Hellman in The Thin Man , was allowed to
slosh back a drink with gusto - rehabilitating, in the process,
women's drinking from taboo to routine.

  Yet despite this long overdue recognition that the Missus, too,
might be fond of the bottle, the woman alcoholic - be she Liz Taylor
or plain Jane Smith - continued to meet with the censure reserved for
the fallen woman (which indeed she often, literally, was). While her
critics hissed their contempt through pursed lips, the female drunk
tried to camouflage her tragic flaw behind closed doors, desperate to
preserve a fiction that all was well, Rock Hudson was straight, and
Doris Day a virgin.

  Incredible to think that only a few decades on, a woman of Anne
Robinson's status would publish a grizzly memoir of her
alcohol-induced self destruction, replete with harrowing vignettes of
waking up in a pool of her own vomit in a strange bed, and staggering
to her off-licence at 9am to buy her first miniature bottle. That the
megastar should dare flaunt her cautionary tale signals a recognition
that there are thousands of women out there for whom a drink means
everything.

  The sobering statistics bear this out: a survey published this week
shows that alcohol consumption by women of all ages is likely to soar
by almost 30 per cent by 2004. Another one shows that more women than
men are now participating in the 3,400 Alcoholics Anonymous groups in
the UK. Being a woman today drives you to drink.



  PAGE 2 The Observer, October 14, 2001

  BLAME THE superwoman myth: thou shalt be a lady in the drawing-room,
a chef in the kitchen, a whore in the bedroom - oh, and a powerhouse
in the boardroom and a Madonna with the children. These days, women
face more pressure to perform in more areas than men do. No wonder
that girls as young as 13 scramble to find an emotional crutch to
help them scale the awesome heights of twenty-first century
womanhood. In a competitive world, where every activity, is a measure
of your success, you need a pint to steady the nerves before an
interview, an alcopop to combat shyness on a date, a Smirnoff Ice to
drown the humiliation of a bad result

  It's easy-peasy to get hold of the drinks at college, where the
on-campus bars are often subsidised: 69 pence will buy you a double
shot at Edinburgh University during happy hour; a pound will buy you
a pint of lager on Wednesday evening when, across the country,
all-women hockey (and rugby and football) teams celebrate their
afternoon matches.

  The problems are just beginning. Drink too little, and you're
accused of not knowing how to have a good time; drink too much and
you're accused of being a good-time girl. And the amount of alcohol
that can make the difference between tipsy charm and sad inebriation
can be, in a woman's physique, treacherously small.

  But another, significant, element surfaces in these alarming
surveys: alcohol abuse is increasing more rapidly among young women
in Britain than anywhere else in Europe.

  No wonder. The Anglo-Saxon woman is forced to be more macho than any
man - taking fewer holidays lest she be suspected of putting her kids
first; obsessively controlling her conduct, lest she be accused of
being hysterical or affected by 'that time of the month'.

  The continental woman, instead, has more room to manoeuvre: she must
be steely, tough, and ruthless, yes - especially in the Mediterranean
countries where so many professions are still predominantly male. But
she need never take on men on their own terms.

  She can inhabit traditional feminine territory without fear of this
disqualifying her from the race. She can bring her child's drawings
to the office, wear a sexy dress to a business dinner, and even flirt
with boss and colleagues to take the unpleasant edge off the
competition - without ever fearing that she be mocked as the office
slapper. And if the going gets unbearable, she can beat a retreat to
non professional status - as wife, mother, or mistress - without
risking the pariah status that a housewife often suffers here. Using
her femininity as a prop keeps her from falling back on alcohol as
her crutch.

  Hers is a less simplistic and narrow world than the Anglo- Saxon
one. Maybe once we realise that 'she' need not out-macho 'him', we'll
allow both sexes to inhabit a world that can accommodate weakness,
fatigue and even failure.

  I'll drink to that.

  Cristina Odone is deputy editor of the New Statesman



  PAGE 3 The Observer, October 14, 2001

  LOAD-DATE: October 14, 2001


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