British tabloid culture loves to gawk at shitfaced (is that a term across the pond? Knackered?) ladies. In response comes “The Drunk Woman’s Manifesto.”
After yet another Daily Mail article lamenting the ladies these days, and their binge drinking, replete with photographs of them in various states of drunken distress, the Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter are saying enough to the combination fascination/pearl clutching that comes with public female drunkenness. In their manifesto, they write:
Friends and readers, as we know, there’s a thin line between love and hate. Somewhat incredibly, Platell’s piece manages to feature almost every aspect of drunken female behaviour that tabloids simultaneously loathe and desire. Yes, this article has the whole shebang: long lens photos of young women with their fishnets torn up to the bum at a fancy dress party in freshers’ week; phrases like “barely leaving anything to the imagination” and “neo-feminists behaving like men” and creepily voyeuristic descriptions of “pretty young girls lying comatose on the pavement”. Not to mention hotpants, girls giving each other piggy-backs, and themed nights at the local clubs – all of which, it has to be said, looks like a pretty cracking night out, especially as no one appears to have even been sick. Yet during the course of the piece, Platell glides seamlessly from her condemnation of a “Dirty Doctors and Naughty Nurses” party to a discussion of NekNomination, the competitive drinking phenomenon that “so far seems to be mainly confined to men, although it can only be a matter of time before girls feel they need to get in on it.”
Coslett and Baxter then go on to name examples of women who are already in on this “NekNomination” game, and to chide the Daily Mail for promoting the notion that drinking isn’t something that ladies are naturally inclined to do: