Have you ever blacked out from drinking too much? It’s quite possibly one of the strangest things that can happen to you. One minute you’re standing there, explaining to a friend how much you “freakin’ love this song,” and the next thing you know, you’re waking up in someone’s hallway, bleeding slightly from your right temple and missing a shoe. What happened in between is a mystery, made even more puzzling by your friend’s description of the previous night as “an ass-slapping good time.”
Now, all of you guys out there who know from past experience what I’m talking about, raise your hand. Okay, now the women. Ah ha! So it is true. The number of women in college who binge drink is on the rise. How clever of me to devise this manner of survey, which in turn has proven Time magazine correct in their recent article about female college students trying to “drink like a man.”
According to Time, the number of women at all female universities who binge drink (defined as four or more drinks in a row, at least three nights in the past two weeks) has gone up 125 percent since 1993. The average blood-alcohol level of women rushed to the hospital at the University of Vermont is .20, which is 10 percent higher than that of their idiot male friends. And the list of facts goes on.
Although I was vaguely aware of this phenomenon before, I can’t say I’ve noticed it here at BU. Now, that may be due to the fact that when you’re drunk, there is little way of telling, or caring, about who else is drunk. You know who isn’t drunk — that guy in the corner who won’t shut up about campaign finance reform. Everyone else, though, they’re just “having a good time.”
Perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t noticed anything is my avoidance of large house parties where you don’t know anyone except the two friends you brought with you, and by the end of the night, that one big guy working the keg (he’s always there, isn’t he?). Typically, on a night like that, I only pay attention to the amount of cheap beer I myself have ingested. So tell me ladies, is Time magazine on to something?
Apparently the reason behind this increase is a warped sense of feminism. “If a guy can drink a 30-pack of Natty Light in one night, why can’t I?” says hypothetical female number one. My answer to this is simply, “Who the hell wants to drink that much beer in the first place? Especially Natty Light. Good Lord!” When was the last time you drank 30 glasses of water in one evening? It just ain’t meant to happen.
“But,” says hypothetical female number two, or as she’s known to her friends, Beer Breath Beth, “when I drink as much as a guy, the other guys are impressed.” Sure they are. You know what they’re really impressed by? The ease at which they’ll be able to get into your pants, provided that you are of course wearing pants.
The whole notion of being impressed by how much someone can drink is ridiculous. This should be obvious by the fact that it is practiced by men everywhere. These are the same men who hold pissing contests (a real bonding experience, I have to admit) among a variety of other meaningless tests of barroom endurance.
Beth chimes in again, “I don’t see why women shouldn’t drink the same amount as men. We’re all equal.” Right. We’re all equal. Hold on a second while I kill Beth. Okay, she’s dead. Now, according to scientific studies, women have a higher ratio of fat to water, and thus are less capable of diluting alcohol when it enters the bloodstream. Add to that the fact that women have lower levels of an enzyme that helps break down alcohol, and that’s proof enough to me that we’re really not the same after all.
Women shouldn’t have to compete with men in all aspects of life. There are some things men are just physically more capable of doing, be it athletics or acting like a complete moron. I can understand sometimes you feel like you “fit in” more when the playing field is level, but why waste your time on one of the dumbest realms of competition?
Don’t let me lead you to believe that I think women should never get drunk. I wouldn’t want to take away that great feeling you get when you can only see straight by closing one eye. But like any responsible or partially responsible or even remotely responsible individual, know your limit and if possible, ignore random frat boy #367 encouraging you to, “Chug it! Chug it!” Wow, I feel like a Coors Light ad now.
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