Keith Morris

19 May 2002

Summary

Binge Drinking Among College Girls

     Isa Diebold, 22 and a student at Syracuse University, says she has two goals by her senior year "Learn how to drive a stick shift, and drink a guy under the table" (57). Diebold said that one night after drinking two pitchers of beer, she got into an argument with her boy friend and put her fist through the back window of her car. Diebold claims drinking like a guy is like a badge of honor. Syracuse administrators are seeing twice as many women as men being rushed to the hospital, one or two each weekend. Some suffer from alcohol poisoning requiring their stomachs to be pumped, treatment for injuries as a result from drinking, and sexual assault (Morse 57-58).

     Throughout the 90s most of the attention was directed towards drinking by frat boys. Today drinking among men in college has dropped or leveled off while there has been an increase among women in most schools. At the University of Vermont the average blood-alcohol level for drunk women treated at the hospital is now .20, 10% higher than that of men and more than twice the legal limit of .08. Georgetown University has experienced a 35% increase in women sanctioned for alcohol violations over the past three years. Patrick Kilcarr, the director of Georgetown's Center for Personal Development says, "Women are not just drinking more, they're drinking ferociously" (58).

     A study being published in the Journal of American College Health, research by Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health, shows between 1993 and 2001 all women colleges saw an increase of 125% in frequent binge drinking. With binge drinking defined as the consumption of four or more drinks in a row, three or more times in the past two weeks (58).

     A report put out in April 2002 by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found girls as young as ninth graders are as likely as boys to report drinking alcohol. And that in 1991, 22.4% of tenth grade girls and 31.4% of tenth grade boys reported binge drinking, while by 1999 girls have narrowed that number to within two percentage points of the boys (58).

     Science, which has focused most of its attention on the effects of alcohol on men and boys, is now playing catch-up on its effect with women. Women's bodies have a higher ratio of fat to water, and this results in alcohol that is less diluted when it inters the bloodstream. Women have lower levels of an enzyme that assists the break down of alcohol, and new research indicates liquor corrodes women's bodies quicker than that of a man. Adult women also tend to develop liver disease 10 to 15 years earlier than men, even with considerably fewer amounts of daily drinks (58-59).

     The stigma that once was associated with drinking among women has changed throughout history. In Colonial America, women owned taverns but were frowned upon for frequenting them. Women mostly drank at home or in private in the early 1900s, due to public opinion at the time. When Alcoholics Anonymous began in the late 1930s, only one of the first 100 members was a woman. With the sexual revolution of the 60s, not only were women's rights and freedoms brought into the limelight, drinking issues were also. As opinions about women drinking changed so did liquor companies, by targeting women with advertisements in the 70s "Get in touch with your masculine side" an ad from Jim Beam, which shows a woman smoking a cigar, is only one of many ways advertisements have directed their promotion of alcohol towards women (59).

     In a study published last year of more than 1000 sixth grade girls in Maryland, girls were twice as likely than boys to drink as a result of peer pressure. Even at an earlier age girls are being primed to drink by TV, radio, and magazines. Equality, selective advertisement campaigns, and not being confined by the stereotyping of femininity, have all played a roll in the reasons for an increase in drinking among women attending college (60).

     Some efforts are being made to help detour the rising number of college women who are binge drinking, Syracuse University is sending female health educators to sororities to inform them of the dangers of excessive drinking.  Campus bars are being pressured to ban specials directed at women, like the drink for free night, and price specials geared at women. Florida State University has print and television ads it plans to start in the next few months that will bring attention to gender based specials as demeaning and dangerous (61).

Works cited

Morse, Jodie. "Women on a Binge" Time 1 April 2002: 57-61