“Not a good look”: Impossible Dilemmas for Young Women Negotiating the Culture of Intoxication in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This paper investigates young women's alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom within a widespread culture of intoxication in relation to recent debates about postfeminism and contemporary femininity. Young women are faced with an “impossible dilemma,” arising from the contradiction between a hedonistic discourse of alcohol consumption and postfeminist discourse around attaining and maintaining the “right” form of hypersexual heterosexual femininity. Drawing on a recent interview study with 24 young white working-class and middle-class women in the South-West of England, we explore how young women inhabit the dilemmas of contemporary femininity in youth drinking cultures, striving to achieve the “right” form of hypersexual femininity and an “optimum” level of drunkenness.

Keywords :

• femininity
• gender
• consumption
• culture
• alcohol
• postfeminism
• night-time economy

GLOSSARY

• Big nights out: Nights out that are constituted as occasions with the aim to drink high quantities of alcohol in bars and clubs on the busiest nights of the week after pre-drinking at home. Big nights out usually begin after 10.00pm in bars or clubs and finish in the early hours of the morning at a club.

• Culture of intoxication: Measham and Brain (2005) suggest that there is a culture of intoxication in the UK where drunkenness is constructed as integral to a good night out amongst a broad social spectrum of contemporary young people. They outline 4 possible contributions: 1) alcohol consumption has been integrated into the normalisation of recreational drug use within young people's desires to experience altered states of intoxication; 2) the recommodification of alcoholic drinks and increased strength by volume since the 1990s; 3) changes in cultural norms about the acceptable and desirable state of intoxication; 4) bars and clubs aimed specifically at large numbers of young people.

• Mainstream drinking venues: City-centre drinking venues specially intended for the majority of young drinkers based on popular culture and designed for ‘big nights out’. These venues are designed to encourage more drinking by having limited seating and music loud enough to drown out conversation.

• NTE: The transformation of city-centers through the development of licensed leisure spaces, especially bars and clubs for 18–35-year-old consumers. The development of the NTE is designed to produce hedonistic consumption and coincides with the deregulation of UK licensing laws.

• Postfeminist discourse: A way of constructing an image of contemporary femininity. This discourse situates the representation of contemporary femininity as stylishly groomed, youthful, bold, “sassy,” and “sexually knowing.” Postfeminism incorporates the shift from objectification to subjectification and integrates a focus on self-transformation through consumption (Gill, 2007; Gill, 2008).