I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You may think you’re the life of the party when you jump up on the bar and lead the rest of the room in a chorus of Madonna’s Like A Prayer in between swigs from the bottle of Sav Blanc clutched by your one free hand. You may think no one notices when you discreetly open your cute little clutch, bend over and fill it with your own stomach lining. You may even think the guy slumped against the bar throwing back bourbons is endearing, so why not make him the object of your night’s affection? After all, nobody is watching, right? Wrong. Everybody is watching.
Enter the “blokette”: the new breed of 20-something woman with the style and sophistication of Alf Stewart. She may have spent the early hours of the evening styling her coif and applying lashings of Fabulash, but by 10pm she’ll be out the back of a popular nightspot sinking casks of Fruity Lexia in the car park. Nevertheless, the blokette can sometimes be a little difficult to spot. Don’t be fooled by her cool couture and Fendi Spy. Deep down she’s just a big bloke screaming to get out.
So, it’s about time to ask young ladies: where in the world has good old-fashioned lady-like charm gone? Evidently, down the toilet with the rest of the by-products of a big night out.
With her own youthful naivet in mind, former university student, medical journalist and adviser to the Society for Women’s Health Research, Dr Jennifer Wider, decided to write The Doctor’s Complete College Girls’ Health Guide. The author aims to give young women all the advice she wished she had received when she went off to study.
In the book, Dr Wider stresses that young women need to understand that their bodies metabolise booze differently to men. “Drink for drink, women are much more affected by alcohol than men. “I can drink until I’m sick just doesn’t work for women. And intoxication can lead to all kinds of risky behaviour,” Dr Wider says.
Even if we are lucky enough not to be faced with the more serious consequences of excessive alcohol consumption, it is more than likely that after a few ‘bevies’ we are well on our way to making a marvelous spectacle of ourselves.
So, how can we redeem ourselves when we’ve had one too many Slippery Nipples?
Rule number one: Don’t lower your standards when eating while drunk. If you wouldn’t eat a bucket of Popcorn Chicken when you are sober, being two sheets to the wind is no excuse. Tantamount to suppressing our own greasy urges, it doesn’t help when Pizza Hut offers us even more ways to stuff processed rubbish into our bodies. A word to our friends at The Hut: settle down love, put the dough away, there is enough fake cheese and spam in the topping; you don’t need to go siphoning it into the crust too!
Rule number two: Cab lines exist for a reason. Sure they are completely useless 90 percent of the time; but that still doesn’t give you the right to blatantly disregard the queue (of equally as tired, hung-over and grumpy partygoers), wolf-whistle the cab over to themselves, so they and their vile partner can get home and do the wild thing.
Rule number three: Don’t piss people off. You might think you’re charming, but leave the police alone. Believe it or not they don’t give a shit about the ramblings of a drunken woman, nor are they going to lend you their handcuffs so that you can perform your ever-so-seductive pole dance. With any luck they’ll throw you into the back of the paddy wagon and do us all a favour.
Admittedly, being bad can sometimes do you the world of good. Just look to any of the glossies at the supermarket checkout. After all, wouldn’t you rather read about Naomi Campbell’s latest temper tantrum than how lovely Natalia Vodianova is to her husband? At the end of the day, it’s the scandal that sells.
Look, I don’t want to be a traitor to my generation. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the odd cosmopolitan or three as much as the next Generation Y gal. But there comes a time when innocent reveling becomes just plain embarrassing. Often I see my gorgeous (and sometimes not so gorgeous) fellow femmes dressed to kill for a big night out, only to end the night screaming obscenities at fast-food restaurant staff who aren’t quite fast enough. Or paying $120 to travel from the City to the Valley as a result of their stunning digestive pyrotechnics in the taxi. Is it too much to ask that we party hard but still retain our dignity?
It seems we have a lot to answer for. Should we have listened to our grandmothers who were brought up according to the school of ‘Be nice to people and don’t speak with your mouth full?’ Maybe, maybe not. Either way, when it comes to matters of the heart (and liver and brain), we need to at least be able to keep our inner blokette in check. After all, that Fendi Spy is destined to hold far more precious possessions than your stomach lining.