Girl News: What Girls Drink

Everybody gets drunk for the same reasons (and there are two: 1. drinking is fun and 2. life is retarded), but how everybody gets drunk is particular to their genus of human. Like everything else, girls’ relationship to alcohol is an elaborate construct of class and cultural identity, light body dysmorphia, and general aspirationalism—be it to have fun in the same ways and to the same ends as boys (which is not actually allowed) or to become the version of themselves that doesn’t have to worry about it (also not allowed). Anyway, it’s fucked. Even though lots of women aren’t willing to accept food into their lives, pretty much everybody will drink 16 mimosas for breakfast if that’s what’s up, plus all of us drink from the widest possible spectrum of alcoholic choices: “girl drinks” exist, but in tandem with beer. Fortunately, girls are better at hangovers since we know about coconut water, and because there are more serious socio-cultural implications for drunk girls (messy) than drunk guys (cool), we don’t tend to drink to the point where we go pee-pee in our beds.

CHAMPAGNE

Champagne is my favorite drink! I like all champagne, because when you drink it you are vaccinated against anything being less than amazing, because even if you are watching a stoner comedy on a Tuesday morning you are really kind of doing something special. It is delicious in an adult way, not a candy way (see: white wine) and opening it is doing a form of work that is sexy, like construction.

I keep one very cheap bottle of champagne (which will not be “champagne,” but sparkling wine--we don't care) and one very expensive bottle of champagne in my apartment at all times to be prepared for people I need to “impress” in different ways. This is also what I give to/get from other girls almost exclusively because it is absolutely guaranteed to be something they/I want.

Girls who love champagne the most are the ones who work in fashion, media, and entertainment, because when you are interning and poor you go to events every night where your dinner will be miniature tacos and chicken kebabs and little soups in shot glasses and unlimited quantities of Moët. Drinking free champagne becomes a serious competition with yourself, like “How much of this can I reasonably drink, and still not barf and have a career someday?” It’s like the champagne that you don’t drink is basically money you lost. I can turn down free vodka (always Grey Goose) and beer (always Peroni) but never, ever champagne.

Plus: wearing some bad outfit (say, as a for instance, your dad’s old t-shirts, cut-offs, and combat boots, which you will pretend to be purposefully derelicte-chic but oh, dear reader, it's just a function of your hangover) when you are holding a glass of Champagne is instantly forgivable. It’s too bad that new-money jags like the Kardashians define popular culture now, because it wasn’t so long ago that champagne felt like a secret import from a distant, older land of money, privilege, and rappers, and now it’s as appropriated and banal as Louis Vuitton. Gross/oh well.

The big trouble with champagne is that it’s so sugary that the hangovers make us real baby-la-las.

COSMOPOLITANS

Just kidding!

WINE

Most white wine--the cheap kind, anyway, I don’t know any girls who lay down real money for white wine--tastes just like all of the dirtiest kinds of candies (those questionable plastic containers of jujubes at the bodega!) melted down and then reconstituted into alcohol. And giiiiirl, it works. If you want to know what a “joyful apocalypse” is, get two girls and a gallon of cold white wine and put them on the porch. I’m not sure I can even talk about this? Is this classified? Like, white wine, cold. If it weren’t so embarrassing to order, it would be my everything.

TEQUILA

Not so much “tequila” as “shots of poor quality tequila.” What do you mean there’s something kind of hot about a chick licking her own wrist (licking her wrist), throwing her head back to both elongate and demonstrate her swan-neck, throwing a soupçon of liquid gold down her throat (down her throat) and then sucking on a piece of fruit (I mean…)? What!? Who invented this freaky-deak? (FYI: exposed necks and exposed inner-wrists are signs of sexual availability so maybe it’s a government fertility plot?)

WHISKY

The idea that women don’t like whisky is really annoying. Haven’t you seen Damages? It’s basically warm medicine. And no, we don’t drink whisky to impress you the way Demi Moore smoked cigars in the 90s. Get over yourself, dungus.

BEER

Do girls like to drink beer? Yes. Do we like it in the same way that guys do? No.

My friend is a “master of beer” or whatever that’s called (“master of my job is fake”) and put three different kinds of beer in front of me and I tasted them all and declared them “Beer!” and then got soooo bored, because beer palate-words are like “grainy” “oaky” “woody” “stinging painful burp” and other things that are squarely masculine. This is a lie: Some girls aren’t grossed out by the words “ale” and “lager,” but beer, especially pints of beer, is so totally the signature drink of Boy Island that I can’t believe we’re expected to go out “for beers” all the time as though it isn’t sexist. Let’s be clear: Beer is delicious and perfect with meat and is for everybody who drinks, but beer culture is for boys.

Girls will probably choose the beer they like the same way they choose sports teams: colors. I used to like drinking 40s (hip hop); now I like Budweiser because the logo is perfect, and because I read an interview with Robert Pollard where he said that he liked Budweiser. I also like Löwenbräu because the can is that beautiful shade of peacock blue that my friend Derek hates because it’s such a good color it’s “arrogant.”

Definitely the girl-est beer is Bud Light Lime. Have you had one? They’re the size of a juice box (DON’T TELL ME HOW MUCH TO DRINK, PATRIARCHY) and they taste like water.

Tip: Put a couple of Slurpee straws in a pitcher of beer and you’re basically Archie and the gang but at a bar. It’s the tits, and you’re welcome.

SPIRITS

Vodka and gin are basically diet aids. Drinking them on the rocks with maybe soda (never tonic, are you for real?) and a twist, or making a Bloody Mary (tomato juice, celery, and horseradish are all very ana) is the most common choice for women to start their night with, because it’s responsible that way. (This is well before you’re way drunk and it’s time to order fries, or whatever.)

COOLERS

Historically, coolers are considered a girl drink, but as of late they are being packaged to appeal to men and in any case are only necessary if you don’t have your own apartment or a valid ID and can’t mix stuff yourself, because they are disgusting. Strictly the domain of high school girls who will drink four and then throw up on the side of her Communications and Technology teacher’s house and when her friend Chris tries to hose it off it will freeze in the distinct shape of a squirrel because it’s the middle of winter in Canada and we forgot about that.

SEX ON THE BEACH/BLOWJOBS/BUTTERY NIPPLES/ETC

Fuck you, rapist! We don’t drink that shit.

KATE CARRAWAY

Follow Kate on Twitter @KateCarraway