Category Archives: Women and Alcohol

Young White Women Using Heroin More Frequently

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A new study released by the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy shows a dramatic increase in heroin using among young white women, especially those living in the Chicago suburbs. Despite a 16 percent drop in heroin related deaths overall since 2000, deaths among white women under the age of 35 have increased by 40 percent. Heroin has become so popular that it is now the second most common drug people seek rehab treatment for, after alcohol. The report makes it clear that the face of heroin use has shifted from older, black users in the inner city to young white women in the city’s famously wealthy suburbs.

While women’s drug use has often been ignored, it is clear that it represents just as much of a problem as that of male users (if not more, as women make up a majority of the population). The media typically equates drug use with urban blacks, involved in gangs and prostitution, while often making white people out to be model citizens who want to strictly enforce the “War on Drugs.” If the media does broach …

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Alcoholism in Middle Class Mothers More Common Than You Think

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Strictly speaking, alcoholism is never a good thing. When any person becomes an alcoholic, there are a myriad of people who are adversely affected by the decisions of the person. However, in family environments, parental alcoholism can have a unique impact on the children in a home. Specifically, the Daily Mail recently reported on the challenges an alcoholic mother creates for the home.

The article discusses the impacts on the children and spouses in specific cases. One man told how he became both a mother and a father to compensate for his wife’s lack of involvement in the lives and well being of the children. Another story highlights …

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How Food Gets Gendered

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photo of woman eating biggest chocolate bar ever

A new post by Salon’s Riddhi Shah examines the ways in which food is gendered to be consumed either by men or women, with the other side shunning that which does not conform to their gender. The classic example that Shah focuses on, as evidenced by the post’s title, is that meat is for men and chocolate is for women. In the United States, meat is particularly associated with manliness and strength, whereas chocolate is “the exclusive preserve of premenstrual women and post-breakup slumber parties.” However, in many other parts of the world these ideas do not hold true, as it is men who often prefer chocolate, and in some cultures salty foods are far and away the dominant favorite regardless of gender. What this leads Shah to conclude is that the United States is a highly food gendered society that exacerbates and perpetuates biological stereotypes.

Stereotypes, however, are often fractured exaggerations of some basic truth. There is scientific evidence that shows that women prefer foods that are sweeter and more colorful, while men show a strong preference for bitterness and colors that connote density and robustness. This is why in the beverage world, women are associated with sugary “girlie drinks” like cosmopolitans and red wine, and heavier more unpalatable whiskeys and beers …

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Women Better at Tasting Beer

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photo of woman kissing a bottle of beer

So you think women don’t know good beer? You’re wrong! The Wall Street Journal is reporting that women make better beer tasters than men, as they are more adept at recognizing complex chemicals that affect flavor. This skill is considered extremely important, not only in order to discover the desirable flavors, but also to discern which unwanted chemicals make the beer “skunky.” While some people (mostly male) have disputed women’s palate prowess, I tend to agree with this logic.

In addition to the science that shows women may have a biological edge when it comes to tasting, it has been suggested by many (including some professional female tasters) that women are also socialized to do more complex tasks related to smell, taste and pattern recognition (the world’s top female taster, Joanna Wasilewska of Poland, claims that a lifetime of memorizing perfumes gives her an edge). One of the top male tasters (who listened to women’s advice to improve his own abilities) put it this way: “sometimes guys will see red or brown and women will see shades in it.” As a man who tends to like beer and will drink just about anything that doesn’t taste like dishwater (and yes, there is such a beer), this makes perfect sense. One of the drinks that I cannot stand (wine) is often preferred by (and heavily marketed towards) women over beer, precisely because it has a more nuanced blend of flavors. One “amateur” drinker agrees with this sentiment: “I think we have a better sense of what tastes better in all aspects, food, clothes, beer.” According to one blogger, this may be why Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose to receive a case of notoriously awful Molson Canadian from Obama after he won a bet that the Canadian hockey team would beat the USA in the Olympics (for the record, Obama picked bilgewater Bud Light for the “beer summit” after the Henry Louis Gates arrest).

So what do you all think? Are women really the better tasters?  They may as well be.  They kind of invented it, so they must know what they’re talking about, right?



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