February 24, 2009 News Story Assignment
Women and Binge Drinking: Women Empowerment or Distasteful Confusion?
Britney Darnell reports the rise of binge drinking for women and why they feel so strongly about it.
Cocktail party! It is Saturday night and you and the girls are chilling out on the sofa and getting caught up with the latest campus gossip. The girls begin talking about that frat party you attended last weekend. Yeah, the one you were super wasted at, remember? Or do you? You can’t remember a thing. Your disheveled look says it all! Everyone laughs and starts drinking some more. You laugh it off, but you know it bothers you. And it should. Results show that binge drinking among women was linked to unsafe sexual practices, such as multiple sex partners, sexually transmitted diseases, rape and even unplanned pregnancies. I bet you wish you could remember now, don’t you?
Many college students drink with one goal in mind―to get drunk! Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more in a row for women. Among those women who partake in binge drinking suffered from alcohol poisoning in need of stomach pumping and others have endured fractured bones after drunken plunges. Why go through such physical agony? Many young women say it makes them feel empowered. Junior communication studies major Kiera Wade of the University of North Texas in Denton, TX disagrees.
“When people do things to show they can impress other people, it shows low self-esteem,” Wade says. “I think that’s foolish to impress a guy by showing that you can hang with them.”
Throughout the 90’s and midway through the 2000’s, fraternity boys were among the elite for partaking in binge drinking festivities. In recent years, women have nearly exceeded this growing trend. Respiratory Therapist Pashine Broussard, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Lafayette, La. says the numbers are equal nowadays between young men and women who binge drink.
“There are just as many young women who binge drink as there are young men,“ Broussard says. “The party scene of college campuses plays a major role.”
The process in which alcohol poison victims undergo is almost identical to a drug victim. When the stomach is pumped, it’s like pumping pills out of the system of an overdose victim. If problems increase, the liver and kidneys will suffer and the binge drinking victim could end up on dialysis.
Alcohol poisoning is only a minor encounter that young women indulge in―unsafe sexual practices tops the chart. Wade says drinking impairs the body and makes it easily accessible as well.
“When you drink you don’t feel as in control of your body and you are looser and do things you do not normally do,” Wade says. “They pay the consequences the next morning.”
According to recent statistics taken from the Journal of American College Health, there has been a tremendous increase in “unplanned” sexual activities, such as date rape and sexual assault. Alcohol completely takes you out of your element and bestows upon you the disability of memory loss. And with this disability, major consequences follow. Recent study has also released an increase in abortions due to drunken nights and unprepared parenting roles. This serious matter continues to be a hot topic because women are the most affected from binge drinking.
Although these taunting statistics are dramatic on instance, there are still those students who would just rather say “no” to drinking altogether.
“It is a personal choice for me not to drink. I have always been taught not to do so,” Wade says.
Wade states that the horrific advertisement of alcohol-related fatalities and viewing what others have gone through in situations where they were drunk, made it easier for her not to give into temptation.
“There are other ways to have fun and not get drunk, and that is just the way I like it,” Wade says.
In all reality, we are college students and drinking will happen regardless of what the most scientific medical expert says. Keep in mind your surroundings, environment, and your limits. Only you can be the judge of that.
