The new binge-drinkers

Dearest Meteor readers,

I’m feeling tender this week and I’m gonna blame Dying For Sex, the new FX miniseries about actual death, the little death, and ride-or-die friendship. The final episode had me in a puddle the other day. Highly rec’d if you’re a fan of Michelle Williams and/or catharsis.

Today, we dig into a surprising new statistic about young women and drinking. Plus, affirmative action for white men and justice for Black mothers.

Still sniffling,

Nona Willis Aronowitz

WHAT’S GOING ON

A sobering new study: If your image of a young binge-drinker is a frat boy doing keg stands, you’re out of date, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association. While drinking among young people is declining overall and older women still drink less than older men, women ages 18 to 25 now binge-drink slightly more than their male counterparts. (Binge-drinking is defined as regularly having more than four drinks in one sitting for women and more than five drinks for men; the study compared data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2017-2019 and 2021-2023.)

Women’s drinking habits have been catching up to men’s for decades, and scholars, journalists, and public health advocates have been noting the results: Women are increasingly dying, getting sick, and going to the ER from drinking. And why are we drinking more? It’s partly  because of stress. (Research indeed shows that women are more likely to drink in order to cope than men. See also: “Mommy wine culture.”) The pandemic seems to have compounded the problem; articles and studies have abounded since 2020 showing how much more women were drinking to get through their days. Women, some have concluded, “need an intervention.” (Others, as one Meteor commenter put it a few months back, are “tired of being targeted for all the things.”)

But what accounts for younger women binge-drinking more than younger men? The study was careful not to draw conclusions; the authors say that because the groups analyzed in each time period are not the same people, they don’t know whether we’re seeing an actual rise among young women or, perhaps, a decline among men. But Susan Stewart, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University who studies alcohol use among women, has an initial hypothesis: “I think it has to do with women’s independence,” she says. “Young people are dating and having sex at lower rates, and less interested in serious relationships. Women are doing their own thing, which includes partying.”

Stewart also points out that young women have higher rates of college completion than men, and college students binge-drink more than their non-college peers. It’s too early to tell whether this will be a longterm trend, Stewart says, but it could just be a side effect of an otherwise encouraging phenomenon: “women exercising a greater latitude of freedom.”

In any case, it doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with the most recent health guidelines on drinking. And yes, alcohol can be a source of great pleasure—but in case you are struggling, there’s help to be had.

AND:

• Yesterday, the UK Supreme Court issued a unanimous and definitive ruling that the terms “women” and “sex” in the UK’s Equality Act refer only to biological sex. The case was brought by the campaign group For Women Scotland (bankrolled by notorious transphobe J.K. Rowling) after two Scottish courts rejected the group’s claim that the definition of a woman was limited to people born biologically female. The decision could have wide-ranging consequences on sports, prisons, hospitals, and schools. Ellie Gomersall, a trans woman and Scottish Green Party activist, told the Guardian she’s “gutted”; she expects some will “use [the decision] as justification or vindication to discriminate further against trans people, and that makes me really worried for my community.”

THE TRANS RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN SCOTLAND HAS BEEN FIGHTING FOR YEARS. VIA GETTY IMAGES

• A new analysis finds that 38 of 43 experts purged last month from the boards that review the science and research of the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic. That’s an astounding number, and radically affects the boards’ diversity: The cuts removed fully half of the Black and Hispanic women serving, and a quarter of all women—some of whom served during the first Trump administration with no incident. But only six percent of white men serving on the boards were let go. (It almost seems like the government thinks white men need all the help they can get…you might even see it as….affirmative action??) A civil rights lawyer called this data “rather compelling” and asked the obvious question: “Is there any way to attribute this to something other than race and gender?”

• Various Fox News pundits have been bending over backwards to tout Trump’s tariffs as “manly” and the key to solving the “crisis in masculinity.” Please enjoy this video by friend of The Meteor Liz Plank, wherein she asks men at Bernie Sanders’ War on Billionaires rally how they’re feeling about their impending assembly line jobs. (Spoiler: A little nervous!)

• And now for a surprisingly likeable billionaire: Melinda French Gates (owner of exactly zero space-tourism companies!) has released her second book, The Next Day, about life transitions, including her own divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, her partner in marriage and philanthropy for decades. The most touching parts? Her reliance on her close circle of female friends, honesty about the “grief” she felt at divorcing, and her slow realization that anxiously overpreparing for every meeting was neither necessary nor healthy. “These days, I’m no longer driven by the same kind of insecurity,” she writes. “I finally believe that it’s okay if…the limits to my knowledge reveal themselves. Now that I’m finally okay showing up as no one but myself, I no longer treat every appointment on my calendar as a referendum on whether I deserve to be there. It’s a much gentler way to live.”

• Today is the last day of Black Maternal Health Week, an excellent time to spotlight the fact that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related reasons as white women. Some wisdom from the Meteor archives on that subject: Rebecca Carroll’s interview with Tonya Lewis Lee about her documentary on the subject, Aftershock; and this UNDISTRACTED episode with podcasters Gabrielle Horton and Martina Abraham Iluga, along with host Brittany Packnett Cunningham, on having a baby while Black.

WEEKEND READING 📚

On the bigger picture: The CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research breaks down exactly how Trump-era NIH cuts will affect women’s health. (XX Factor)

On the man at the center of a crisis: Here’s what to know about Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unjustly trapped in a notorious prison in El Salvador. (The Guardian)

On playing the game: Fox Sports host Joy Taylor talks to Irin Carmon about work, beauty, and those sexual harassment lawsuits. (The Cut)

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