‘Today’s young women’ can do as they please, Sarah Vine

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‘Today’s young women’ can do as they please, Sarah Vine

Drunk girls on NYE aren’t the disgrace the Daily Mail wants them to be. They’re an inspiration

If you’re a woman and you have the internet, chances are that (unfortunately), in the few days since New Year’s, you’ve read an article written by Sarah Vine for The Daily Mail. I did, and it turned me red with anger. In a typical ‘shame-women-for-being-alive’ tabloid fashion, the Daily Mail paints women who dared to have a drink on one of the busiest nights of the year as classless, out of control harlots. It despairs for the sake of modern women. But it shouldn’t.

These drunk girls are more than a terrifying sign of the future for Daily Mail readers clutching their pearls and singing Jerusalem. They’re an inspiration. They’re having fun, they’re looking after their friends. The photos aren’t embarrassing, they’re positive. In some cases, they’re masterpieces.

The article firstly talks about how binge drinking is awful as a whole, and how it’s generally a disgrace, and that I can agree with. Being a 20-year-old student who’s partial to a Jagerbomb or six, that may sound hypocritical, but I’m fully aware of the dangers of binge drinking and I can agree to an extent with the statements that ambulance crews are being unable to reach ‘genuine medical emergencies’ because of people voluntarily intoxicating themselves with actual intentions of being hospitalised for being too drunk.

So yes, it’s not all wrong. Yes, binge drinking to excess can be a big problem, but what’s really got under my skin is the fact that this article is only aimed at women, and was also written by a woman.

The whole article is based around shaming girls for having a good time. The pictures included in the article obviously come under the whole umbrella of being branded ‘shameful’, and it’s completely unfair. The captions are cringe worthy, they’re assuming things and publishing them as though it’s actually okay to publicly shame these girls for having a couple drinks too many. It doesn’t work like that, where are the pictures of the young men getting too drunk? Why aren’t they being shamed for it?

According to Vine “These girls have grown up in a post-feminist society that tells them anything a man can do, they can do better. And that includes getting monumentally, catastrophically bladdered. Judging a woman for being drunk to the point of incontinence is not the done thing anymore.”

The weird thing is how Vine, how sniffling, shaming, middle-aged journalists in general are aware of the changing times, but rather than heralding a new era, are clinging to their internalised misogyny for dear life. Nobody should be getting drunk to the point of incontinence, yes, but realistically it’s still going to happen, to both males and females. We’re British, it’s New Years, we love to get drunk, we like to get fucked up, we like to party.

That’s not a bad thing, and it’s not a condition reserved only for women.

There’s a good chance that most young women who drink, will relate to some, if not all of these pictures. We’ve all been in states we’re not proud of, myself included, and I know that the last thing I would want is it brandished all over the internet to humiliate me with the twisted attempt to shame me into not doing it again. To be honest, any time I’ve been this drunk, while it might not have looked photogenic, at least I had fun doing it.

Articles like this don’t put young women off drinking, or having fun. That’s the whole thing, they’re completely pointless. They’re not influencing anyone – thank god. If anything, reading it would make me more likely do to it again just to give Sarah Vine a big middle finger.

A lot of the pictures show girls doing completely relatable stuff. Taking your heels off to walk, despite it raining? Yes. Finding plastic bags and using them to protect your blow-dried hair? Yasss. Giving your mate a piggy back cause their feet hurt? What’s even wrong with that?

There’s no point getting angry at the ignorance Sarah Vine spouts in her article. It’s tempting, but there’s just not. It shouldn’t fill anyone with rage, it should make them laugh. It is laughable. If a woman has on what you’d consider an “indecently short dress”, maybe you should keep it to yourself Sarah Vine. That girl had a nice dress, and a great arse, bore off.

The only thing that makes me weep – with laughter – for the state of today’s young women is that they still have to read journalism written by past it funsuckers like Sarah Vine.

@maredemlynparry