“Not a good look”: impossible dilemmas for young women negotiating the culture of intoxication in the United Kingdom.

BAILEY, Lin, GRIFFIN, Christine and SHANKAR, Avi (2015). “Not a good look”: impossible dilemmas for young women negotiating the culture of intoxication in the United Kingdom. Substance Use & Misuse, 50 (6), 747-758.

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Official URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/10826...
Link to published version:: https://doi.org/10.3109/10826084.2015.978643

Abstract

This paper investigates young women's alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom within a widespread culture of intoxication in relation to recent debates about postfeminism and contemporary femininity. Young women are faced with an “impossible dilemma,” arising from the contradiction between a hedonistic discourse of alcohol consumption and postfeminist discourse around attaining and maintaining the “right” form of hypersexual heterosexual femininity. Drawing on a recent interview study with 24 young white working-class and middle-class women in the South-West of England, we explore how young women inhabit the dilemmas of contemporary femininity in youth drinking cultures, striving to achieve the “right” form of hypersexual femininity and an “optimum” level of drunkenness.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Special issue : Rethinking Gender Within Alcohol and Drug Research
Uncontrolled Keywords: femininity, gender, consumption, culture, alcohol, postfeminism, night-time economy
Departments - Does NOT include content added after October 2018: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities > Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.3109/10826084.2015.978643
Page Range: 747-758
Depositing User: Lin Bailey
Date Deposited: 15 May 2018 14:44
Last Modified: 18 Mar 2021 13:18
URI: https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/21093

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