PLAIN TRUTH: So you can hold your liquor? That’s not something to admire

There’s has been a rise in the number of women who drink. The profile of the woman who regularly indulges has also changed over time. It’s no longer necessarily the ratchet young one who likes to paint the town red.

It’s increasingly becoming the busy working mother who, at the end of the day, barely has any time left for herself. So she sips on glasses of wine through the evenings and the weekends.

It was just the other day that I encountered another breed of the drinking woman. The one who thinks that drinking alcohol is empowering. I sat amongst a group of them, mature women in their late 20s and 30s, and the conversation shifted to drinking habits. Quite a number of them spoke with pride about how much alcohol they could take, how they could out do this man or the other. Being able to buy yourself alcohol was also something that was bragged about.

Now, I have nothing against drinking. If you want to, you can afford it and it doesn’t make you disruptive of other people’s lives, go ahead and indulge. The assumption, however, that being able to buy alcohol or to hold it down is empowering to a woman – or a man – is false. This attitude, perhaps, is a spill-over from that belief that to succeed in a patriarchal society like ours, a woman needs to appear and to act more manly, to outdo men at things they enjoy doing. It’s a misguided attitude. Drinking alcohol will nor empower you or set you apart from the crowd career wise.

It’s true, it’s tough for a woman to succeed in the corporate and business world today. It’s even tougher to raise a family while doing that. If you can pay your own bills and buy your own alcohol that is good.

Do not even for a second, however, start thinking of being able to do this as an achievement or a source of liberation. In the relationships arena, being able to drink like a fish will also not make you a more attractive prospect. In fact, depending on the person you are trying to impress, your ability to hold down alcohol might have the opposite effect.

Alcohol might make you feel good for a while but it will, at the same time, slow down your brain function. It will not make you appear smarter. Indulge all you want but do it quietly and do it with no expectations.

You can buy yourself the most expensive drink at the bar? Well done. You can down that bottle of whisky faster than anybody at the table? Good for you. If you want empowerment, however, put down the shot glass and instead seek knowledge, improve on your skill set and seek to make yourself better.

Your alcohol tolerance isn’t something to brag about, no one is impressed by it. If you are looking to impress you will need to do better that downing a bottle.