GENDER: FEMININITY
PHOTO: HELEN YATES
While society has spent a great deal
of effort to help people moderate
drinking, she found little research
underway on the alternative – sobriety.
That this work is now taking place
at the University of Portsmouth is
somewhat apt, with the campus
recently making headlines for closing
down its Students’ Union bar, the
Waterhole, due to lack of demand.
In its place are kettles, microwaves
and quiet study areas.
Dr Emily Nicholls: social contradictions make
women walk a tightrope.
ILLUSTRATION: 123RF
are constantly walking a tightrope,”
Dr Nicholls says.
“Respectable femininity is always a
narrow category and women who strive to
embody it feel they are constantly failing,
being judged or being policed for doing
it wrong.”
Wanting to get away from such
uncompromising strictures may seem
appealing. In fact, in more recent work
Dr Nicholls has identified a strong desire
for sobriety, particularly among women in
their 40s.
While society has spent a great deal of
effort to help people moderate drinking,
she found little research underway on the
alternative – sobriety. That this work is now
taking place at the University of Portsmouth
is somewhat apt, with the campus recently
making headlines for closing down its
Students’ Union bar, the Waterhole, due
to lack of demand. In its place are kettles,
microwaves and quiet study areas.
“There are some interesting changes
happening,” Dr Nicholls says. “Alcohol
consumption rates are in decline,
particularly among young people.”
In a bid to understand some of the
social drivers, she has just completed data
collection with ichange21, a support and
coaching organisation that helps people
rethink their relationship with alcohol.
In search of the real me
The project is called Sobriety Stories and
has involved interviewing women who have
recently quit drinking alcohol.
A recurring theme that emerges from the
interviews is authenticity. Giving up alcohol is
perceived as removing a mask and allowing
a person’s true self to be seen. This is in stark
contrast to the idea of alcohol as the liberator
of a more uninhibited self – an idea that
has strongly prevailed in Western drinking
cultures.
Authenticity is then seen to lead to a
renewed sense of agency and an ability to
make positive change, in contrast to feeling
powerless and ineffectual.
Where once sobriety was viewed
as a stigma, often associated with past
alcohol addiction, a new idea of sobriety
is emerging, couched in terms of a more
positive lifestyle choice. Promoting this new
zeitgeist are communities and organisations
such as Dry January, Club Soda and a wider
positive sobriety movement, and women in
particular are increasingly active on social
media celebrating sobriety.
Dr Nicholls believes that experiences of
sobriety – and the stigma around it – are
shaped by gender. For example, the women
she spoke to expressed concerns about
being a ‘bad’ partner or mother if they
drink heavily.
Notably, the newly sober women relish
being house-proud, learning to cook, being
a better mum and becoming more loving
and caring – values that Dr Nicholls says
centre femininity in the domestic sphere
and draw on traditional ideas of femininity.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a
universally positive thing,” she adds. “So we
are looking at starting a conversation about
whether sobriety in itself could be a kind
of rebellious or feminist act that empowers
[people] by going against drinking norms.”
That’s where she sees the greatest
likelihood for having impact: in changing
the narrative around sobriety to make it a
positive, not a defensive, stance.
ISSUE 1 / 2020
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