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The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media

Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lennox, Jemma, Emslie, Carol, Sweeting, Helen, Lyons, Antonia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6098244/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29734048
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.04.009
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author Lennox, Jemma
Emslie, Carol
Sweeting, Helen
Lyons, Antonia
author_facet Lennox, Jemma
Emslie, Carol
Sweeting, Helen
Lyons, Antonia
author_sort Lennox, Jemma
collection PubMed
description Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience. This paper explores how young people discuss young women’s drinking practices, and how young women construct their identities through alcohol consumption and its display on social media. We conducted 21 friendship-based focus groups (both mixed and single sex) with young adults aged 18–29 years and 13 individual interviews with a subset of focus group respondents centred on their Facebook practices. We recruited a purposive sample in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) which included ‘middle class’ (defined as students and those in professional jobs) and ‘working class’ respondents (employed in manual/service sector jobs), who participated in a range of venues in the night time economy. Young women’s discussions revealed a difficult ‘balancing act’ between demonstrating an ‘up for it’ sexy (but not too sexy) femininity through their drinking and appearance, while still retaining control and respectability. This ‘balancing act’ was particularly precarious for working class women, who appeared to be judged more harshly than middle class women both online and offline. While a gendered double standard around appearance and alcohol consumption is not new, a wider online audience can now observe and comment on how women look and behave. Social structures such as gender and social class remain central to the construction of identity both online and offline.
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spelling pubmed-60982442018-08-20 The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media Lennox, Jemma Emslie, Carol Sweeting, Helen Lyons, Antonia Int J Drug Policy Article Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience. This paper explores how young people discuss young women’s drinking practices, and how young women construct their identities through alcohol consumption and its display on social media. We conducted 21 friendship-based focus groups (both mixed and single sex) with young adults aged 18–29 years and 13 individual interviews with a subset of focus group respondents centred on their Facebook practices. We recruited a purposive sample in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) which included ‘middle class’ (defined as students and those in professional jobs) and ‘working class’ respondents (employed in manual/service sector jobs), who participated in a range of venues in the night time economy. Young women’s discussions revealed a difficult ‘balancing act’ between demonstrating an ‘up for it’ sexy (but not too sexy) femininity through their drinking and appearance, while still retaining control and respectability. This ‘balancing act’ was particularly precarious for working class women, who appeared to be judged more harshly than middle class women both online and offline. While a gendered double standard around appearance and alcohol consumption is not new, a wider online audience can now observe and comment on how women look and behave. Social structures such as gender and social class remain central to the construction of identity both online and offline. Elsevier 2018-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6098244/ /pubmed/29734048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.04.009 Text en © 2018 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lennox, Jemma
Emslie, Carol
Sweeting, Helen
Lyons, Antonia
The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
title The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
title_full The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
title_fullStr The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
title_full_unstemmed The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
title_short The role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
title_sort role of alcohol in constructing gender & class identities among young women in the age of social media
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6098244/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29734048
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.04.009
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