Many of you regular readers may know that I’m an avid reader of Jezebel.com, Gawker’s feminist little sister blog.

I graduated from a women’s college and it was refreshing to read commentary on politics and pop culture that was both feministy and funny. Jezebel showed that you could care just as much about petro politics and Britney Spears and still be smart and irreverent.

But I go through periods when I have to stop reading it because of the self righteous, better than thou attitude. It’s the kind of blog that makes women feel bad for watching Sex and the City or buying Vogue magazine. Look I buy Vogue because I’m not exactly going to read The Economist while in the bathroom!

And then this happened.*

For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to figure out why it bothered me so much. Was it the hypocrisy? The same people that made fun of the Carrie Bradshaws and Julia Alisons were making fools of themselves. Or maybe it hit too close to home. I question whether or not I would have done the same thing had I been in that situation. Afterall, what we judge in others is usually a result of what we deplore in ourselves. God knows how many blog posts I’ve devoted to my drunk, stumbling inanities. Would I have bombed like that?


I guess this also raises greater questions of what it really means to be a feminist today. Is it empowering to prove that you can drink just like (or more than) a man?** Is it empowering to tell tales of your drinking adventures of passing out and making out?** Even going beyond the blogosphere, look at how many girls post half naked pics of themselves on msypace or facebook or photos of them passed out drunk somewhere because it’s “funny.” Is that proving that we’ve come a long way?

I think my generation of women has so many conflicting messages about feminism. On the one hand, our forebearers fought for women’s sexual liberation but then on the other hand we have girls gone wild. And then we’re told that we should be equal to men in every way as if that gives us a free pass to drink to the point of oblivion and say fuck you. How do we straddle these two spheres of restriction and excess?

I wonder if the problem is that we don’t have a designated speaker or role model for our generation of women. We don’t have a Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem that we could all look up to.

Hmmm, I nominate Tina Fey. She’s funny. She’s smart. She’s self-deprecating. And she’s never flashed her drawers to the paparazzi.

*While Thinking and Drinking is ostensibly a comedy panel that touches on serious subjects, I’m not really sure if rape is a great subject for that kind of thing. Rape is not exactly hilaahrious comedy terrain.

**Depends on who you are drinking against

*** Maybe not but it makes for good comedy