Australia - Drugs
Susan Maushart 21/6/08;
“Gay! Gay!” shriek the children like some baleful Greek chorus, their kohl-rimmed eyes ablaze with pity. I cover the receiver. “Gay, straight, or scallop-edged, I’m making this phone call,” I hiss. (These days, the word “gay” has nothing to do with sexuality, they insist. Now it just means “loser”. Phew. For a moment there I was worried 40 years of civil rights activism had been in vain.) Teenagers hate it when parents confer about their social arrangements, but in my experience there is strength in collective paranoia.
The Australia, Weekend Magazine, No Internet Text
So when my 13-year-old invited a few girlfriends around for a sleepover, I was happy to take a phone call from a fellow member of the Gay! community. She asked the usual questions. Would there be an adult at home? Should the girls bring pillows? And … oh yes, would alcohol be served?
At a slumber party for 13-year-olds?” I repeated incredulously. You can’t be serious. Of course I’ll be drinking.
There was a longish sort of pause before I realised she meant the girls. (Gulp!) The girls who can barely multiply fractions, and who take turns pouring the popcorn into the popcorn maker (it’s that much of a thrill). The girls who talk about boyfriends as if they were trout (omigod! I got one!!), who can still be observed conversing earnestly with a stuffed toy, or playing “shops” with a pretend credit card (just like mummy’s).
After I assured her I would be more likely to hire strippers to celebrate the pug’s 18th, the mother told me that her daughter had recently spent the night with a friend whose father admitted he’d “given in” and shared a few cocktails with them. He was recently separated, she added. From what, I couldn’t help wondering. His cerebral cortex?
The dad in question (let’s just call him AlcoPop), who lives in one of Perth’s most privileged postcodes, defended his hospitality with “they’d be doing it anyway, so they might as well do it at home, where it’s safe”. The irony is so strong you could get wasted on the fumes alone.
“Mean Girls!” barks the headline in our Sunday tabloid the next morning. “Drink-fuelled violence by young women is soaring.”
It’s a hot topic in papers all over the country. The violence may or may not be soaring, and the drink may or may not be fuelling it. But one fact is beyond dispute: we ladle out blame to teenage girls like cheap punch at an after party, while the more confronting debate about alcopops (and alco-mums as well) stays stoppered.