‘New femininities’, alcohol consumption and life beyond young womanhood. Negotiating gender, class and ageappropriate identities through alcohol consumption

Abstract

Drawing on theoretical insight from the study of ‘new femininities’, I explore how young women in Norway perform and negotiate gendered identities through their alcohol consumption. I focus in particular on women in their late twenties and early thirties, who represent a less explored age group in both research on women’s contemporary drinking practices and the study of new femininities. I shed light on the contextual and relational nature of new femininities, and highlight the usefulness of exploring gender performances as embedded in broader life projects and imagined (gendered) futures. In turn, I argue that this approach broadens our understanding of women’s accounts and experiences of ‘maturing out’ of youthful drinking practices, lifestyles and gendered identities. This dissertation contributes to the research field exploring changes in young womanhood and the emergence of new femininities in contemporary Western societies. Alcohol consumption and nightlife settings have been argued to be important areas in which new femininities are enacted and negotiated by young women. While much of the recent research has focused rather narrowly on young women’s drinking in public spaces and participation in intoxication-oriented drinking cultures, I consider how drinking practices unfold in relation to different settings and how these practices interact with social categories such as age and class. To explore this main theme, I consider the following research questions in four published articles: 1. What subject positions are available to young adult women as they negotiate unwanted attention in nightlife, and what space for action do these positions make available? 2. How do new ideals of ‘successful femininity’ interact with alcohol consumption for young middle-class adult women, both in their present lives and in their imagined future lives? 3. How do young adult women negotiate conventional and contemporary ideals of femininity as they mature out of former heavy drinking practices? 4. How does age influence constructions of appropriate sexuality for women, and how do young adult women negotiate sexual behaviours and desires in nightlife in light of this? To answer these questions, I draw on qualitative, in depth interviews from two research projects. The first sample consists of interviews with 50 young adult Norwegian women (18-34 years old) that explored their experiences of participating in heavy drinking cultures. The second sample consists of interviews with 19 Norwegian women (27-34 years old) that examined their drinking and nightlife experiences as young, professional women. Together with inspiration from an introductory fieldwork, these interviews form the empirical foundation of my dissertation. Results from the analyses of these interviews are presented in four published articles.