Women are also shaped by the culture we consume, which muddies the waters even more. But she did make me sit up and take note of the way wine is coded as part of bonding among women of my socioeconomic status. “I see that booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we should be making other kinds of noise,” writes Coulter, who is now sober. And so when I do end up having more than a single glass of wine with dinner, I don’t beat myself up about it. In our online store, we sell a portable wine tumbler branded with our podcast logo. I don’t make a habit of bar-crawling on weekday nights the way I did when I was in my 20s and working in D.C. Now I live in Los Angeles, where I’m a freelancer whose meetings mostly take place over coffee and whose friends are more likely to suggest we go for a hike than a cocktail. She calls out women she knows for inserting alcohol into every social scenario, from a morning walk through the farmers market to a trip to the waxing salon. Perhaps some women who drink together are victims of groupthink and ignoring their problems. Well, maybe because even cool chicks are still women. Women have a lot of models for booze as both a coping mechanism and a bonding tool. Either way, I’m less concerned about what draws women together over a bottle of wine, and more interested in what we do once we get there. It’s a perfect visual metaphor for Olivia’s need to be perfect in order to counter the twin demons of sexism and racism.) And Coulter mentions the women of “Sex and the City,” whose “f— it, let’s get cosmos” attitude is ancient pop culture history by this point. “Ratfucks.” 
 
 What’s a girl to do when a bunch of dudes have just told her, in front of an audience, that she’s wrong about what it’s like to be herself? Under the influence of alcohol, I’ve decided to dump a dude who wasn’t treating me right, committed to revamping my career and, honestly, had a lot of fun. In other words, blame capitalism, perhaps, but not the patriarchy. Maybe patriarchy does drive us to drink, just as patriarchy drives us to shave our legs and wear bright lipstick. What I do know is that I don’t share Coulter’s experience of having my female friends insist that all social interactions be lubricated with alcohol — again, I live in Los Angeles, where there are always at least a few drivers in the group who aren’t drinking. Think Olivia Pope, the “Scandal” protagonist who self-medicates with red wine. Yeah, I know you. “I’m going to feel hungover by dinner,” a different woman says. Like most women who call themselves feminists, I know that living in a sexist world shapes my life and choices. When I felt the twinge of a hangover, I immediately thought of an essay that I — and, judging by Facebook and Twitter, almost every woman I know — read recently. I’d never considered that the two things might be related. “Maybe all that wine is an Instagram filter for our own lives, so we don’t see how sallow and cracked they’ve become,” she writes. In one specific instance, I’m pretty sure it’s why I was denied a promotion. Or maybe it doesn’t, and we get drunk for the same reasons that men do. In most cases, though, when it comes to decisions I make, it’s difficult to separate what is and isn’t related to the patriarchy. On Sunday morning we’re reading by the deep end of the hotel pool when the shallow end starts to fill with women, a bridal party to judge by what we overhear. It is so nice on this side of the pool, where the book I’m reading is a letdown and my legs look too white and the ice has long since melted in my glass and work is hard and there’s still no good way to be a girl and I don’t know what to do with my life and I have to actually deal with all of that.
– A recent essay on Quartz by Kristi Coulter has been making waves on social media, with a (now-sober) Coulter saying she thinks 21st-century women guzzle too much hooch to forget about the sexist world we live in. Ann Friedman offers her own take, writing for the Washington Post that even though she takes some of Coulter's "well-written" points to heart, she's not completely on board with Coulter's conclusion, noting it's "difficult to separate what is and isn't related to the patriarchy." "Did I get drunk last night because of the patriarchy? Who knows," she says, listing other woman-related issues (e.g., a penchant for short hair, picking at one's cuticles) that could theoretically be linked to a male-dominated society. Friedman lays out why she's reluctant to fully toast Coulter's thesis, noting many men also drink to deal with the day-to-day, and that pop culture—especially via boozy women protagonists on TV and in the movies—has much to do with it, too, presenting alcohol "as both a coping mechanism and a bonding tool." And she cites her own personal imbibing, relaying how her boozing sessions tend to serve a more active "plotting" purpose to direct her "outrage," with her drinking buddies serving as sounding boards. "Maybe patriarchy does drive us to drink, just as patriarchy drives us to shave our legs and wear bright lipstick," she concludes. "Or maybe it doesn’t, and we get drunk for the same reasons that men do. Either way, I'm less concerned about what draws women together over a bottle of wine, and more interested in what we do once we get there." (Her entire essay here.)