A Girls’ Night Out: Gender, Subjectivity, Pleasure

Abstract

This thesis investigates ‘girls’ nights out’ at a time of increased concern over women’s alcohol consumption. Girls’ Nights Out responds to three current understandings of women’s drinking. First, drug and alcohol research explores drinking practices in relation to consumption levels, intentionality and self-care and thus presents nights out as revolving around the intoxication of a sovereign subject. Second, work on postfeminism interprets women’s hedonism as either an appropriation of phallicism or as a self-aware performance of heteronormative ‘sassiness’ and ‘sexiness’. Finally, Australian and British ‘binge-drinking’ campaigns present intoxication as bringing about regrettable transformations to femininity including masculinisation or decreased heterosexual desirability. Intoxication is therefore depicted as undesirable and unpleasant. These perspectives are unable to provide an adequate account of the specific pleasures of girls’ nights out, or the way that such pleasures relate to alcohol consumption. Engaging with these diverse literatures, the thesis aims to respond to their shortcomings by bringing to light the pleasures that underpin girls’ nights out. The research draws on 20 interviews with British and Australian women aged 19-29. The thesis argues that girls’ nights out revolve around finding, forgetting, doing and undoing the self. These processes are secured through tangible pleasures that include: dressing up, having a laugh, being ‘one of the girls’, dispensing with intentionality, and rejecting postfeminist interpretations of fun. Girls’ Nights Out also argues that consumption levels are mediated by and ancillary to these pleasures rather than visa versa. These findings undo narratives of inevitable regret and complicate the way pleasure relates to either phallicism or normative femininity. They dislodge alcohol from the epicentre of nights out, destabilise the sovereign subject from the centre of intoxication narrative, and disturb notions of intentionality. Overall, the thesis argues that girls’ nights out consist of a complex mix of pleasures that allow women to subtly shift, affirm and play with feminine subjectivities.