Formal policy measures and adults' attitudes have probably affected the availability of alcohol for adolescents, and thus they partly explain the decline in youth drinking. This decline coincides with the introduction of new digital technologies, new forms of interaction within families and peer groups, and more conscientious teenagers. All these changes are not necessarily causes of the decline but are part of a similar broader change in adolescents' lives.
AIMS
The article focuses on the discourse on intoxication and its changes among young women in Finland. According to surveys, drinking among Finnish women has been rising for decades. Especially young women have been in the front line in the raise of drinking and intoxication-oriented drinking. However, statistics are not able to explain the factors behind this change. What has happened to women's attitudes and connotations related to binge drinking during the past decades? How do young women in their twenties perceive being drunk and how has the description of their relationship to this condition changed over the last 20 years?
Methods and Data
To explore these questions, the present article compares interview materials concerning drinking collected among young adults in 1985 and 2005/2007. The article analyses how young women identify themselves with intoxication in these periods and how the way in which women describe this relationship has changed in the meantime.
Results
The greatest change has to do with how young women regard drunkenness while presenting themselves. Whereas in the 1985 material young women distanced themselves from binge drinking, 20 years later they identify themselves strongly with it. The analysis shows that this development illustrares that both the significance of drunkenness in itself and the way in which drinking-related self-expression has changed.
Conclusions
The results relate to the changes in Finnish drinking culture which have been more pronounced in the case of women than men as well as the change of acceptable and desirable images of femininity.
Aims
The article deals with how Finnish women of different ages perceive acceptable and desirable images of female alcohol use as well as gender orders associated with drinking. A focus on women and differences between women is motivated by the fact that women's increased drinking is one of the most significant changes in the Finnish alcohol landscape in recent history.
Data and Design
The data consists of group interviews with women aged 50–60, 35–40 and 25. The images of female alcohol use adopted in these groups are analysed by studying what representations of women's alcohol use and what drinking-related gender identities women in different age brackets identify themselves with as they interpret the stimulus images of drinking situations shown in interviews.
Results
The analysis suggests that women in different age groups have different ideas of what kind of images of female alcohol use are considered suitable, acceptable and desirable. The different generations also express and repeat different drinking-related norms and attitudes.
Conclusions
Overall, the analysis shows that women have achieved greater autonomy in their alcohol use and that the construction of women's gender identity in relation to drinking has expanded beyond traditional feminine values and become more varied and layered. Younger generations thus have access to a wider range of feminine imageries, norms and ways of being women.
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