Loading...
Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Mothers with children under the age of five consumed over 300% more alcohol during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cultural messaging around “mommy juice”—alcohol consumed by mothers to cope with parenting—normalizes drinking and disregards the severity and prevalence of alcoholism in women. Mommy juice memes exploit vulnerabilities of a population at risk for depression and anxiety and with enhanced consequences. These cultural messages shape gender expectations and increase the potential for alcoholism in children.
Using feminist interdisciplinary methods, I critically analyze screenshots of images found on social media during the U.S. Covid-19 “lockdown” in March 2020 and continuing through 2021. The culmination of images supports what Holly Whitaker in Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol calls “engineered addiction” specifically targeting women.
Using social comparison, cultivation, and gender schema theory, as well as personal experience, I argue that the social acceptance of excessive drinking in mothers leads to detrimental outcomes for women and children. As an alcoholic with a young child, mommy juice memes helped justify my drinking as it gave me liver disease and pancreatitis. Now sober, I recognize my deeper problem is one many women share.
An antidote to these harmful representations of alcohol and alcoholism is sober mom culture and related communities and media, normalizing sobriety over drinking and bringing an often-hidden issue into public discourse. Hashtags like #sobermom bring women in recovery together, providing support, community, and an alternate narrative that benefits rather than harms women.
Mommy Juice Memes: Disrupting Media Representations of Alcohol Use by Women during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Mothers with children under the age of five consumed over 300% more alcohol during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cultural messaging around “mommy juice”—alcohol consumed by mothers to cope with parenting—normalizes drinking and disregards the severity and prevalence of alcoholism in women. Mommy juice memes exploit vulnerabilities of a population at risk for depression and anxiety and with enhanced consequences. These cultural messages shape gender expectations and increase the potential for alcoholism in children.
Using feminist interdisciplinary methods, I critically analyze screenshots of images found on social media during the U.S. Covid-19 “lockdown” in March 2020 and continuing through 2021. The culmination of images supports what Holly Whitaker in Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol calls “engineered addiction” specifically targeting women.
Using social comparison, cultivation, and gender schema theory, as well as personal experience, I argue that the social acceptance of excessive drinking in mothers leads to detrimental outcomes for women and children. As an alcoholic with a young child, mommy juice memes helped justify my drinking as it gave me liver disease and pancreatitis. Now sober, I recognize my deeper problem is one many women share.
An antidote to these harmful representations of alcohol and alcoholism is sober mom culture and related communities and media, normalizing sobriety over drinking and bringing an often-hidden issue into public discourse. Hashtags like #sobermom bring women in recovery together, providing support, community, and an alternate narrative that benefits rather than harms women.
Bio
Leandra Preston is Senior Lecturer of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Central Florida, where she has taught for almost twenty years. She earned her Master’s in Literature and her PhD in Texts and Technology at UCF. She also runs a foster network for pets of people escaping domestic violence, Animal Safehouse of Brevard. Her research focuses on gendered bodies and technology, identity in virtual communities, gendered body and beauty technologies, and masculinities. Her classes include Gender and Technology, Theories of Masculinity, and Girls and Digital Media. She and her 8-year-old daughter live in Cocoa Beach, Florida, surrounded by dogs and plants.