The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master
A man can be expert in nothing, but he must be practiced in many things. Skills. You don't have to master them all at once. You simply have to collect and develop a certain number of skills as the years tick by. People count on you to come through. That's why you need these, to start.
By Tom Chiarella
A Man Should Be Able To:
1. Give advice that matters in one sentence. I got run out of a job I liked once, and while it was happening, a guy stopped me in the hall. Smart guy, but prone to saying too much. I braced myself. I didn't want to hear it. I needed a white knight, and I knew it wasn't him. He just sighed and said: When nobody has your back, you gotta move your back. Then he walked away. Best advice I ever got. One sentence.
2. Tell if someone is lying. Everyone has his theory. Pick one, test it. Choose the tells that work for you. I like these: Liars change the subject quickly. Liars look up and to their right when they speak. Liars use fewer contractions. Liars will sometimes stare straight at you and employ a dead face. Liars never touch their chest or heart except self-consciously. Liars place objects between themselves and you during a conversation.
3. Take a photo. Fill the frame.
4. Score a baseball game. Scoring a game is an exercise in ciphering, creating a shorthand of your very own. In this way, it's a private language as much as a record of the game. The only given is the numbering of the positions and the use of the diamond to express each batter's progress around the bases. I black out the diamond when a run scores. I mark an RBI with a tally mark in the upper-right-hand corner. Each time you score a game, you pick up on new elements to track: pitch count, balls and strikes, foul balls. It doesn't matter that this information is available on the Internet in real time. Scoring a game is about bearing witness, expanding your own ability to observe.
5. Name a book that matters. The Catcher in the Rye does not matter. Not really. You gotta read.
6. Know at least one musical group as well as is possible. One guy at your table knows where Cobain was born and who his high school English teacher was. Another guy can argue the elegant extended trope of Liquid Swords with GZA himself. This is how it should be. Music does not demand agreement. Rilo Kiley. Nina Simone. Whitesnake. Fugazi. Otis Redding. Whatever. Choose. Nobody likes a know-it-all, because 1) you can't know it all and 2) music offers distinct and private lessons. So pick one. Except Rilo Kiley. I heard they broke up.
7. Cook meat somewhere other than the grill. Buy The Way to Cook, by Julia Child. Try roasting. Braising. Broiling. Slow-cooking. Pan searing. Think ragouts, fricassees, stews. All of this will force you to understand the functionality of different cuts. In the end, grilling will be a choice rather than a chore, and your Weber will become a tool rather than a piece of weekend entertainment.
8. Not monopolize the conversation.
9. Write a letter. So easy. So easily forgotten. A five-paragraph structure works pretty well: Tell why you're writing. Offer details. Ask questions. Give news. Add a specific memory or two. If your handwriting is terrible, type. Always close formally.
10. Buy a suit. Avoid bargains. Know your likes, your dislikes, and what you need it for (work, funerals, court). Squeeze the fabric — if it bounces back with little or no sign of wrinkling, that means it's good, sturdy material. And tug the buttons gently. If they feel loose or wobbly, that means they're probably coming off sooner rather than later. The jacket's shoulder pads are supposed to square with your shoulders; if they droop off or leave dents in the cloth, the jacket's too big. The jacket sleeves should never meet the wrist any lower than the base of the thumb — if they do, ask to go down a size. Always get fitted.
11. Swim three different strokes. Doggie paddle doesn't count.
12. Show respect without being a suck-up. Respect the following, in this order: age, experience, record, reputation. Don't mention any of it.
13. Throw a punch. Close enough, but not too close. Swing with your shoulders, not your arm. Long punches rarely land squarely. So forget the roundhouse. You don't have a haymaker. Follow through; don't pop and pull back. The length you give the punch should come in the form of extension after the point of contact. Just remember, the bones in your hand are small and easy to break. You're better off striking hard with the heel of your palm. Or you could buy the guy a beer and talk it out.
14. Chop down a tree. Know your escape path. When the tree starts to fall, use it.
15. Calculate square footage. Width times length.
16. Tie a bow tie.
17. Make one drink, in large batches, very well. When I interviewed for my first job, one of the senior guys had me to his house for a reception. He offered me a cigarette and pointed me to a bowl of whiskey sours, like I was Darrin Stephens and he was Larry Tate. I can still remember that first tight little swallow and my gratitude that I could go back for a refill without looking like a drunk. I came to admire the host over the next decade, but he never gave me the recipe. So I use this:
• For every 750-ml bottle of whiskey (use a decent bourbon or rye), add:
• 6 oz fresh-squeezed, strained lemon juice
• 6 oz simple syrup(mix superfine sugar and water in equal quantities)
To serve: Shake 3 oz per person with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glasses. Garnish with a cherry and an orange slice or, if you're really slick, a float of red wine. (Pour about ½ oz slowly into each glass over the back of a spoon; this is called a New York sour, and it's great.)
18. Speak a foreign language. Pas beaucoup. Mais faites un effort.
19. Approach a woman out of his league. Ever have a shoeshine from a guy you really admire? He works hard enough that he doesn't have to tell stupid jokes; he doesn't stare at your legs; he knows things you don't, but he doesn't talk about them every minute; he doesn't scrape or apologize for his status or his job or the way he is dressed; he does his job confidently and with a quiet relish. That stuff is wildly inviting. Act like that guy.
20. Sew a button.
21. Argue with a European without getting xenophobic or insulting soccer. Once, in our lifetime, much of Europe was approaching cultural and political irrelevance. Then they made like us and banded together into a union of confederated states. So you can always assume that they were simply copying the United States as they now push us to the verge of cultural and political irrelevance.
22. Give a woman an orgasm so that he doesn't have to ask after it. Otherwise, ask after it.
23. Be loyal. You will fail at it. You have already. A man who does not know loyalty, from both ends, does not know men. Loyalty is not a matter of give-and-take: He did me a favor, therefore I owe him one. No. No. No. It is the recognition of a bond, the honoring of a shared history, the reemergence of the vows we make in the tight times. It doesn't mean complete agreement or invisible blood ties. It is a currency of selflessness, given without expectation and capable of the most stellar return.
24. Know his poison, without standing there, pondering like a dope. Brand, amount, style, fast, like so: Booker's, double, neat.
25. Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it. Use a contractor's hammer. Swing hard and loose, like a tennis serve.
26. Cast a fishing rod without shrieking or sighing or otherwise admitting defeat.
27. Play gin with an old guy. Old men will try to crush you. They'll drown you in meaningless chatter, tell stories about when they were kids this or in Korea that. Or they'll retreat into a taciturn posture designed to get you to do the talking. They'll note your strategies without mentioning them, keep the stakes at a level they can control, and change up their pace of play just to get you stumbling. You have to do this — play their game, be it dominoes or cribbage or chess. They may have been playing for decades. You take a beating as a means of absorbing the lessons they've learned without taking a lesson. But don't be afraid to take them down. They can handle it.
28. Play go fish with a kid. You don't crush kids. You talk their ear off, make an event out of it, tell them stories about when you were a kid this or in Vegas that. You have to play their game, too, even though they may have been playing only for weeks. Observe. Teach them without once offering a lesson. And don't be afraid to win. They can handle it.
29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped. Sometimes the laws of physics aren't laws at all. Read The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone, by Kenneth W. Ford.
30. Feign interest. Good place to start: quantum physics.
31. Make a bed.
32. Describe a glass of wine in one sentence without using the terms nutty, fruity, oaky, finish, or kick. I once stood in a wine store in West Hollywood where the owner described a pinot noir he favored as "a night walk through a wet garden." I bought it. I went to my hotel and drank it by myself, looking at the flickering city with my feet on the windowsill. I don't know which was more right, the wine or the vision that he placed in my head. Point is, it was right.
33. Hit a jump shot in pool. It's not something you use a lot, but when you hit a jump shot, it marks you as a player and briefly impresses women. Make the angle of your cue steeper, aim for the bottommost fraction of the ball, and drive the cue smoothly six inches past the contact point, making steady, downward contact with the felt.
34. Dress a wound. First, stop the bleeding. Apply pressure using a gauze pad. Stay with the pressure. If you can't stop the bleeding, forget the next step, just get to a hospital. Once the bleeding stops, clean the wound. Use water or saline solution; a little soap is good, too. If you can't get the wound clean, then forget the next step, just get to a hospital. Finally, dress the wound. For a laceration, push the edges together and apply a butterfly bandage. For avulsions, where the skin is punctured and pulled back like a trapdoor, push the skin back and use a butterfly. Slather the area in antibacterial ointment. Cover the wound with a gauze pad taped into place. Change that dressing every 12 hours, checking carefully for signs of infection. Better yet, get to a hospital.
35. Jump-start a car (without any drama). Change a flat tire (safely). Change the oil (once).
36. Make three different bets at a craps table. Play the smallest and most poorly labeled areas, the bets where it's visually evident the casino doesn't want you to go. Simply play the pass line; once the point is set, play full odds (this is the only really good bet on the table); and when you want a little more action, tell the crew you want to lay the 4 and the 10 for the minimum bet.
37. Shuffle a deck of cards. I play cards with guys who can't shuffle, and they lose. Always.
38. Tell a joke. Here's one:
Two guys are walking down a dark alley when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash. Just then, one guy turns to the other, hands him a bill, and says, "Hey, here's that $20 I owe you."
39. Know when to split his cards in blackjack. Aces. Eights. Always.
40. Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear. Use his first name. Don't use baby talk. Don't crank up your energy to match his. Ask questions and wait for answers. Follow up. Don't pretend to be interested in Webkinz or Power Rangers or whatever. He's as bored with that sh** as you are. Concentrate instead on seeing the child as a person of his own.
41. Speak to a waiter so he will hear. You don't own the restaurant, so don't act like it. You own the transaction. So don't speak into the menu. Lift your chin. Make eye contact. All restaurants have secrets — let it be known that you expect to see some of them.
42. Talk to a dog so it will hear. Go ahead, use baby talk.
43. Install: a disposal, an electronic thermostat, or a lighting fixture without asking for help. Just turn off the damned main.
44. Ask for help. Guys who refuse to ask for help are the most cursed men of all. The stubborn, the self-possessed, and the distant. The hell with them.
45. Break another man's grip on his wrist. Rotate your arm rapidly in the grip, toward the other guy's thumb.
46. Tell a woman's dress size.
47. Recite one poem from memory. Here you go:
WHEN YOU ARE OLD
When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
—William Butler Yeats
48. Remove a stain. Blot. Always blot.
49. Say no.
50. Fry an egg sunny-side up. Cook until the white appears solid . . . and no longer.
51. Build a campfire.
There are three components:
• The tinder — bone-dry, snappable twigs, about as long as your hand. You need two complete handfuls. Try birch bark; it burns long and hot.
• The kindling — thick as your thumb, long as your forearm, breakable with two hands. You need two armfuls.
• Fuel wood — anything thick and long enough that it can't be broken by hand. It's okay if it's slightly damp. You need a knee-high stack.
Step 1:Light the tinder, turning the pile gently to get air underneath it.
Step 2: Feed the kindling into the emergent fire with some pace.
Step 3: Lay on the fuel wood. Pyramid, the log cabin, what-ever — the idea is to create some kind of structure so that plenty of air gets to the fire.
52. Step into a job no one wants to do. When I was 13, my dad called me into his office at the large urban mall he ran. He was on the phone. What followed was a fairly banal 15-minute conversation, which involved the collection of rent from a store. On and on, droning about store hours and lighting problems. I kept raising my eyebrows, pretending to stand up, and my dad kept waving me down. I could hear only his end, garrulous and unrelenting. He rolled his eyes as the excuses kept coming. His assertions were simple and to the point, like a drumbeat. He wanted the rent. He wanted the store to stay open when the mall was open. Then suddenly, having given the job the time it deserved, he put it to an end. "So if I see your gate down next Sunday afternoon, I'm going to get a drill and stick a goddamn bolt in it and lock you down for the next week, right?" When he hung up, rent collected, he took a deep breath. "I've been dreading that call," he said. "Once a week you gotta try something you never would do if you had the choice. Otherwise, why are you here?" So he gave me that. And this . . .
53. Sometimes, kick some ass.
54. Break up a fight. Work in pairs if possible. Don't get between people initially. Use the back of the collar, pull and urge the person downward. If you can't get him down, work for distance.
55. Point to the north at any time. If you have a watch, you can point the hour hand at the sun. Then find the point directly between the hour hand and the 12. That's south. The opposite direction is, of course, north.
56. Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.
57. Explain what a light-year is. It's the measure of the distance that light travels over 365.25 days.
58. Avoid boredom. You have enough to eat. You can move. This must be acknowledged as a kind of freedom. You don't always have to buy things, put things in your mouth, or be delighted.
59. Write a thank-you note. Make a habit of it. Follow a simple formula like this one: First line is a thesis statement. The second line is evidentiary. The third is a kind of assertion. Close on an uptick.
Thanks for having me over to watch game six. Even though they won, it's clear the Red Sox are a soulless, overmarketed contrivance of Fox TV. Still, I'm awfully happy you have that huge high-def television. Next time, I really will bring beer. Yours,
60. Be brand loyal to at least one product. It tells a lot about who you are and where you came from. Me? I like Hellman's mayonnaise and Genesee beer, which makes me the fleshy, stubbornly upstate ne'er-do-well that I will always be.
61. Cook bacon. Lay out the bacon on a rack on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
62. Hold a baby. Newborns should be wrapped tightly and held against the chest. They like tight spaces (consider their previous circumstances) and rhythmic movements, so hold them snug, tuck them in the crook of your elbow or against the skin of your neck. Rock your hips like you're bored, barely listening to the music at the edge of a wedding reception. No one has to notice except the baby. Don't breathe all over them.
63. Deliver a eulogy. Take the job seriously. It matters. Speak first to the family, then to the outside world. Write it down. Avoid similes. Don't read poetry. Be funny.
64. Know that Christopher Columbus was a son of a bitch. When I was a kid, because I'm Italian and because the Irish guys in my neighborhood were relentless with the beatings on St. Patrick's Day, I loved the very idea of Christopher Columbus. I loved the fact that Irish kids worshipped some gnome who drove all the rats out of Ireland or whatever, whereas my hero was an explorer. Man, I drank the Kool-Aid on that guy. Of course, I later learned that he was a hand-chopping, land-stealing egotist who sold out an entire hemisphere to European avarice. So I left Columbus behind. Your understanding of your heroes must evolve. See Roger Clemens. See Bill Belichick.
65-67. Throw a baseball over-hand with some snap. Throw a football with a tight spiral. Shoot a 12-foot jump shot reliably. If you can't, play more ball.
68. Find his way out of the woods if lost. Note your landmarks — mountains, power lines, the sound of a highway. Look for the sun: It sits in the south; it moves west. Gauge your direction every few minutes. If you're completely stuck, look for a small creek and follow it downstream. Water flows toward larger bodies of water, where people live.
69. Tie a knot. Square knot: left rope over right rope, turn under. Then right rope over left rope. Tuck under. Pull. Or as my pack leader, Dave Kenyon, told me in a Boy Scouts meeting: "Left over right, right over left. What's so fucking hard about that?"
70. Shake hands. Steady, firm, pump, let go. Use the time to make eye contact, since that's where the social contract begins.
71. Iron a shirt. My uncle Tony the tailor once told me of ironing: Start rough, end gently.
72. Stock an emergency bag for the car. Blanket. Heavy flashlight. Hand warmers. Six bottles of water. Six packs of beef jerky. Atlas. Reflectors. Gloves. Socks. Bandages. Neosporin. Inhaler. Benadryl. Motrin. Hard candy. Telescoping magnet. Screwdriver. Channel-locks. Crescent wrench. Ski hat. Bandanna.
73. Caress a woman's neck. Back of your fingers, in a slow fan.
74. Know some birds. If you can't pay attention to a bird, then you can't learn from detail, you aren't likely to appreciate the beauty of evolution, and you don't have a clue how birdlike your own habits may be. You've been looking at them blindly for years now. Get a guide.
75. Negotiate a better price. Be informed. Know the price of competitors. In a big store, look for a manager. Don't be an a-hole. Use one phrase as your mantra, like "I need a little help with this one." Repeat it, as an invitation to him. Don't beg. Ever. Offer something: your loyalty, your next purchase, even your friendship, and, with the deal done, your gratitude.
Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Do Woman & Alocohol Mix Well?
Cocktails and Consequences
Studies on the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption abound, but many apply more to men than women. Here are five factors women should consider before they drink.
You could forgive the average woman for being confused about how much alcohol she should be drinking, or even whether she should be drinking at all. Headlines over the last decade have linked moderate alcohol consumption to everything from a higher risk of breast cancer to a lower risk of dementia. Even the notion that pregnant women should never drink may be debatable. Just this month, a British study suggested that binge drinking—on a very occasional basis—might not be harmful to the fetus (though researchers cautioned that more investigation was needed).
As doctors continue to sort through the contradictory evidence, one thing remains certain: decisions about drinking are more loaded for women than for men. "The benefits of alcohol are going to vary by individual, depending on genes and lifestyle," explains Samir Zakhari, director of metabolic research at the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. "But the risks--which we know much more about—those clearly vary by gender, and are much higher for women." Here's what we know—and don't—about how alcohol affects the female body:
1. Gender Benders
The differences between men and women can be stark when it comes to the way alcohol affects them. For example, if two people, of opposite genders but equal weight drink the same amount and type of alcohol, the woman will get drunker, and stay that way longer.
The reasons come down to basic physiology. Alcohol passes through the digestive tract and is dispersed in the body's water. Because women always have less water in their bodies, the alcohol is less dilute for them. Women's bodies also produce less alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH)—the molecule responsible for breaking alcohol down so that the body can eliminate it. Less water and less ADH means more alcohol stays in the body, for longer periods of time. "It's like taking the same amount of alcohol and putting it into a much smaller glass," explains Michael Charness, a Harvard Medical School neurologist.
This biologic difference not only means that women have to be careful during those infamous college drinking games, but long-term, women are more likely than men to develop alcohol-related liver disease and brain damage. And women are just as likely to develop alcohol-related heart diseases as men, even though they still tend to drink less alcohol over a lifetime.
Intoxicated women are also far more likely to be the victims of date rape or sexual assault than men. And they are more prone to alcohol-induced blackouts, which can make reporting such attacks difficult.
2. The Wine Myth
One of the biggest misconceptions that women fall prey to is the idea that wine is a safer, healthier choice than the fattening, masculine beer we see in commercials. While wine has some appealing ingredients that other alcoholic beverages do not, (namely a group of antioxidants called polyphenolic compounds that come from grape skin), most experts say it's a myth that wine is healthier. All the risks and benefits of an alcoholic beverage come from the alcohol itself," says Zakhari, explaining that the alcoholic content of wine far outweighs the amount of these other ingredients. "So it doesn't really matter whether it's beer or wine or something else."
3. Breast Cancer Caveat
As for the much-studied link between alcohol and breast cancer, no one can say for certain whether one has anything to do with the other. While research reported at September's European Cancer Conference indicated that women who drank heavily (three glasses a day or more) faced a 30 percent higher risk of breast cancer, numerous other studies over the last decade have shown the opposite—that there is no correlation between alcohol and breast cancer. "The studies have been all over the place," says Zakhari. "The bottom line is that we aren't sure, and women who are genetically predisposed to breast cancer should probably drink less if they want to be on the safe side."
4. The Third Trimester
It's no secret that drinking while pregnant can seriously threaten the health of your unborn child—the risk of fetal-alcohol syndrome (FAS) has long been tied to alcohol consumption during the first trimester of pregnancy, when organs and body features are still developing. That being said, many if not most mothers report being cleared by their doctors for a glass of wine or two once they reach the third trimester—and some evidence suggests that as many as 10 percent of pregnant women drink moderately. Now researchers say that FAS-associated brain damage may result from drinking at any point during a pregnancy, including the final weeks.
How much drinking puts an unborn child at risk has divided the American medical community from its European counterpart for decades. While the United States has adopted a precautionary approach, advising women who are or might become pregnant not to drink at all, Europeans have traditionally condoned a couple of drinks towards the end of a pregnancy. This can lead to confusion (and make Americans seem like prudes to their European friends). But with the French now putting warnings about drinking during pregnancy on their wine, those continental attitudes seem to be changing.
5. Drink and Live Longer?
More research is needed before doctors can say for certain whether alcohol does in fact reduce your chances of suffering from type-2 diabetes or dementia. But most experts do agree that a drink a day can offer at least some protection against cardiovascular disease. "The main benefit of alcohol that we can state with any degree of certainty is that it counteracts the narrowing of coronary arteries that comes with age," says Cynthia Bearer, a physician and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio "That benefit is going to be seen really only in the older population—people over 50."
With that bit of certainty comes another conundrum: aging also reduces our tolerance for alcohol, most likely by reducing the amount of water in our bodies. Studies have shown that older adults of both sexes reach higher blood-alcohol levels than younger adults who drink the same amount. So reaching the half-century mark doesn't necessarily mean you should party like a rock star. Moderation is still key, at any age.
What's a Wise Woman to Do?
Take a look at the official guidelines and compare them honestly to your own consumption. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines moderate drinking as no more than one drink a day for women, and no more than two drinks a day for men. According to a report by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA), 13 percent of women who drink surpass this one-drink cut off. And roughly 5.3 million women in the United States drink in a way that threatens their health and safety. "I don't think this means that women are over-estimating the benefits of drinking," Zakhari says. "But people who want to drink may use [the reported benefits] as a way to justify their choices."
While the potential benefits of moderate drinking may be equal for both sexes, the risks are higher for women, which means that women need to be more cautious than men at the bar or liquor store. Those with a family history of breast cancer or alcoholism should probably head for the soft-drink aisle instead. Bottom line, says Zakhari: "If you want to drink for pleasure and you can do it in moderation, that's fine. If you want to drink to combat coronary heart disease, well, there are safer, cheaper and more effective ways of doing that." The most obvious examples are diet and exercise, and for osteoporosis, make sure you are getting enough calcium.
Studies on the benefits of moderate alcohol consumption abound, but many apply more to men than women. Here are five factors women should consider before they drink.
You could forgive the average woman for being confused about how much alcohol she should be drinking, or even whether she should be drinking at all. Headlines over the last decade have linked moderate alcohol consumption to everything from a higher risk of breast cancer to a lower risk of dementia. Even the notion that pregnant women should never drink may be debatable. Just this month, a British study suggested that binge drinking—on a very occasional basis—might not be harmful to the fetus (though researchers cautioned that more investigation was needed).
As doctors continue to sort through the contradictory evidence, one thing remains certain: decisions about drinking are more loaded for women than for men. "The benefits of alcohol are going to vary by individual, depending on genes and lifestyle," explains Samir Zakhari, director of metabolic research at the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. "But the risks--which we know much more about—those clearly vary by gender, and are much higher for women." Here's what we know—and don't—about how alcohol affects the female body:
1. Gender Benders
The differences between men and women can be stark when it comes to the way alcohol affects them. For example, if two people, of opposite genders but equal weight drink the same amount and type of alcohol, the woman will get drunker, and stay that way longer.
The reasons come down to basic physiology. Alcohol passes through the digestive tract and is dispersed in the body's water. Because women always have less water in their bodies, the alcohol is less dilute for them. Women's bodies also produce less alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH)—the molecule responsible for breaking alcohol down so that the body can eliminate it. Less water and less ADH means more alcohol stays in the body, for longer periods of time. "It's like taking the same amount of alcohol and putting it into a much smaller glass," explains Michael Charness, a Harvard Medical School neurologist.
This biologic difference not only means that women have to be careful during those infamous college drinking games, but long-term, women are more likely than men to develop alcohol-related liver disease and brain damage. And women are just as likely to develop alcohol-related heart diseases as men, even though they still tend to drink less alcohol over a lifetime.
Intoxicated women are also far more likely to be the victims of date rape or sexual assault than men. And they are more prone to alcohol-induced blackouts, which can make reporting such attacks difficult.
2. The Wine Myth
One of the biggest misconceptions that women fall prey to is the idea that wine is a safer, healthier choice than the fattening, masculine beer we see in commercials. While wine has some appealing ingredients that other alcoholic beverages do not, (namely a group of antioxidants called polyphenolic compounds that come from grape skin), most experts say it's a myth that wine is healthier. All the risks and benefits of an alcoholic beverage come from the alcohol itself," says Zakhari, explaining that the alcoholic content of wine far outweighs the amount of these other ingredients. "So it doesn't really matter whether it's beer or wine or something else."
3. Breast Cancer Caveat
As for the much-studied link between alcohol and breast cancer, no one can say for certain whether one has anything to do with the other. While research reported at September's European Cancer Conference indicated that women who drank heavily (three glasses a day or more) faced a 30 percent higher risk of breast cancer, numerous other studies over the last decade have shown the opposite—that there is no correlation between alcohol and breast cancer. "The studies have been all over the place," says Zakhari. "The bottom line is that we aren't sure, and women who are genetically predisposed to breast cancer should probably drink less if they want to be on the safe side."
4. The Third Trimester
It's no secret that drinking while pregnant can seriously threaten the health of your unborn child—the risk of fetal-alcohol syndrome (FAS) has long been tied to alcohol consumption during the first trimester of pregnancy, when organs and body features are still developing. That being said, many if not most mothers report being cleared by their doctors for a glass of wine or two once they reach the third trimester—and some evidence suggests that as many as 10 percent of pregnant women drink moderately. Now researchers say that FAS-associated brain damage may result from drinking at any point during a pregnancy, including the final weeks.
How much drinking puts an unborn child at risk has divided the American medical community from its European counterpart for decades. While the United States has adopted a precautionary approach, advising women who are or might become pregnant not to drink at all, Europeans have traditionally condoned a couple of drinks towards the end of a pregnancy. This can lead to confusion (and make Americans seem like prudes to their European friends). But with the French now putting warnings about drinking during pregnancy on their wine, those continental attitudes seem to be changing.
5. Drink and Live Longer?
More research is needed before doctors can say for certain whether alcohol does in fact reduce your chances of suffering from type-2 diabetes or dementia. But most experts do agree that a drink a day can offer at least some protection against cardiovascular disease. "The main benefit of alcohol that we can state with any degree of certainty is that it counteracts the narrowing of coronary arteries that comes with age," says Cynthia Bearer, a physician and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio "That benefit is going to be seen really only in the older population—people over 50."
With that bit of certainty comes another conundrum: aging also reduces our tolerance for alcohol, most likely by reducing the amount of water in our bodies. Studies have shown that older adults of both sexes reach higher blood-alcohol levels than younger adults who drink the same amount. So reaching the half-century mark doesn't necessarily mean you should party like a rock star. Moderation is still key, at any age.
What's a Wise Woman to Do?
Take a look at the official guidelines and compare them honestly to your own consumption. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines moderate drinking as no more than one drink a day for women, and no more than two drinks a day for men. According to a report by the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA), 13 percent of women who drink surpass this one-drink cut off. And roughly 5.3 million women in the United States drink in a way that threatens their health and safety. "I don't think this means that women are over-estimating the benefits of drinking," Zakhari says. "But people who want to drink may use [the reported benefits] as a way to justify their choices."
While the potential benefits of moderate drinking may be equal for both sexes, the risks are higher for women, which means that women need to be more cautious than men at the bar or liquor store. Those with a family history of breast cancer or alcoholism should probably head for the soft-drink aisle instead. Bottom line, says Zakhari: "If you want to drink for pleasure and you can do it in moderation, that's fine. If you want to drink to combat coronary heart disease, well, there are safer, cheaper and more effective ways of doing that." The most obvious examples are diet and exercise, and for osteoporosis, make sure you are getting enough calcium.
Friday, May 23, 2008
7 Most Common Retirement Mistakes
There's no single formula that will produce a happy retirement for baby boomers. But there are ways to boost the odds you'll retire in bliss rather than misery, experts say.
"About half of today's retirees are really quite miserable in their post-retirement lives," psychologist and researcher Ken Dychtwald has concluded, based on 50,000-plus interviews he has done for his books on aging.
Those retirees end up unhappy because they are unable to adapt to the new retirement model, says Jim McCarthy, a managing director at Morgan Stanley. How to be happy after work ends
"We have tended to look at our lives as being linear and retirement as being the final stage that we enter," McCarthy says. "If you realize that you're not locked in to any one approach or model -- that having 20 or 30 years gives you a lot of time to test out new roles for yourself -- well, you've boosted the odds that you'll succeed at retirement."
Having both time and options is a plus for boomers. But it also "pushes them to think outside their routines, beyond their comfort zone," says Sri Reddy, the head of retirement-income strategies for ING, a financial-services company. "Perhaps the biggest challenge boomers will face is a challenge to their imagination." Quiz: Are you ready for retirement?
As boomers start to act on their imaginations, experts say, there will be common traps to watch out for. Here are the top seven:
1. Exiting before deciding on an encore. Retiring early may seem like a status symbol, signaling financial success. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, says McCarthy, even if you really hate your job.
"You're not ready to retire until you've decided what you're going to do for an encore," McCarthy says.
A retirement-life plan doesn't have to be carved in stone, but it should exist, says Fred Mandell, a former Ameriprise executive.
Mandell, for example, began crafting his plan at age 55, three years before he retired in 2001.
"Once I began thinking about the future, I realized I didn't know what that would involve, and I drew up a kind of business plan around what I thought I might want to pursue."
That led Mandell to explore art -- sculpture, drawing and painting -- and then create a consulting company. Slide show: See Mandell's art
2. Locking yourself in. For many boomers, retirement is the first time in their adult lives to be their own bosses -- that is, if they choose to. If they don't, that's a big mistake, says Jeri Sedlar, author of 'Don't retire, rewire!' and an adviser to The Conference Board, a business research organization, on issues related to the aging work force. The most common problem
"It's unrealistic to try and come up with one giant plan for the rest of your life," she says. Instead, Sedlar advocates breaking up retirement plans into small, bite-size pieces.
"Don't let anyone tempt you into giving them a definitive answer to the question, 'What are you going to do with your retirement?'" she urges. "Figure it out, step by step, along the way."
3. Failing to communicate your dreams to loved ones. Spending decades of your working life with a spouse or significant other doesn't necessarily mean you've shared all your thoughts and dreams about retirement. Oh, and . . . tell your spouse
"One person wants to go and ski; the other wants to join the Peace Corps. That's a recipe for a problematic retirement," says Carlos Lowenberg, a financial adviser in Austin, Texas.
Another financial adviser, Brad Levin of Legacy Wealth Partners in Encino, Calif., has both spouses fill out a checklist of retirement goals -- separately. The two lists often look very different, he says. "Then the challenge is getting them to find middle ground that leaves both feeling they will have a retirement they can look forward to."
4. Leaping before you look. The retirement hall of shame is full of people whose dreams crashed into reality. "What gives you pleasure during a 10-day vacation isn't necessarily what you'll want from a retirement that lasts 30 years," points out Bob Gleeson, a vice president and the medical director of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. A retirement test drive?
The same rules apply to a post-retirement career change. Whether you plan to start a business, move to a village in Italy or get involved in philanthropy, the best idea is to test-drive your plans before you begin. Get the skills you'll need; work in the field for a few months before making the leap. Or spend a few weeks in Sicily before you buy a villa.
5. Underestimating your longevity or health-care costs. You've built up a retirement nest egg, but that doesn't mean you should embark on a spending spree. You need to remember that one member of each couple reaching the age of 65 stands a 50-50 chance of living past age 90, and longevity is increasing all the time.
"It's a joke in this business that the ideal financial plan is one where your money lasts a day longer than you do," says financial adviser Levin. "But the nightmare scenario is where someone has structured a financial plan that didn't include the possibility of living beyond 90 -- or of the major health-care costs that pile up late in retirement."
6. Counting on consulting. When it comes to pondering a post-retirement career, the field of consulting is a perennial favorite. But how many newly minted consultants does the market really need?
If you're expecting a consulting business to help pay the bills in retirement, test the waters before you dive in. The same is true of other businesses, says Chris Fahlund of T. Rowe Price.
"We've seen people buy franchises with the thought that this isn't really spending money, but investing, because they are putting it into a business to make money," she says.
The glitch, Fahlund notes, is that a lot of franchises don't work out, and the capital invested to acquire them is lost.
7. Overdoing it. Many boomers may want to avoid the lives of endless leisure lived by their parents in retirement. But it's possible to veer too far in the other direction as well, cautions Tom Rogerson, a financial adviser at BNY Mellon.
"How you go about striking that balance is the question that everyone needs to address," he says. To help his clients find a balance, Rogerson asks them what makes them "relax well enough to sleep at night," he says.
"It turns out that the days they slept well were days that they had been productive at something but had also spent time with friends and family," Rogerson says. So the key to reinventing retirement is hanging on to the best parts of working lives, he says, and replacing the rest with more time devoted to family, friends and other passions
"About half of today's retirees are really quite miserable in their post-retirement lives," psychologist and researcher Ken Dychtwald has concluded, based on 50,000-plus interviews he has done for his books on aging.
Those retirees end up unhappy because they are unable to adapt to the new retirement model, says Jim McCarthy, a managing director at Morgan Stanley. How to be happy after work ends
"We have tended to look at our lives as being linear and retirement as being the final stage that we enter," McCarthy says. "If you realize that you're not locked in to any one approach or model -- that having 20 or 30 years gives you a lot of time to test out new roles for yourself -- well, you've boosted the odds that you'll succeed at retirement."
Having both time and options is a plus for boomers. But it also "pushes them to think outside their routines, beyond their comfort zone," says Sri Reddy, the head of retirement-income strategies for ING, a financial-services company. "Perhaps the biggest challenge boomers will face is a challenge to their imagination." Quiz: Are you ready for retirement?
As boomers start to act on their imaginations, experts say, there will be common traps to watch out for. Here are the top seven:
1. Exiting before deciding on an encore. Retiring early may seem like a status symbol, signaling financial success. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, says McCarthy, even if you really hate your job.
"You're not ready to retire until you've decided what you're going to do for an encore," McCarthy says.
A retirement-life plan doesn't have to be carved in stone, but it should exist, says Fred Mandell, a former Ameriprise executive.
Mandell, for example, began crafting his plan at age 55, three years before he retired in 2001.
"Once I began thinking about the future, I realized I didn't know what that would involve, and I drew up a kind of business plan around what I thought I might want to pursue."
That led Mandell to explore art -- sculpture, drawing and painting -- and then create a consulting company. Slide show: See Mandell's art
2. Locking yourself in. For many boomers, retirement is the first time in their adult lives to be their own bosses -- that is, if they choose to. If they don't, that's a big mistake, says Jeri Sedlar, author of 'Don't retire, rewire!' and an adviser to The Conference Board, a business research organization, on issues related to the aging work force. The most common problem
"It's unrealistic to try and come up with one giant plan for the rest of your life," she says. Instead, Sedlar advocates breaking up retirement plans into small, bite-size pieces.
"Don't let anyone tempt you into giving them a definitive answer to the question, 'What are you going to do with your retirement?'" she urges. "Figure it out, step by step, along the way."
3. Failing to communicate your dreams to loved ones. Spending decades of your working life with a spouse or significant other doesn't necessarily mean you've shared all your thoughts and dreams about retirement. Oh, and . . . tell your spouse
"One person wants to go and ski; the other wants to join the Peace Corps. That's a recipe for a problematic retirement," says Carlos Lowenberg, a financial adviser in Austin, Texas.
Another financial adviser, Brad Levin of Legacy Wealth Partners in Encino, Calif., has both spouses fill out a checklist of retirement goals -- separately. The two lists often look very different, he says. "Then the challenge is getting them to find middle ground that leaves both feeling they will have a retirement they can look forward to."
4. Leaping before you look. The retirement hall of shame is full of people whose dreams crashed into reality. "What gives you pleasure during a 10-day vacation isn't necessarily what you'll want from a retirement that lasts 30 years," points out Bob Gleeson, a vice president and the medical director of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. A retirement test drive?
The same rules apply to a post-retirement career change. Whether you plan to start a business, move to a village in Italy or get involved in philanthropy, the best idea is to test-drive your plans before you begin. Get the skills you'll need; work in the field for a few months before making the leap. Or spend a few weeks in Sicily before you buy a villa.
5. Underestimating your longevity or health-care costs. You've built up a retirement nest egg, but that doesn't mean you should embark on a spending spree. You need to remember that one member of each couple reaching the age of 65 stands a 50-50 chance of living past age 90, and longevity is increasing all the time.
"It's a joke in this business that the ideal financial plan is one where your money lasts a day longer than you do," says financial adviser Levin. "But the nightmare scenario is where someone has structured a financial plan that didn't include the possibility of living beyond 90 -- or of the major health-care costs that pile up late in retirement."
6. Counting on consulting. When it comes to pondering a post-retirement career, the field of consulting is a perennial favorite. But how many newly minted consultants does the market really need?
If you're expecting a consulting business to help pay the bills in retirement, test the waters before you dive in. The same is true of other businesses, says Chris Fahlund of T. Rowe Price.
"We've seen people buy franchises with the thought that this isn't really spending money, but investing, because they are putting it into a business to make money," she says.
The glitch, Fahlund notes, is that a lot of franchises don't work out, and the capital invested to acquire them is lost.
7. Overdoing it. Many boomers may want to avoid the lives of endless leisure lived by their parents in retirement. But it's possible to veer too far in the other direction as well, cautions Tom Rogerson, a financial adviser at BNY Mellon.
"How you go about striking that balance is the question that everyone needs to address," he says. To help his clients find a balance, Rogerson asks them what makes them "relax well enough to sleep at night," he says.
"It turns out that the days they slept well were days that they had been productive at something but had also spent time with friends and family," Rogerson says. So the key to reinventing retirement is hanging on to the best parts of working lives, he says, and replacing the rest with more time devoted to family, friends and other passions
Girls Gone Wild
Women are drinking more and committing more violent crimes than in previous generations. Sonia Harford unravels the complex reasons why.
Not long ago, the women in Victorian prisons were there largely because of drug or property-related crimes.
But that picture is slowly changing, with a rising number of women being convicted for assault and other violent crimes.
Police statistics show that the rate of women arrested for crimes against the person - including homicide, rape, sexual assault, robbery and assault - increased from 2005 to 2007.
However, according to Australian Institute of Criminology figures covering Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, overall female offending rates increased only for assault between 1995 and 2006. The rate rose 40% for women, compared with 15% for male offenders.
Nationally, the imprisonment rate for women soared between 1984 and 2003, by 209% for women compared with 75% for men. So what's going on? Are women really becoming more violent?
While these figures point to a disturbing trend, those searching for the reasons behind it paint a complex picture of women's changing identities, and an apparent acceptance of an increasingly violent culture.
With traditional male and female roles under constant pressure, young women have been alternately admired and derided for their independence, risk-taking and showing a more aggressive side. At the same time, their lives have changed in other significant ways. Women now marry later (if at all), delay childbirth, enjoy their independent incomes and often play hard. Women are now more likely than ever to have a voice in business, government and relationships.
Popular culture carries the momentum, bringing feisty women to our television screens: Buffy, Roseanne, and Seinfeld's Elaine. And it has also brought images that didn't spare our sensitivities.
"I grew up taking in a lot of violence by watching news and current affairs on the ABC, and I believe I had a readiness to respond to this far more than my mother or grandmother had," says University of Melbourne academic and author Liz Conor. "Because of that indoctrination of violence, I came away thinking the world was a dangerous place."
The current generation of women may be less shocked by images of violence than previous generations, she says. "And young women witness the lack of redress of violence, particularly in football when the tribunals don't act. You have to ask, too, about violent video games like Grand Theft Auto. This is where they're allowed to act out their frustrations about being young."
Conor views female identity as inexorably shifting from discreet and self-effacing to assertive, with war service and the feminist revolution forming high-water marks. "Discreet is Edwardian, dainty was 1920s and interwar. Later, during wartime, women were involved in heavy work, and were also heroic and effective in espionage. They had physical endurance and skills that we've seen transfer to the sports field.
"Then feminism came along to say we were no longer to be dainty or fragile. This identity went out the window, it was wiped."
In alcohol consumption, too, women have taken to riskier behaviour. As the Rudd Government recently noted, women have caught up with men in terms of regular heavy drinking.
But the evidence of women taking on more "male" forms of crime, and the potential links between drinking and violence, are complex.
"Women populate public space now more than they once did, often in the company of men, and it would be interesting to track where violent incidents occur," says Dr Sue Davies, a senior criminology lecturer at La Trobe University.
Few jobs, sports and leisure activities remain inaccessible to women, and as well as rubbing shoulders with men, they can be rubbed up the wrong way. "The violence may well be happening in and around social venues where women drink and might get involved in violence with men," says Davies.
Criminologists and prisoner advocates emphasise there are many contributing factors to women's violence, including drug dependence and the influence of childhood abuse and family neglect. Many academic papers have also been devoted to women's treatment by police and the courts, and sentencing patterns.
In Australian Institute of Criminology data, the most common reasons female offenders gave for committing serious offences were: "I was drunk or high"; and "I lost my temper". Others included payback, seeking money for drugs, peer pressure, or for kicks.
"Girls these days are using speed and ice, destructive drugs that will intensify people's behaviour," says Davies. "There is no doubt drugs are a major part of female offending. But in crime statistics, drugs often get obscured when there's a more serious charge. If someone runs in waving a syringe, it's an armed robbery. The robbery may be recorded, but not the drug connection."
In Conor's view, feminists in the 1980s and '90s failed to be alert to women's drug and alcohol use, and violent behaviour. "We said it's nonsense, it's patriarchal, and that men consolidated power through violence. That was our political protest. We needed then, and we need now, to pay attention to alcohol and drug use among young women, too, particularly ice."
Professor George Patton, of Melbourne's Centre for Adolescent Health, has observed how young women over time "catch up" with men, particularly in recreational drug and alcohol use.
"The best example is tobacco use. For a long time we thought it was something boys came to earlier and used more heavily and longer. By the early 1990s, we'd seen an equalisation in the tobacco use rates, with girls even sneaking ahead. We've seen similar trends with cannabis use, and with drinking. In a couple of decades, girls have caught up to the boys."
He believes many factors have influenced the catch-up, including affluence and the marketing of alcohol products, particularly during puberty when "kids are acutely attuned to what their peers are doing and what they believe their peers are doing, and are acutely attuned to what they see in the media".
Hence the Rudd Government targeting brightly coloured "alcopops" with its dramatic tax hike.
The organisation ARBIAS (Alcohol Related Brain Injury Australian Services) warns that a whole generation of young women may suffer the harmful effects of alcohol within 10 years. Alarming statistics reveal that girls aged 12 to 15 are more than three times as likely as teenage boys of the same age to consume alcohol at least once a week. More teenage girls than boys are drinking at levels regarded as harmful to their health; and the number of girls between 15 and 17 drinking alcopops has jumped more than 40% since 2000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Women are more susceptible than men to alcohol's effects. But apart from the physical price they pay for big nights out, women also labour under lingering cultural prejudices about acceptable feminine behaviour. Drunk women and violent women tend to attract attention - when Amy Winehouse walks into a lamppost, a photographer is usually on hand to capture her humiliation.
"Back in the '50s and '60s, women who did drink were linked with promiscuity, and I think that still carries over into a link with sexual risk-taking," says Dr Jo Lindsay, a Monash University sociologist who has researched Melbourne's club and pub culture. "That's been glamourised in shows like Sex and the City, and there's been more openness for women, but there's a negative side too."
The days of a modest sherry are long gone for many women. "Drinking habits are linked to gender, and we have seen a big shift. Alcohol is central to everyday life in Australia and an important part of being an adult. If you're a non-drinker now, it's very hard to participate socially."
It wasn't always so. In the 1950s and '60s, when the public bar was off-limits to females, women accepted a kind of social apartheid built on the high moral ground. Most women traditionally played a supporting role for men, which included limiting men's consumption of alcohol, says Lindsay. "They had to manage the drinking too, in terms of its impact on domestic violence and sexual assault, so drinking has been a dangerous thing for women in the past," she says.
"Clearly there's been a big change that goes along with second-wave feminism. Nightlife has been feminised and so has drinking. Women see it as their right to enjoy nightlife just as men do, and it's become an important part of work life to go out drinking. Also, the youth stage is so stretched out, with women having children later. It's not just the two years between high school and then motherhood, now young people have a lot more time to drink."
The downside, she says, is the compulsory drinking with peers that men have always been subject to. "You can't really get away with your one shandy."
Patton believes the perception of women drinkers as unfeminine has faded. "Alcohol and drug use is very much part of the lifestyle of celebrity role models that girls look to, and I think that's contributed to the social sanctions against drinking diminishing."
But are they? Feminist criminologists are quick to warn that women are often judged more harshly than men for seemingly inappropriate behaviour. "If women behave aggressively, it's more quickly pathologised as not being feminine enough," says University of Melbourne criminology researcher Antonia Quadara.
"If binge-drinking is seen as aping male behaviour, it's still seen as more problematic for women than it is for men. There's an association of women as uncontrollable. When they step outside rigid stereotypes of what's acceptable, they're seen as behaving worse than men."
Conor believes perceptions of drunk or violent women are governed by "a class reading, rather than a gender one; they are seen as trash".
Victoria Police inspector Paul Ross insists that, on Melbourne's nightlife streets, women and men are treated equally when drunk or violent. Despite the statistics, he hasn't witnessed any great change in rates of female offending in the inner city.
In his experience, drunk women are more at risk of being victims of violence or sexual assault, than perpetrators. "Becoming inebriated puts women in a high-risk category, particularly late at night, and they should be mindful of that."
Lindsay also takes a moderate view. She doesn't believe, on the whole, that Australian women are violent, and says it's often overlooked that many women do drink just a little. In her view, there's no need for "moral panic" about young women's drinking and subsequent behaviour.
"I don't think we're like Britain, where the 'ladette' stuff is really strong. I was in Manchester a few years ago, and it was St Patrick's Day and there was mayhem on the streets. Women were throwing things, getting arrested, screaming. I don't think we see that here.
"For men, drinking is often a licence to be aggressive. Women in Australia just don't do that, we're not like football players who glass their girlfriend."
Even at the Melbourne Cup, when they're sitting ducks for press photographers, women are more messy than menacing. "They're just hilariously toppling on their heels, or having a wee in the car park. They're hardly a public danger!" says Lindsay.
Not long ago, the women in Victorian prisons were there largely because of drug or property-related crimes.
But that picture is slowly changing, with a rising number of women being convicted for assault and other violent crimes.
Police statistics show that the rate of women arrested for crimes against the person - including homicide, rape, sexual assault, robbery and assault - increased from 2005 to 2007.
However, according to Australian Institute of Criminology figures covering Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, overall female offending rates increased only for assault between 1995 and 2006. The rate rose 40% for women, compared with 15% for male offenders.
Nationally, the imprisonment rate for women soared between 1984 and 2003, by 209% for women compared with 75% for men. So what's going on? Are women really becoming more violent?
While these figures point to a disturbing trend, those searching for the reasons behind it paint a complex picture of women's changing identities, and an apparent acceptance of an increasingly violent culture.
With traditional male and female roles under constant pressure, young women have been alternately admired and derided for their independence, risk-taking and showing a more aggressive side. At the same time, their lives have changed in other significant ways. Women now marry later (if at all), delay childbirth, enjoy their independent incomes and often play hard. Women are now more likely than ever to have a voice in business, government and relationships.
Popular culture carries the momentum, bringing feisty women to our television screens: Buffy, Roseanne, and Seinfeld's Elaine. And it has also brought images that didn't spare our sensitivities.
"I grew up taking in a lot of violence by watching news and current affairs on the ABC, and I believe I had a readiness to respond to this far more than my mother or grandmother had," says University of Melbourne academic and author Liz Conor. "Because of that indoctrination of violence, I came away thinking the world was a dangerous place."
The current generation of women may be less shocked by images of violence than previous generations, she says. "And young women witness the lack of redress of violence, particularly in football when the tribunals don't act. You have to ask, too, about violent video games like Grand Theft Auto. This is where they're allowed to act out their frustrations about being young."
Conor views female identity as inexorably shifting from discreet and self-effacing to assertive, with war service and the feminist revolution forming high-water marks. "Discreet is Edwardian, dainty was 1920s and interwar. Later, during wartime, women were involved in heavy work, and were also heroic and effective in espionage. They had physical endurance and skills that we've seen transfer to the sports field.
"Then feminism came along to say we were no longer to be dainty or fragile. This identity went out the window, it was wiped."
In alcohol consumption, too, women have taken to riskier behaviour. As the Rudd Government recently noted, women have caught up with men in terms of regular heavy drinking.
But the evidence of women taking on more "male" forms of crime, and the potential links between drinking and violence, are complex.
"Women populate public space now more than they once did, often in the company of men, and it would be interesting to track where violent incidents occur," says Dr Sue Davies, a senior criminology lecturer at La Trobe University.
Few jobs, sports and leisure activities remain inaccessible to women, and as well as rubbing shoulders with men, they can be rubbed up the wrong way. "The violence may well be happening in and around social venues where women drink and might get involved in violence with men," says Davies.
Criminologists and prisoner advocates emphasise there are many contributing factors to women's violence, including drug dependence and the influence of childhood abuse and family neglect. Many academic papers have also been devoted to women's treatment by police and the courts, and sentencing patterns.
In Australian Institute of Criminology data, the most common reasons female offenders gave for committing serious offences were: "I was drunk or high"; and "I lost my temper". Others included payback, seeking money for drugs, peer pressure, or for kicks.
"Girls these days are using speed and ice, destructive drugs that will intensify people's behaviour," says Davies. "There is no doubt drugs are a major part of female offending. But in crime statistics, drugs often get obscured when there's a more serious charge. If someone runs in waving a syringe, it's an armed robbery. The robbery may be recorded, but not the drug connection."
In Conor's view, feminists in the 1980s and '90s failed to be alert to women's drug and alcohol use, and violent behaviour. "We said it's nonsense, it's patriarchal, and that men consolidated power through violence. That was our political protest. We needed then, and we need now, to pay attention to alcohol and drug use among young women, too, particularly ice."
Professor George Patton, of Melbourne's Centre for Adolescent Health, has observed how young women over time "catch up" with men, particularly in recreational drug and alcohol use.
"The best example is tobacco use. For a long time we thought it was something boys came to earlier and used more heavily and longer. By the early 1990s, we'd seen an equalisation in the tobacco use rates, with girls even sneaking ahead. We've seen similar trends with cannabis use, and with drinking. In a couple of decades, girls have caught up to the boys."
He believes many factors have influenced the catch-up, including affluence and the marketing of alcohol products, particularly during puberty when "kids are acutely attuned to what their peers are doing and what they believe their peers are doing, and are acutely attuned to what they see in the media".
Hence the Rudd Government targeting brightly coloured "alcopops" with its dramatic tax hike.
The organisation ARBIAS (Alcohol Related Brain Injury Australian Services) warns that a whole generation of young women may suffer the harmful effects of alcohol within 10 years. Alarming statistics reveal that girls aged 12 to 15 are more than three times as likely as teenage boys of the same age to consume alcohol at least once a week. More teenage girls than boys are drinking at levels regarded as harmful to their health; and the number of girls between 15 and 17 drinking alcopops has jumped more than 40% since 2000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Women are more susceptible than men to alcohol's effects. But apart from the physical price they pay for big nights out, women also labour under lingering cultural prejudices about acceptable feminine behaviour. Drunk women and violent women tend to attract attention - when Amy Winehouse walks into a lamppost, a photographer is usually on hand to capture her humiliation.
"Back in the '50s and '60s, women who did drink were linked with promiscuity, and I think that still carries over into a link with sexual risk-taking," says Dr Jo Lindsay, a Monash University sociologist who has researched Melbourne's club and pub culture. "That's been glamourised in shows like Sex and the City, and there's been more openness for women, but there's a negative side too."
The days of a modest sherry are long gone for many women. "Drinking habits are linked to gender, and we have seen a big shift. Alcohol is central to everyday life in Australia and an important part of being an adult. If you're a non-drinker now, it's very hard to participate socially."
It wasn't always so. In the 1950s and '60s, when the public bar was off-limits to females, women accepted a kind of social apartheid built on the high moral ground. Most women traditionally played a supporting role for men, which included limiting men's consumption of alcohol, says Lindsay. "They had to manage the drinking too, in terms of its impact on domestic violence and sexual assault, so drinking has been a dangerous thing for women in the past," she says.
"Clearly there's been a big change that goes along with second-wave feminism. Nightlife has been feminised and so has drinking. Women see it as their right to enjoy nightlife just as men do, and it's become an important part of work life to go out drinking. Also, the youth stage is so stretched out, with women having children later. It's not just the two years between high school and then motherhood, now young people have a lot more time to drink."
The downside, she says, is the compulsory drinking with peers that men have always been subject to. "You can't really get away with your one shandy."
Patton believes the perception of women drinkers as unfeminine has faded. "Alcohol and drug use is very much part of the lifestyle of celebrity role models that girls look to, and I think that's contributed to the social sanctions against drinking diminishing."
But are they? Feminist criminologists are quick to warn that women are often judged more harshly than men for seemingly inappropriate behaviour. "If women behave aggressively, it's more quickly pathologised as not being feminine enough," says University of Melbourne criminology researcher Antonia Quadara.
"If binge-drinking is seen as aping male behaviour, it's still seen as more problematic for women than it is for men. There's an association of women as uncontrollable. When they step outside rigid stereotypes of what's acceptable, they're seen as behaving worse than men."
Conor believes perceptions of drunk or violent women are governed by "a class reading, rather than a gender one; they are seen as trash".
Victoria Police inspector Paul Ross insists that, on Melbourne's nightlife streets, women and men are treated equally when drunk or violent. Despite the statistics, he hasn't witnessed any great change in rates of female offending in the inner city.
In his experience, drunk women are more at risk of being victims of violence or sexual assault, than perpetrators. "Becoming inebriated puts women in a high-risk category, particularly late at night, and they should be mindful of that."
Lindsay also takes a moderate view. She doesn't believe, on the whole, that Australian women are violent, and says it's often overlooked that many women do drink just a little. In her view, there's no need for "moral panic" about young women's drinking and subsequent behaviour.
"I don't think we're like Britain, where the 'ladette' stuff is really strong. I was in Manchester a few years ago, and it was St Patrick's Day and there was mayhem on the streets. Women were throwing things, getting arrested, screaming. I don't think we see that here.
"For men, drinking is often a licence to be aggressive. Women in Australia just don't do that, we're not like football players who glass their girlfriend."
Even at the Melbourne Cup, when they're sitting ducks for press photographers, women are more messy than menacing. "They're just hilariously toppling on their heels, or having a wee in the car park. They're hardly a public danger!" says Lindsay.
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