Way to Go Cosmopolitan!
Cosmopolitan Magazine markets to young women. In a recent article, the magazine offered up ways to hide booze in everyday items such as a hair brush. Way to go Cosmopolitan! With high school and college students dying from alcohol poisoning, do we need containers that look like hair brushes and tampons to encourage underage and/or constant drinking? Have we lost our way so completely that we think these sorts of things are funny or cool? I find it reprehensible that a magazine that has the power to influence young women would advertise and encourage behavior that kills, maims, and ruins lives and families. Our culture has become as alcohol soaked as many young brains. What are we doing? Do we know?
Alcoholism often starts at a young age. The ramifications of alcoholism in a teen or young woman in her twenties is devastating. How can an alcoholic teen ever finish school or college, and move on to become a productive member of society? The answer is, they can’t. The trajectory looks more like a life comprised of rehabs, broken relationships, and confused off spring. When a whole society celebrates and encourages alcoholic behavior; when a magazine that has significant influence on young lives jumps on the train of destruction, what does this say about our priorities?
Mom, Look What I Can Hide & Buy.
Shop on Amazon and you’ll see what I mean. Cups and plastic wine glasses with straws are littered with sayings that all encourage and make light of drinking:
Liquid therapy.
Mommy’s sippy cup.
Sip, sip hooray!
I teach, therefore I drink!
My book club can drink your book club under the table.
Wrong is more fun.
I’m not slurring my words I’m speaking in cursive.
Are these the messages that we want to impart to our kids? If you’re answer is no, then why do so many parents think this is funny? An even larger number of parents will purchase these cups, parade them around their children and their children’s friends. What often happens is the kids start drinking and now parents have full blown addiction to contend with. A parent’s once flippant attitude toward drinking does a 180 degree turn. They’ll wail in agony and beat their breasts, wondering where they went wrong, and now, how do they save their child?
Mindfulness matters. Shouldn’t we stop and ask ourselves if toting around containers that encourage alcohol consumption any time and any place is the sort of behavior that we’d want our kids to mimic. If not, then why would any adult sink to this level?
I know I have talked to moms who were uncomfortable with all the drinking—parental drinking, but they assumed that because everyone was doing it that it was fine. Another camp of women went along with the alcohol frenzy because they didn’t want to be ostracized or have their kids ostracized.
I hope to encourage those who are uncomfortable with the constant drinking that it is okay to stand up and say no. It’s admirable to role model better behavior so that your kids can learn what normal “social” drinking looks like. Social drinkers would never think to hide booze in their clothes. If you need a drink that bad, perhaps your drinking is not so social after all.
What are your thoughts? Let’s talk!