Sex Roles, Vol. 52, Nos.

5/6, March 2005 (

C 2005)

DOI: 10.1007/s11199-005-2672-7

Changing Gender Norms for Alcohol Consumption: Social

Drinking and Lowered Inhibitions at Bachelorette Parties

Beth Montemurro1,3 and Bridget McClure2

In this research, we examined the role of alcohol as both substance and symbol at bachelorette
parties. The bachelorette party is characterized by ritualized embarrassment of the bride and
by sexualized games, both of which are made easier by heavy alcohol consumption. As there
are few occasions when it is considered socially acceptable for women to drink, the bache-
lorette party provides a unique opportunity to explore women’s social drinking and public
drunkenness. Based on interviews with 51 women we found that drinking seemed to add to
the fun of bachelorette parties and that group alcohol consumption appeared to increase so-
cial solidarity as women at bachelorette parties bonded over their shared experience. Finally,
women relied on alcohol to lower inhibitions so that they were able to feel justified in en-
gaging in deviant behavior. Women’s use of alcohol in this ritual challenges existing gender
norms and conceptions of masculinity and femininity.

KEY WORDS: gender; alcohol; bachelorette party; lowered inhibitions.

Gender norms dictate appropriate behavior
for men and women. Whereas such expectations
are modified and reconstructed as society at large
changes, the undercurrent of traditional gender roles
remains powerful in many areas of social life. One
such area is alcohol consumption. Although women
are no longer legally restricted from entering bars
or having drinks in them, women’s use of alcohol,
particularly excessive use, is viewed differently than
that of men. Because it is consistent with masculinity,
heavy drinking and consequent boisterous or rowdy
behavior among men is often excused or neutralized,
whereas similar behavior on the part of women is
viewed as deviant and is criticized. However, as the
number of women attending college—a prime site for
binge drinking and public drunkenness in America—
increases, women’s drinking norms and behaviors be-
come more visible. Residential colleges afford young
1 PennsylvaniaState University, Abington.
2 New
York University.
3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at 1600 Woodland
Road, Penn State Abington, Abington, Pennsylvania 19001;
e-mail: Eam15@psu.edu.
women the opportunity to drink excessively, and al-
cohol researchers rely heavily on these women as
sources of data. Similarly, the development of an
intoxication-focused ritual, the bachelorette party,
challenges traditional assumptions about masculin-
ity and femininity and raises questions about gender
convergence in drinking behavior.
The bachelorette party is the antithesis of the
bridal shower, women’s traditional pre-wedding rit-
ual. It commonly takes place on a Friday or Saturday
night a few weeks prior to the wedding. Guests in at-
tendance are usually the bride’s peers, such as the
bridesmaids and other close friends, with the oc-
casional sister, cousin, or, in a few cases, mother.
Though many begin in a private home with a cocktail
and hors d’oeuvres pre-party, bachelorette parties
nearly always involve going out to a bar or club. As
one interviewee described it, the bachelorette party
is “a lot of alcohol, a lot of sexual stuff . . . drinking
and letting loose.” The bachelorette party is the
only pre-wedding event in which it is expected and
planned that women will become intoxicated—and
really the only secular ritual focused on women’s
alcohol consumption.

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C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
280
Women’s excessive alcohol consumption has
been viewed as deviant by society at large (Heath,
2000; Holmila, 1991; Sheehan & Ridge, 2001), and
the motivations of women who drink in public
or drink excessively have been viewed as suspect
(Parks, Miller, Collins, & Zetes-Zanatta, 1998; Parks
& Scheidt, 2000). Thus, the bachelorette party is
unique because it is a sanctioned opportunity for
women to be drunk and to act drunk in public. In-
toxication at this event is the norm, and it serves a
couple of functions. First, drinking with friends acts
as a stress reducer during the hectic and often over-
whelming time of planning a wedding. Throughout
the pre-wedding period, there are expectations for
the bride-to-be to act in a reserved, scripted manner,
in which she expresses excitement about her current
role and her anticipation about becoming a wife. Any
anxiety or stress she may have about getting mar-
ried is not appropriate for public display or discus-
sion. Thus, the bachelorette party provides a much-
needed release for women. It is a “time-out” activity
(MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969), an escape from ev-
eryday life. Bachelorette party participants perceive
alcohol as a substance that enables them to “loosen
up” or become less inhibited. Thus, it provides an ex-
cuse for the deviant behavior expected at the party.
In this article we discuss the role alcohol, as both sub-
stance and symbol, plays at bachelorette parties. This
research follows the symbolic interactionist tradition;
thus, alcohol is viewed as a symbol through which
meaning is created in the context of the bachelorette
party.
There is little qualitative research available on
women’s social drinking patterns and the contexts
in which they drink. The majority of research on
women’s drinking behaviors or gender and alco-
hol consumption focuses on problem drinking or
alcoholism (e.g., Gomberg, Lisansky, & Nirenberg,
1993; Holmila, 1991; Jersild, 2001; National Insti-
tute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 1999; Raine,
2001; Roman, 1988; Sandmaier, 1992; Stammer, 1991;
Wechsler, 1995; Wilsnack & Beckham, 1984). Pre-
vious researchers have described women alcoholics,
women’s susceptibility to alcohol problems, and cor-
relations between alcohol consumption and violence
against women (Parks et al., 1998). Their work is ex-
tremely valuable as most early research focused on
the experiences of men, as drug and alcohol addic-
tions were perceived to be men’s issues. Other re-
searchers have explored gender differences in drink-
ing patterns. For example, Gianakos (2002) reported
that men were more likely than women to use alcohol
Montemurro and McClure
as a coping mechanism in dealing with work stress.
Although some research has shown that women’s
alcohol consumption has increased since the mid-
1980s (Hilton, 1988), more recent research shows
that women’s drinking was relatively stable dur-
ing the 1970s and 1980s (Wilsnack & Wilsnack,
1995). However, it has also been reported that men’s
drinking still exceeds that of women (Mercer &
Khavari, 1990; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism, n.d.; Wilsnack & Wilsnack, 1995).
Thus, a gender gap still exists where men drink
more, and more often, than do women. Further-
more alcohol consumption, particularly heavy alco-
hol consumption, has been seen as a masculine activ-
ity (Andersen, 2003; Heath, 2000; Strate, 2001), and
bars have historically been viewed as men’s territory
(Parks & Scheidt, 2000). Strate’s (2001) analysis of
beer commercials suggested that such advertisements
showed that drinking is, in fact, a “central masculine
activity” and communicated the idea that “real men”
drink.
However, as Heath (2000) argued, “The over-
whelming majority of those who drink choose to do
so for at least partially hedonistic reasons” (p. 167),
and most of those people do not have alcohol ad-
dictions. Alcohol is a powerful substance that is of-
ten used to evoke a pleasurable and desirable effect
(Sheehan & Ridge, 2001). It carries with it a highly
social symbolism as it is regularly consumed in times
of celebration and joy. People most often imbibe with
others, and thus think of alcohol as something to be
shared—both in terms of the actual substance and
the overall experience (Heath, 2000). Given this, it
is important to understand social drinking as well as
problem drinking. How does alcohol function in so-
cial situations? What is its role? Why is it used in cel-
ebratory rituals such as the bachelorette party? Little
attention has been directed to these questions, possi-
bly for the reason that a moral stigma surrounds al-
cohol consumption.
Several researchers have attempted to exam-
ine social drinking. Many of these studies still fall
into the problem drinking analysis category as they
concern binge-drinking practices of college students
(e.g., Wechsler, 1995). Yet, few studies have specifi-
cally concerned women’s social drinking, perhaps be-
cause it is less common and more stigmatized than
men’s social drinking, or perhaps because it is less of-
ten public (Wilsnack, Vogeltanz, Wilsnack, & Harris,
2000). Notable exceptions include Parks et al. (1998),
who interviewed women bar patrons in order to de-
termine why they frequented bars and the problems
Changing Gender Norms for Alcohol Consumption
they encountered as a result. They found that one of
the main reasons women patronize bars was for com-
panionship and sociability; yet, women often expe-
rienced harassment or physical violence in such set-
tings. Parks and Scheidt (2000) explored perceptions
of women drinkers, and found that men bar patrons
judged women bar patrons negatively and stereo-
typed them as sexually promiscuous and of question-
able character. These authors thus concluded that
there remains a double standard that dictates that
women should not drink and especially not in sig-
nificant amounts or public places. Heath (1993) sug-
gested a similar idea and argued that not only are
women who drink susceptible to being labeled as
“wanton,” but also that there are different standards
for how much women and men should drink and
where they should consume alcohol.
These studies provide a foundation for research
on women’s social drinking as they point to the ex-
istence of gendered norms and expectations for al-
cohol consumption. However, the researchers failed
to discuss the meaning of alcohol, its social use for
women themselves, or women’s specific motivations
for social drinking. Furthermore, if women are drink-
ing more now in public than in past decades, as Parks
et al. (1998) and others have suggested, and if the
bachelorette party, an often intoxication-focused rit-
ual, is becoming a common part of wedding festivi-
ties (Geller, 2001; Montemurro, 2003), then perhaps
norms for women’s alcohol consumption are chang-
ing as well, and public intoxication may no longer be
perceived as deviant by young women and/or by so-
ciety at large.
One study did concern the significance of drink-
ing in young women’s social groups. Sheehan and
Ridge (2001) explored the binge-drinking practices
of female teenagers in Australia and their discus-
sions about their drinking episodes, and they found
that alcohol use was both “meaningful and positive”
(p. 365). They further reported that the girls in their
study “bond through their alcohol experiences and
narratives . . .” (p. 365). Sheehan and Ridge’s study
points to the importance of examining the variant
contexts of women’s alcohol use and the meaning
that alcohol use has within particular subcultures.
Their suggestion that alcohol has positive functions
for young women is provocative, and in the present
research we aimed to examine the extent to which
that is true for women in other social circumstances
and later in life, particularly via the bachelorette
party ritual. Very little has been written about bach-
elorette parties. Tye and Powers (1998) provided an
281
analysis of this ritual in their study of bachelorette
parties in Atlantic Canada. They view the bache-
lorette party as a rite of passage to marriage and ar-
gued that it functions as both a reinforcement of and
a form of resistance to traditional gender roles. Tye
and Powers suggested that women take on a sexu-
alized image or persona at bachelorette parties and
thus conform to traditional societal conceptions of
women as sex objects. Their analysis of bachelorette
parties is quite useful theoretically and empirically
as it substantiates the prevalence and popularity of
this phenomenon beyond the United States. How-
ever, Tye and Powers (1998) did not fully explore
the key role alcohol plays at bachelorette parties.
Studying alcohol’s function is critical in analysis of
the bachelorette party, as it seems to have a major
impact on the atmosphere of the party and the behav-
ior of participants. The bachelorette party provides
a forum for women’s public drinking and drunken-
ness, and thus it is an excellent site for the study
of women’s social drinking. We looked at this issue
from a non-problem focused approach, assuming that
the majority of women who consume alcohol at bach-
elorette parties are unlikely to have alcohol addic-
tions. Rather, we worked from the perspective that
these women do not become intoxicated very often,
and thus their behavior at the parties is different from
their everyday behavior.
METHOD
Participants
This research was done using qualitative inter-
view methods. The first author conducted in-depth
interviews with 51 women aged 21 and older, with
a mean age of approximately 26 years. In order to
be eligible to participate, women either had to have
had or attended a bachelorette party within the pre-
vious year. Selection of participants was based on
a snowball sampling method, which was built from
known contacts who directed the researcher to other
relevant contacts. A snowball sample is useful in
this study as there is no public record of engaged
women, thus no master list from which to sample.
Snowball samples are useful in research that deals
with sensitive or secretive behavior (Biernacki &
Woldorf, 1981), and the bachelorette party certainly
involves such conduct. Because women engage in
binge drinking and sexualized play during the bache-
lorette party, some may have been hesitant to divulge
282
the details of the party to a stranger. As the first
author either knew the participants or was referred
to the participants by a friend, or friend of a friend, it
seems that they felt comfortable sharing intimate de-
tails of the activities of the bachelorette party, which
may not have been the case had another sampling
method been used.
This sample is by no means representative nor
generalizable to all brides-to-be, but provides a va-
riety of perspectives and variations of bachelorette
parties. Most respondents recommended women
whose racial and social class backgrounds were sim-
ilar to their own, a limitation of the snowball sam-
pling method. Ninety-four percent of respondents
were White, the remaining 6% were Asian or multi-
racial. Eighty-eight percent of interviewees consid-
ered themselves to be either middle or upper-middle
class; 6% identified as working class, and 6% as up-
per class. It might be that bachelorette parties take
different forms or are less common among the lower
classes and poor women because they can be expen-
sive events. Women in the sample reported having
spent an average of $75 per person at a bachelorette
party.
In order to gain an understanding of the preva-
lence and variation in bachelorette parties, data were
collected primarily in two regions of the country:
the Northeast and the Southeast. The Northeast in-
cludes several cities in Pennsylvania, New York,
New Jersey, and the suburbs of Washington DC.
The Southeast includes cities and towns in Georgia,
Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana, and
Kentucky. Approximately 69% of respondents were
from the Northeast. All place and participant names
used in this article are pseudonyms.
Procedure
Interviews took place at the home of the partici-
pant, in the office of the first author, or at a restaurant
or coffee shop convenient to the interviewee. The
first author met the participant in the designated lo-
cation at a specific time, scheduled in advance. Partic-
ipants were asked to describe in detail bachelorette
parties they had attended during the previous year,
and probes were used to elicit detailed information
about alcohol consumption and behavior at these
parties. Interviews lasted approximately 90 min. Be-
cause this is part of a larger study of both bache-
lorette parties and bridal showers, participants were
asked questions about both rituals. The first author
Montemurro and McClure
conducted all interviews, and the second author as-
sisted in analysis of data related to alcohol consump-
tion. All interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed,
and then analyzed using grounded theory (Strauss &
Corbin, 1998).
Materials
Before the interview started, demographic infor-
mation was collected via a brief questionnaire. Par-
ticipants provided information regarding age, mari-
tal status, race, social class, religion, occupation, as
well as basic information about the number of bach-
elorette parties they had had or had attended dur-
ing the previous year. A semi-structured interview
guide was used to conduct all interviews. The inter-
view guide consisted of questions about the number
of bachelorette parties in which the interviewee had
participated, specific details about bachelorette par-
ties attended, as well as general attitudes about bach-
elorette parties and their meaning in contemporary
American society.
RESULTS
Alcohol and the Bachelorette Party
Alcohol was central at the bachelorette party.
All 142 bachelorette parties described by intervie-
wees involved alcohol consumption. In most cases,
women drank for 6–8 hr, often beginning the evening
with a pre-party at someone’s home or at a hotel.
Forty-two percent of interviewees attended parties
held in private homes, and 50% went to parties that
started at restaurants. Eighty percent of interviewees
went to bachelorette parties in clubs or bars. Alcohol
was so important at these events that two women in
the sample who were pregnant when they were en-
gaged waited until after they were married and had
given birth to have their bachelorette parties, so that
they could drink. They still called their parties “bach-
elorette” and participated in the same activities as
engaged women do, even though they were already
wed.
Regardless of when or where drinking began, it
was the focal activity of the night. With the exception
of a few bachelorette parties where the brides-to-be
were under age 21, bachelorette parties nearly al-
ways took place at bars, dance clubs, or taverns. Bars
and clubs are recognized as “time out” locations,
Changing Gender Norms for Alcohol Consumption
places where one can relax and unwind. These cul-
tural associations make such places fitting locations
for the bachelorette party, as it is a “time-out” ac-
tivity (MacAndrew & Edgerton, 1969; Parks et al.,
1998). The vast majority of bar patrons drink alcohol
(Heath, 2000), and thus such an environment is con-
ducive to drinking large quantities.
One of the goals of bachelorette parties is to
get the bride drunk. Sharon, for example, suggested
that the purpose of the bachelorette party is to “make
the bride-to-be drink, to get her drunk, [and] to
make a fool out of her.” In other words, intoxication
is planned and expected. Thus, women at a bache-
lorette party deviate from the norms that suggest that
women should not drink, and, if they do, they cer-
tainly should not get drunk. Purposeful intoxication
at the bachelorette party can be seen as a form of
gender deviance and, thus, also as resistance to tra-
ditional gender norms. In the same way that women
challenge traditional notions of sexuality and related
norms (Montemurro, 2003), women’s use of alcohol
at bachelorette parties can be interpreted as women’s
way of expressing that they can do what men do.
In the past, women had only the “dry” ritual of the
bridal shower, whereas men went out and became in-
toxicated at bachelor parties. Although women still
have bridal showers, the invention of the bache-
lorette party suggests a step toward gender conver-
gence, in that women and men engage in complemen-
tary pre-wedding festivities. In this sense, women use
alcohol as a symbol of power and equality, and it ex-
emplifies women’s ability to control their own alco-
hol consumption. Furthermore, the fact that bache-
lorette parties take place in bars, historically men’s
space, suggests transgression and transformation.
Levels of Intoxication
Eighty-three percent (n = 118) of parties were
described as consisting of heavy drinking with a
bride-to-be who was intoxicated by the end of the
night. Fewer parties, in contrast, were characterized
by moderate drinking where interviewees said that
they and/or the bride were “tipsy” or “buzzed.” At
parties where the bride-to-be consumed only a cou-
ple of drinks, her behavior reflected only minimal
effects from the alcohol. On the other end of the
spectrum were parties where the bride and most of
the guests were, in the words of several interviewees,
“trashed.” Based on interviewees’ descriptions, we
define “trashed” as a more intense state of intoxi-
283
cation in which the bride-to-be passed out, blacked
out, or got sick from drinking too much. One method
of intoxication common at these heavy drinking par-
ties involved the consumption of shots of alcohol. At
44% of all bachelorette parties described by intervie-
wees the brides-to-be drank shots.
A party Gina attended fits within the category of
heavy drinking. She said, “We had a couple of people
throw up. [The bride was vomiting] in the bathroom
at some point. She couldn’t even walk.” Similarly,
Heather described the amount of alcohol consumed
at a bachelorette party she recently attended:
[When we were out] all of us were pretty much
drinking liquor . . . We made the bride do a couple
of shots when we got [to the bar] and then we were
doing them.
We drank probably 4 or 5 beers each on the way
downtown. So we were definitely . . . drinking fairly
[heavily]. We had a couple of people throw up.
Levels of intoxication were correlated with the
atmosphere of the party, such that parties with lit-
tle or no alcohol were perceived as less “wild” than
parties with a lot of alcohol consumption. Vanessa
addressed this idea when she talked about a bache-
lorette party she attended that began at a lively Mex-
ican restaurant. She said, “And of course there were
a lot of margaritas, and the party steps up propor-
tional to the amount of margaritas.” A “wild” party
was characterized not just by what the participants
did, but also by the heavy alcohol consumption that
enabled them to do those things. As one woman ex-
pressed it, “You go out to a place where you can
act crazy and wild and obnoxious and draw atten-
tion to yourselves, and a lot of times you draw atten-
tion to yourselves by drinking a lot more.” In a few
cases, party participants became so intoxicated that
they did not remember everything about the party.
Abby’s description (or lack thereof) of her friend’s
bachelorette party was an example of this. She said,
“It was pretty wild that night. I do remember that. I
remember one of the girls getting sick in the RV. I
don’t remember much more of what we did.”
Another way that the quantity of alcohol con-
sumed related to the overall assessment of the bach-
elorette party was that those with heavier drinking
were perceived as more fun than those with mod-
erate or light drinking. For example, Sharon ex-
pressed that she did not have much fun at a cousin’s
bachelorette party—that it was boring. There was
no drinking because two members of the bridal
party were under 21. Grace would not even go to a
284
bachelorette-slumber party to which she was invited
because it took place at a cabin where there was to
be no alcohol. When she heard about the plans she
asked, “What’s the point?” Similarly, it was those
who did not drink during bachelorette parties who
were viewed as deviant by the other participants.
Brooke, for example, criticized women who would
not drink at a friend’s party. She said, “It happened
to be that a large number of girls in the group have
strange eating habits and think drinking is fatten-
ing, and it was more that issue that anything else . . . I
mean, like, do you think you could make an excep-
tion?” Her tone indicated that this was a drinking
event and that these women should have gone along
with the norms for the occasion. Although women’s
intoxication may be seen as deviant by the larger
society, at bachelorette parties drinking is norma-
tive, and those who abstained were more conspicu-
ous than those who indulged.
Why Alcohol is of Central Importance
at Bachelorette Parties
Interviewees repeatedly suggested that the rea-
son drinking alcohol was a part of bachelorette par-
ties was because it made people “freer” or looser.
Women expected alcohol to alter their behavior and
their mood so that they would not be self-conscious
or uptight during these events. Several quotes exem-
plify this. Gina, for example, said that alcohol is a
part of bachelorette parties because “You’re more
apt to have fun. Like lose inhibitions and this is sup-
posed to be the last wild night. If you weren’t drink-
ing there’s more of a chance of that not happening.”
And Heather said, “People drink . . . to lose inhi-
bitions and stuff that is done . . . I would never do
sober. It lowers inhibitions—that’s the main point of
it. Because you know you’re going to do silly stuff.”
Finally, Shannon commented that drinking is a part
of a bachelorette party “to make people loosen up
and less inhibited. Lightens the atmosphere. Makes
you more susceptible to doing the things you do at
bachelorette parties that you would not normally do
sober. You play games, have a better time with the
stripper, and [are] more free when you’re dancing . . .
more sociable.” In each of these quotes women ac-
knowledged that their behavior under the influence
of alcohol was different than when sober—and that
they would not or would be much less likely to en-
gage in the play of the bachelorette party without
having consumed alcohol. These statements thus sug-
Montemurro and McClure
gest that women viewed alcohol as a substance that
could heighten their enjoyment of the party by en-
abling them to participate wholly in its activities. Part
of full participation in some bachelorette parties in-
cluded being a good sport about being dressed up in
a veil or completing dares like asking random men
for their boxer shorts. Thus, drinking enabled women
to go along with and even enjoy doing things that
they claimed they would not do when sober. This was
particularly true for the bride-to-be. As Reva said,
“It’s just a lot easier to go around with a . . . veil on
if you’ve had a few in you. I couldn’t imagine being
completely sober on a bachelorette party, especially
if you’re the bachelorette.”
At bachelorette parties, women were often chal-
lenged and pressured by their friends to approach
men and ask them for their phone numbers or for a
kiss. Women acknowledged that they needed alcohol
to engage in the sexualized play of the party. Alcohol
was used to lower inhibitions about being too sex-
ual, about the risk of being perceived as promiscuous,
or about being sexual in public. Women commented
that they felt freer to talk about sex while under
the influence of alcohol, to flirt with male strangers,
or to dance with a male stripper. Several expressed
that they would not consider doing these same things
when sober. The following exchange between two in-
terviewees, one a recent bride and the other an en-
gaged woman, illustrates this:
Jane: If you have the whole sexual thing involved . . .
you wouldn’t be able to do that if you were sober.
Kristen: Would you wear a suck-for-a-buck shirt4 ?
Jane: Dead sober? Absolutely not! I guess they go
hand in hand. Like if you’re going to have the whole
sexual thing—like if you are going to have that play,
you are going to have to have alcohol to get you loos-
ened up to do that.
Both Jane and Kristen seemed mortified at the
idea of doing something sexualized without first hav-
ing been “loosened up” by having a few drinks. It is
the public expression of sexuality that puts women
in a position to be judged as “good” or “bad.” Thus,
“good” women could still retain their status as good
by claiming that the only reason they acted sexu-
ally in public was because of the alcohol—when they
4 At some parties, interviewees said that the bride-to-be wore a
shirt covered with candy. This was made into a game, known as
“suck-for-a-buck,” in which men were to pay the bride-to-be a
dollar to suck a piece of candy from her shirt. This game was sex-
ualized as candies were placed in suggestive locations on women’s
bodies.
Changing Gender Norms for Alcohol Consumption
were sober they were good girls who kept their sex
lives and sexuality private.
Further evidence of inhibitions can be found in
circumstances where the bride-to-be or others had
not yet had much to drink or when they encountered
something that they considered especially awkward.
For example, prior to Carol’s bachelorette party she
had talked about how she wanted a stripper to be part
of the night. However, when the party actually took
place and the stripper was before her, she had sec-
ond thoughts. She said that she remembered think-
ing, “I am so sorry I asked for this because I am way
too sober and mortified. . . . I really needed to go get
drunk after that.” Carol felt uncomfortable with a
man dancing provocatively for her because she had
not had enough to drink, and it also seemed that her
desire to go drink after the event was motivated by
a desire to rid herself of a clear memory. Similarly,
at a friend’s bachelorette party, Mary went “club-
hopping” and at one point their group met up with
a bachelor party who invited them to a female strip
club. Mary described her immediate reaction to en-
tering this environment. She said, “As soon as we
went in I was like I want some tequila and [the bride]
was like I want some, too.” Mary’s first response to
being in a female strip club was discomfort. It was
likely that she was uncomfortable because it was a
morally tainted place, and she had reservations about
her identity and her “goodness” when she found her-
self there. She might have also been ill at ease be-
cause of the perception of the way women are treated
at female strip clubs, and she may have feared being
harassed. She clearly believed that alcohol would al-
leviate some of her uneasiness and prepare her for
what came next. Carol and Mary, like others in the
study, clearly had inhibitions about public sexual ex-
pression and seemed to perceive it as something that
needed to be brought out with, and was only accept-
able after, alcohol consumption. Thus, alcohol was
used to neutralize or silence inhibitions.
In addition, at bachelorette parties, intoxicated
women were able to be sexual without as much fear
of negative judgments as they could explain away
their behavior, as Sharon said, “[you can’t get in trou-
ble for what you did on a bachelorette party] because
you were drunk.” Brides-to-be were more comfort-
able engaging in embarrassing and otherwise deviant
acts, such as being dressed up in a costume or watch-
ing a dance by a stripper, when they had consumed a
substance that made them less self-conscious.
Perhaps women drink at bachelorette parties be-
cause drinking is another way they can violate norms
285
and be a little reckless. Because the party is per-
ceived as a “last wild night,” a large component of
the wildness has to do with deviance and transgres-
sion. Women recognized that their drinking behav-
ior at bachelorette parties was deviant; however, they
stated that they were comfortable with their peers
and their own heavy drinking in this context. Al-
though interviewees acknowledged that such drink-
ing binges were rare in their everyday lives, they did
not report regretting becoming intoxicated (although
many regretted their hangovers). Women seemed
clearly to be aware that drinking heavily was deviant,
and that seemed to be exactly why it was so critical at
the bachelorette party.
There were certainly limits to how “badly”
women behaved at bachelorette parties. Sober,
clear-headed women planned these parties in de-
tail in advance, and because they anticipated ex-
cessive alcohol consumption, they were careful to
minimize related risks. Most women arranged some
type of transportation, such as private limousines or
party-buses, or they had a non-party member or an
agreeable participant commit to acting as designated
driver. The degree of responsibility that women felt
for others who had been drinking was evident in
the extent to which they talked about this subject
or described the parties they attended. In addition
to arranging a driver, there were several women
who stated that they took on the responsibility of
watching out for the bride-to-be to make sure that
strangers did not take advantage of her when she
had too much to drink. Hillary, for example, was the
designated driver for a friend’s bachelorette party:
“Everybody was drinking, getting pretty drunk . . . I
had a major focus on [the bride], just felt responsible
for her, for driving her, so I paid the most attention
to her.” Jane, like several other women interviewed,
was also sure to keep an eye on the bride at the par-
ties she had attended. She said, “People tend to wan-
der off by themselves. You have to make sure every-
body’s okay. . . . I tend to be like the mother. . . . I’m
kind of like the mother hen. I was like where’s [the
bride]? You know and I went and found [her].”
Increasing Social Solidarity
Alcohol is perceived as an important element
of social gatherings and parties in general. Intervie-
wees acknowledged that going out and drinking, the
ritual of the bar or “bar-hopping,” was something
that they associated with their friends. Many of the
286
women who went away to college, approximately
80% of women in our sample, suggested that going
out and drinking with friends carried a nostalgic qual-
ity, as Jane said, “It was like reliving the college days,
you’re out a couple of years and you don’t do that
often.” Hilary concurred when she described the at-
mosphere at a friend’s bachelorette party. She said it
seemed like “old times and the guys together again
and just getting drunk.” In these cases, drinking can
be interpreted as an in-group activity, one that iden-
tified individuals as members of a social circle.
Alcohol may also foster solidarity among peo-
ple who have little in common other than that they
know the bride-to-be. There were often friends from
different parts of the bride’s life at the bachelorette
party, some of whom did not know each other. Thus,
it seemed that drinking aided bonding, such that
a collection of people from the bride’s past and
present became, at least temporarily, unified. Inter-
viewees noted that alcohol made it easier for women
to bond and feel comfortable hanging out with peo-
ple whom they did not really know. Furthermore,
alcohol consumption also facilitated conversation
about intimate topics such as relationships, sex, and
friendship.
DISCUSSION
The results of our research indicate that alco-
hol consumption is a key element of the bachelorette
party. Alcohol functioned as a means of lowering
behavioral inhibitions and thus allowed women to
express an image of themselves or aspects of their
identity that contrasted with that of their everyday
selves. It seems that women found it necessary to
become intoxicated in order to participate fully in
bachelorette party activities because they had reser-
vations about how others would perceive them, how
they would perceive themselves if they engaged in
similar behaviors when sober, or because they did
not want to do the required and often embarrassing
tasks. Thus, drinking served a key role in increas-
ing the social aspect of the event because women
reported feeling “looser” or “freer” when under the
influence and thus more able to relax and be expres-
sive with one another. This perceived need for alco-
hol is telling in terms of women’s status in contem-
porary society. Like the bar patrons in Parks and
Scheidt’s (2000) study, women in this sample were
aware of, and felt constrained by, gendered norms
for public sexual expression as well as for their be-
Montemurro and McClure
havior more generally. It seems that the women in
this sample used alcohol as an excuse for their ac-
tions. In other words, if they were able to dismiss or
legitimate their behavior by claiming intoxication, to
say that behavior was neutralized in some way, their
“real” self or identity would not be marred by their
actions at the bachelorette party. That women were
not comfortable in suggestive situations, such as be-
ing around strippers, when they had not consumed
alcohol implies that these women have internalized
gendered norms that dictate that “good” women
should not do such things or be in such stigmatized
places.
However, the bachelorette party is about being
“bad,” and alcohol helped women accomplish this
in several ways. Although some respondents were
a little sheepish in admitting that they themselves
had gotten sick at a bachelorette party or had done
something that they considered, in retrospect, to be
embarrassing, almost none said that they regretted
their behavior or seemed remorseful about having
been drunk. Many said that the hangover was the
worst part of the bachelorette party, but they seemed
to realize that, like the Australian young women in
the Sheehan and Ridge (2001) study, “The horrible
hangover the next morning. . . . do[es] not exist on
[its] own. [It is] an accepted element of the social-
izing that afforded a good time, a pleasurable inter-
action, and a shared experience that can be savored
and recounted . . .” (p. 355). Thus, if a stigma against
women’s intoxication still exists, as reported by pre-
vious researchers, it seems that these women did not
feel significantly constrained by it within this context.
Perhaps the excuse of the bachelorette party and the
normative structure for heavy drinking that is asso-
ciated with it made women unconcerned about this
aspect of norm violation. In other words, because
these were women who did not become intoxicated
often and because they drank at the bachelorette
party because it was normative to do so, the ele-
ment of deviance was neutralized. This is evidence of
change in gender norms for alcohol consumption—
even if such a change is bound to the bachelorette
party ritual, which sanctions deviant behavior at
large.
The data also demonstrate that women do drink
heavily at or during bachelorette parties and not only
believe that doing so is acceptable in this situation
but that such behavior is required. Women who ab-
stained during bachelorette parties, other than those
who were appointed designated drivers, were viewed
as bad sports. These women certainly had drinking
Changing Gender Norms for Alcohol Consumption
cultures, and many had drinking groups, mostly col-
lege friends or sorority sisters, with whom they
shared a history of social or binge drinking. Contrary
to early research where women’s drinking was found
to be hidden or secretive, women in this sample were
not ashamed of their alcohol consumption at bache-
lorette parties. In fact, some recounted their drink-
ing tales with pride, consistent with masculine norms
for drinking behavior as found by Wechsler (1995),
and Sheehan and Ridge (2001). This raises questions
regarding whether or not women’s masculinized be-
havior at bachelorette parties suggests that men and
women are becoming more similar in their alco-
hol consumption patterns and behaviors. It seems
that these women believed that they were drink-
ing “like men” because they acknowledged that the
bachelorette party was based on the bachelor party,
which is generally expected to be a group-drinking
binge.
Women’s social drinking is a topic that mer-
its ethnographic exploration. The drinking patterns
of women (particularly non-college students) have
been under-studied and deserve close analysis as they
have much to tell us about alcohol’s function in peer
groups as well as about gender roles and norms in
modern society. The results of the present study pro-
vide insight into the only women’s ritual in which
heavy drinking is both condoned and encouraged.
The bachelorette party is an event that shows us
that middle-class women do occasionally drink ex-
cessively and that they rely heavily on alcohol and
perceptions about its ability to lower inhibitions in
their pursuit of “a good time.” Future researchers
might examine drinking norms at bachelor parties
in order to measure gender differences and similar-
ities in the use of alcohol at pre-wedding events.
Furthermore, as this sample was relatively homoge-
nous, it would be interesting to study the bache-
lorette parties of women from different racial, ethnic,
and class groups to see if the role of alcohol would be
similar.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the support of
Penn State University and the Abington College
Undergraduate Research Activities program. Beth
Montemurro would also like to thank Paul Roman,
the Institute for Behavioral Research at the Univer-
sity of Georgia, and the support of Grant T32-AA-
07473 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
287
and Alcoholism during the collection of data for this
article.
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