Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
 

I was wondering if anyone else read this book. The author, Koren Zailckas has a whole chapter dedicated to greek life and the rest of the book is about her and alcohol and how her sorority made her abuse worse. she is more anti-greek than the author of Pledged. Zailckas was in a sorority and dropped out of it her Senior year so she wrote about tons of secrets. She also writes very badly of fraternities.. here's a quote:

"I've decided that fraternities and the boys in them are hazards. At universities, they are the last booby trap that women have left to dismantle. They are the self-flooding springkler system that would drive us violently away. I think fraternities should be dismantled. When you crack open the fraternal system and see it clearly, you realize how outrageous it is, in this day and age, that organizations still exist to protect the interests of white males-- namely, drinking and sex.
No structure needs to further these boys' advancement. They have gone as far as the game goes. They have collected all the Monopoly money, and earned the title of all-time champions. Any funds fraternities raise for charitable organizations, all the Habitat for Humanity houses they can build, will not compensate for their utter destructiveness. They take far more than they give. They've had their cake, and eaten ours, too."

That's just one example of how bitter she is towards greek life. I am curious if anyone else has read this book and your thoughts toward it.

Okay, can we quit it with comments like these? They just make US look stupid and petty, not the other way around, and they're not funny either.


One of my creative writing teachers was reading this book, and she let me skim the chapter on pledging. She uses a fake name for the sorority, although I'm sure that someone with a working knowledge of the Syracuse (?) Greek system could figure out which sorority it was. I don't want to pass judgement because I don't know any Syracuse Greeks personally, but some of the rumors I've heard about the system there make it not entirely surprising that a book like this would take place there.

Anyway, I'm not going to comment further because I haven't read the whole book, but there is something that irks me about blaming all frat boys for the evils of the entire world. Way way way too much of a generalization.

I heard about this and I sort of want to read it...although I don't know why.

Doesnt a generalization seem to be the Mode of the day? Greek Bashing is printable.

So, does one campus and one or two Greek Organizations mean that All are the same?

So these Authors feel that their little bit of Greek association is the true and total story? Maybe jaundiced is a better word.

Re: Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
 

I know lots of Mexicans, Blacks, and Asians who enjoy drinking and sex. Its not an exclusively white thing. Someone should tell her so she knows.

Re: Re: Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
 

Lol. Nope, it's whitey's fault.

Sounds more like someone is trying to take a slice from Alexandra Robbins' book. Come on, "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood"? Come up with your own creative way of telling your sob story. COLLEGE is probably what made her drinking worse, not the sorority. I know plenty of non-Greeks that could drink every single fraternity guy I've ever met under the table.

I saw the author on a talk show. She said that her problems with alcohol preceded her college experience, but when she went away to college her drinking escalated.

I haven't read the book, but the author said she wrote it as a cautionary tale.

I think if I was her I might have started with a good look at her own ALCOHOL ABUSE as the possible root of her problems.

Damn frat boys and their inability to stop her from self-destruction. Damn them straight to hell!

Re: Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
 

Sounds like more than her cake needs to be eaten

Yay! Sheetcake's back! :)

So I finally finished this book. I'm glad she wrote it, because I think it's a topic that desperately needs addressing and isn't taken seriously enough. There are too many women who are going through exactly what she went through.

I also am pretty sure that I've figured out her sorority, but that is neither here nor there. :p

That said, I don't think her issues lie solely with fraternity men. It's clear that she has major, major issues with men in general. I think some of this may be linked to a statement she makes early on in the book -- those who live their lives through alcohol find themselves emotionally stunted at the age they start drinking. Hopefully she is going through a growth process since she's stopped. If you look at her interactions with men through the whole book, however, you realize there is not a single one that is described in positive terms until Matt. She questions the motives -- or makes assumptions about the motives of every male figure in her life from the boys at the birthday party when she is in eighth grade through the boys in New York who buy her drinks. I'm not sure if she's aware of these issues or not, but it was bordering on ridiculous -- I hope she's got a damn good therapist she's discussing that with ;-) . . . because her issues with men seemed really unhealthy.

I also think she should have waited a few years before writing this book. First of all, I honestly think that she will relapse into problems with alcohol again. I don't really believe she's done. Furthermore, her understanding of the issues at play seem very shallow. She's often attacking the symptoms rather than the problem. For example, her take on sorority life. I don't understand why she is so bitter about it -- at first she seems to have a decent time (singing at her freshman formal, for example), but she seems to start hating it without explaining to her readers WHY she hates it other than saying that it contributed to her drinking problems. I don't believe that for a second -- the girl's been drinking since she was 14, and it's clear that she's drinking almost nightly before she moves into the sorority house, but then she blames moving into the sorority house for an increase in drinking problems even though her problems with alcohol don't seem any greater than they had been prior to the move-in. What? Her issues with the alcohol industry seem similar -- she's not attacking the root of the cause. She claims the alcohol industry plays off of sexist stereotypes -- okay, I buy that, but the root of the cause is not alcohol, it's the gender roles and stereotypes that are held in this country. For example, she is bothered by the founder of Girls Gone Wild saying something that basically seems to promote date rape, which is understandable. But the biggest problem is not that the guy uses liquor to push girls into doing they would not do when sober. It's the way that girls are pushed to be "good girls" at the same time as they're being pushed to be sexy, and the inner conflict is what drives these girls to seek out alcohol and use it to lose their inhibitions. I would have liked to see more examination of what drives girls to drink so much, psychologically, rather than just blaming it on the alcohol industry or "peer pressure" or whatever excuses she came up with. She touched on it in the beginning and a little in the closing -- I think her own issues with anxiety were a huge driving factor that she never explored in enough depth -- but not nearly as much as I would have liked.

I don't know -- on the whole, I think it's a worthwhile topic to bring to the table, but I think it would be less trite and have more insightful arguments if she had written it five or ten years from now and had more experience analyzing girls' relationships to alcohol in America.

http://www.statbet.net/postcards/images/drunk_girl.jpg

If you love drunk girls that think writing silly books is a great ambition, raise your hand!

-Rudey

I definitely agree with you Sugar and Spice. I am also very glad she wrote it because i think we can all relate with her at some point or another. It seems as though her personality changed with alcohol making her more "fun" and not shy like she typically was. Even her mom didn't like her sober shy personality. I think the main reason she is so bitter towards fraternities is b/c when she blacked out Skip raped her and she couldn't remember what they did in the morning, if she lost her virginity or not. I also think she started to not enjoy her sorority experience near the end because she mentions that more and more freshman were coming in and all they wanted to do was party while she wanted to get away from the atmosphere and sober up. she associated her friends with drinking.

Personally, I don't believe that he did rape her. Most girls are going to feel some soreness the morning after they lose their virginity (especially if it's sloppy drunk sex and the guy's not taking any precautions to be especially careful with you). It frustrated me to read this section when she assumes that she's been date-raped when that sign seemed to imply (at least to me) that they probably hadn't had sex. It bothered me that she essentially wrote it off as date rape without even asking him what happened. The other part that rang false to me was that she seemed bitter about fraternity guys even before that event -- but then again, she seemed bitter about ALL guys even before that. This is a girl who was bitter about the opposite sex in eighth grade.

The point about her friends in the sorority partying a lot is valid, but hardly a good reason to write off her entire Greek experience. Like she says later in the book -- she needs to learn how not to confuse "seclusion" with "sobriety." But I also think that she needs to learn a drunken atmosphere around her is not responsible for her own drinking. She seems to push a lot of blame on the Greek system (or her friends, or her parents, or guys) instead of taking responsibility for it herself.

For example, when I moved OUT of my sorority house, my drinking went from one or two nights a week to four or five some weeks. Even though I was living with people who drank far less than most of my sorority sisters, I was going out far more. Who can I blame for that? Not my sorority sisters. Not the girls I was living with afterwards. Only myself.

Which leads me to another point about why it would have been an improvement if she had waited a few more years. This book reads like it was written by someone who is newly sober -- there is an extremeness about her opinions regarding alcohol. A lot of the events seemed tainted by the whole "Drinking was always bad/Alcohol is always bad" spin she put over them. The Greek system is bad because it involves alcohol, spring break is bad because it involves alcohol, Greeks are bad because they drink alcohol, athletes are bad because they drink alcohol, Chris is bad because he drinks a lot, Matt is good because he doesn't really drink a lot. As anybody who drinks knows, there is a reason why you keep going back to it -- because some nights are good and fun and you don't black out and nothing horrible happens. And honestly, the only incident in the entire book that she gave that spin was the first time she drank. I think that if she waited a while, she would begin to develop a more nuanced approach to how she thought about alcohol, and we would get more of a balanced picture in the book as well.

I was just curious from what the first poster said "she revealed tons of secrets". To those of you that have read the book did she reveal secrets, because no one else has mentioned this. I'm not curious to read the secrets just curious to if she did or not.

She revealed a few: what her sorority wore for initiation, one aspect of the initiation ceremony, what they said during roll call, maybe a little bit more. Nothing particularly major -- no passwords, handshakes, meanings behind the letters or symbols or anything like that. And as I said, unlike Pledged's ritual section, she used a code name for her own sorority and several other Greek organizations. If you were a member of this particular sorority (or collect rituals), or are familiar with the Syracuse Greek system, you might be able to figure out which house she is talking about. I personally wasn't offended by it, but I'm sure there's people out there who would be.

I just finished this book, it was a quick read, but I thought it was very good.

I completely agree with you on this point, S&S. She's only been sober for a year and a half (at the time she wrote the book), but yet it's obvious she still has quite a bit to figure out and needs more time to grow. Which is fine, but I'd be interested to see what her take on it would be after being sober for say, five years.

Also, as someone else pointed out, I feel there's a good chance she'll relapse. I assume she's still with Matt, and since this is her first serious ("grown-up") relationship, I feel there's a good chance it will not last forever, which could cause her to seek out old habits.