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.
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.