'Mum, I've been sick' you utter as you stand in your parents' doorway, like a Calpol riddled junkie, itching for your next score of the pink stuff. You feel like death warmed up and lament on halcyon days when you weren't chucking yer guts up (and swear you'll never take the feeling of good health for granted again). Because being sick when you're 8 isn't glamorous, its not brat, its not a tally on your uni kitchen wall's chunder chart- its just your body being sick and trying to purge the bug. Vomiting is gross.
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| Gonna start using Calpol as a mixer xx |
But then you grow a couple inches taller, discover the devil drink, and with the bottle in hand, sick takes on a different meaning. Suddenly, after years of trying to speed up the growing up process, you are given full grace to act like a child again. You can get drunk! With that, you have a free pass to be stupid and playful and all things child-like. You play (drinking) games where silly behaviour is mandatory, suddenly your default sound levels revert back to those of screaming and shouting, your capacity for social interactions are stunted to the level of a small child, and most importantly, its the one time in your adult life where being sick, is completely normal.
Being sick on a night out is a sign of a good time. It's a funny story to tell. Sometimes it’s even an important part of the night out strategy (who hasn't taccy chunded in a mission to continue the night out!?) But, there's a sinister side underpinning the big night out sickness..
I recently came across the term 'drunkorexia' when I was doom scrolling on Instagram. @theeatingdisordernutritionist outlines it as a non-clinical term, describing using alcohol either instead of food, or as an aid to eating. Examples of associated behaviour include:
- Eating less food before a night out so more alcohol calories can be consumed later on
- Compulsive and/or excessive exercise before or after drinking to make allowances for the 'excess' calories consumed
- Binge drinking to bring about vomiting and expel the calories consumed
Shocking and bleak as it was to read, it also unfortunately rang true.
So why is there such a complex relationship between drinking and body image?I have countless stories from myself and peers that demonstrate 'drunkorexic' behaviour. From those listed above, to drinking less to maintain self-control when tempted to eat 'drunk food', or getting so
drunk that you're out for the count the next day and consequentially miss meals- it's all in the handbook! In my uni days (where the expected uni drinking culture coincided with the covid-19 lockdown), we were essentially house-bound and drinking 3-4 times a week- which only magnified these behaviours. My hangxiety fed off the guilt-riddled, self-scrutiny that I internalised after the one day on, one day off conveyor belt of eating and drinking. With that came a whole wave of horrible internal monologues and unhealthy habits.Whether we were consciously doing so or not is another story, but this worrying phenomena highlights just how complicit we are in normalising body dysmorphia. There are buckets of excuses and attempts to normalise such behaviours that make this even more insidious. Even if we claimed that such behaviours were all part of a 'maximise the night out' game plan strategy (eg, eat less, so we can get drunk quicker, be sick so we can carry on the fun), there was typically a +1, ulterior motive.
These habits that we take as part and parcel of drinking culture, perpetuate and reward eating disorder behaviours. It's a glamorised purge, disguised under the guise of being a 365 party girl.
Thinness... 💫everywhere💫
Then there's all the other shit in the mix that continue to praise thinness, whilst perpetuating a weird relationship with alcohol: from recent social media trends such as the 75 Hard challenge (that sees partakers go tee-total and partake in intensive work out regimes instead), the 'clean-girl' aesthetic, and the rise of 'heroin-chic' and 'indie-sleaze' fashions that glamorise the 90s supermodel diet of chain-smoking, binge-drinking and the skinny frame to match it.
The more we unpick at the complicit thread between drinking and disordered eating, the more we become aware of its presence, hiding in shady corners and lurking in the patchwork of 2025's day-to-day culture. And if you're someone who already has a dodgy relationship with food and body image, then these things we do in the name of liquid gold can lead to a slippery, sloshed up slope. But by recognising and addressing these unhealthy behaviours, we are given the opportunity to help ourselves. We do not have to diminish those real, underlying struggles by brushing it off as ‘just something we do for drinking culture’. Understanding what is normal and what’s actually disordered, will help us obtain a better, healthier relationship with alcohol and ourselves.
The Vodka lime soda phenomenon:
How drinking culture is inherently gendered
Vodka lime soda and hard seltzers have become some of 2025’s most popular drinks due to their low-cal, low-carb status, ‘skinny’ status. I’ll never forget watching an episode of Made in Chelsea, when Verity (name says it all) proudly beams she only drinks “vodka lime soda” because “I’m a skinny girl”. What could have been a culturally nuanced, piss-taking quip, just came across as a smug, self-satisfied comment when said by someone who is un-coincidentally white, middle-upper class and in her early twenties, on a television show that appeals to a predominantly young female audience. We have become so obsessed with box filling, that now even our drink choices are gendered and classified.
Emily Nicholls' fascinating academic essay, Doing Femininity through Drink Choice on the Girls’
Night Out (Nicholls, 2016) found that gender ideologies and stereotypes are deeply entrenched in drinking culture. We tend to attribute gender characteristics to the drink in which best represents them, i.e. cocktails and flutes of champagne are the 'girly' drink of choice because they are physically attractive, small, delicate and more palatable- aka everything we are taught a woman should be. Whilst pints are associated with male culture; their large volume, the associated practice of chugging and drinking to get drunk and bolshy behaviour- it's everything we deem appropriately masculine.
Women are aware of the baggage that their drink choice comes with, and may often base their consumption choices on how likely they are to risk the disruption of gender expectations and how they are perceived (Nicholls, 2016). Therefore, when we add concerns about body image and the male gaze into the mix, it makes sense that women might go for the 'lighter' alternative. Whilst drink companies continue to prey on women's body insecurities by feminising their products and emphasising low-cal, 'skinny' options in the name of 'femvertising' (IAS, 2019) its no surprise that alcoholic consumption is entrenched with body politics.
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| Split the G hen! |
Historically, the patriarchy has been keen to uphold such ideas; illustrated by drinking and the spaces associated with it, namely pubs. These were spheres traditionally reserved for pint-drinking working men, whilst women were encouraged to stay away and socialise in their domestic sphere, reinforcing gender roles and preserving inequalities (Connolly, 2021)
As suggested by Elias (2009), shifts in gendered drinking habits mirror the changing gender dynamics happening at that time in society. So yes, whilst we'll give feminism its flowers and acknowledge that gender disparities are slowly improving, we still refuse to budge when it comes to the complicit relationship between body image and drinking culture.
It all feels connected to me.
We are happy to get drunk, as long as we punish ourselves in other ways. Otherwise, it’s best to go sober (or at least purge the alcohol from our body if we do drink). We can't even go out for a few drinks now, without punishing ourselves.
In an Ozempic world, where being snatched and getting thin remains femininity's ultimate prize, we owe it to ourselves to call it what it is: indoctrination. The longer we keep normalising these behaviours, and gift-wrapping unhealthy food and body relationships under excuses, game-plans and a sick bucket, the longer we remain complicit. Complicit in normalising disordered eating. Complicit in perpetuating the leading killer of all mental illnesses (Oak Health Foundation, 2025).
Do it for you and your mates' future selves- the ones who would much rather reminisce about those stupid nights out, 5am bedtimes and memories that become the glue of a friendship group.
I'll have one of your manliest pints please and a skinny-frapalapafucked up for the missus. Mwah!
(lil disclaimer: <3
not that anyone really reads this silly little blog, but I feel the need to say this:
if you are struggling with disordered eating and/or body dysmorphia, then please take care reading this blog. I would never want it to trigger or give ideas to anyone, and I am definitely not trying to glamorise eating disorders or thinness. Nor am I trying to shame anyone of any body type. It's all love baby). xx
if you are struggling with disordered eating and/or body dysmorphia, then please take care reading this blog. I would never want it to trigger or give ideas to anyone, and I am definitely not trying to glamorise eating disorders or thinness. Nor am I trying to shame anyone of any body type. It's all love baby). xx
References used:
@theeatingdisordernutritionist
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLDN335scQ3/?hl=en&img_index=1
Emily Nicholls (2016):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298711745_'What_on_earth_is_she_drinking'_Doing_femininity_through_drink_choice_on_the_girls'_night_out
IAS (2019):
https://www.ias.org.uk/2019/10/16/its-time-to-call-time-on-the-use-of-gender-stereotypes-in-alcohol-marketing/
John Connolly (2021):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12903
Norbert Elias (2009):
https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/en/publications/revisiting-relations-between-the-sexes-in-sport-on-the-island-of--3
Oak Health Foundation (2025):
https://www.oakhealthfoundation.org/why-eating-disorders-are-the-deadliest-mental-health-condition/
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