Sure, bowling’s a swell time, but how much sweller would it be if you didn’t have to go through all that hassle of hefting your own beers? Guys viewing this ad back then were probably thinking, “Say! My best gal never holds a beer to my lips when I’m laying down strikes. What gives?”
Of course, the fact they’re apparently bowling outdoors in the snow might mean his fingers have become frozen stiff inside the bowling ball and she’s just lending a much needed hand.
Drinkers in the United States have been indulging their inebriatory habits for hundreds of years; since before there were States to indulge them in, in fact. In the beginning, they did their wrist-raising with uncomplicated gusto and a formidable immunity to guilt or shame. But then, in 1919, the Volstead Act put American drinkers on notice that their wobbly predilections were no longer going to be tolerated by “polite society,” here taken to mean “a well-organized, politically connected minority of squinty-eyed teetotalers who had the astonishing nerve to assume they could dictate behavior to the general public.” Prohibition was eventually overturned, but the anti-alcohol mindset that forced it down the nation’s throat, persisted, like a smoldering tumor, and continues to exert its share of influence today, so that even though Americans are purchasing booze in record amounts and bar-stooling with most of their traditional verve, our merrymaking is colored by the murmuring voice of self analysis:
Yes, you are drinking, whispers the voice. Yes, you are whooping it up at the saloon, kegger, ballgame, but beware. Don’t have too much fun. Be responsible. Drink,but don’t enjoy it. And when you tell your friends Monday morning about your weekend bacchanal, be sure to focus on your hangover first, and not the fact that you had a really good time. Make sure they see that you were amply punished for your transgression. Otherwise, they might wonder what is wrong in your life that you have to compensate for it by getting drunk—and you don’t want to be the subject of gossip, do you?
The Walk of Shame? It’s more about Tanqueray than Trojans.
Around thirty years ago Americans became the targets of what has swollen into a deluge of anti-alcohol propaganda. For teenagers, M.A.D.D. mothers and other professional fretters warn parents (without citing any proof, of course) that alcohol “effects kids differently” than adults, while our tax dollars fund organizations that demand we “D.A.R.E.” to keep kids sober, and instruct them to “Just say nada mas.” Breweries and distilleries are required by law to spend millions every year broadcasting the dangers posed by their products. In liquor commercials it is against FCC regulations to depict people actually drinking the advertised beverage. Movies now receive “R” ratings from the MPAA for “scenes of teen drinking” (yet they can shoot, stab and otherwise assault one other and still get a “PG-13”). Parents who escaped unharmed from their own under-age boozing, and now feel it would be just a tad duplicitous to berate their kids about it, there are ads explaining that not only is it acceptable for them to act hypocritically, it is vital that they do so.
Shit. Let’s just pack our kids in Styrofoam at birth.
The wiser course of action would be, of course, a well-thought-out illumination of the facts about booze. Don’t scare the kids. Teach them. (Our society already has quite enough taboos as it is.) If they know the true scoop they will be more likely to make good choices. They’ll will become aware of their limits, and come to understand all the fine and friendly things alcohol has to offer. Insulating teenagers from the realities of adult life only leaves them unprepared to handle them…well…like adults.
Next time the news blares a story about some hapless waif who, at the ripe old age of 19, fell into an alcohol-induced coma after drinking 20 shots of Stoli raspberry, please remember: it wasn’t the alcohol’s fault. Our whole benighted culture is to blame.
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