The stereotype of the party girl who throws back a few too many tequila shots and finds herself in a bar fight is rooted in cultural phenomena like "Jersey Shore" and "The Real World" — but at what point does the cliché become a real-life concern?
A recent study in the United Kingdom by the British Association of Anger Management claims that the number of aggressive drunks is on the rise — and that these drunks are women.
Although the study only finds a correlation, rather than causation, between violent crimes perpetrated by young British women and an increase in binge drinking among the same demographic, the results serve to frame the question of how — and why — drinking affects the behavior of women.
In the United States, the number of women who drink has been steadily catching up to the number of men who drink, according to Director of Alcohol and Health Education Ian Wong.
"We know overall drinking rates in colleges are going down, but [rates] in women are going up," Wong said.
Yet evidence shows drinking rates among women on the Tufts campus are not in line with the British results.
In a 2010 survey conducted by the Department of Health Education at Tufts, 59 percent of male respondents said they engaged in binge drinking versus 40 percent of females, according to Wong.
In the same survey, four percent of males said they have hurt someone else while drinking, in comparison with two percent of women. While these percentages are low, they suggest that Tufts does not fit in with the study's findings.
Gender aside, one of alcohol's proven side effects is aggression.
"[Alcohol] is one of the few drugs that does correlate with an increase in aggressive behavior in terms of fights," Director of the Center for Health Promotion at UMass Amherst Sally Linowski, said.
She believes that biology contributes to aggression in women who drink. "Biologically we don't handle [alcohol] as well….We get drunker faster," Linowski said.
An article in the Daily Mail detailing the study's findings cited rebellion against gender roles as a possible cause for this rise in aggression. Linowski agreed, noting that these roles influence drinking habits in women.
"I think for females, reasons for drinking are different. We have pretty tightly prescribed gender roles," Linowski said. "Women, young women in particular, drink to be social, to show that ‘I'm a good girl, but I can be a bad girl if I want to' and to try to socialize with men, in particular."
The social acceptance of women drinking in public, in comparison with men, is a relatively recent development, according to Wong.
"Men will drink, and it's pretty out in the open," Wong said. "But women have a tendency of taking care of each other, taking each other home. Guys don't do that."
Wong said that women have a propensity to consume alcohol at a small "pre-game" rather than at a large party because drinks can be more closely monitored. This trend, he said, arises from concerns about the potential to be drugged or raped.
Issues that lead girls to heavy drinking often also spur aggressive emotions.
"Obvious trauma, past trauma, sexual trauma — all correlate with heavy drinking," Linowski said. "I think as we see an increase in eating disorders, stress, we see an increase in drinking."
According to Linowski, the research on social norms done by Wes Perkins, a sociologist at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, shows that female drinking is largely dependent upon gender roles and the adoption of traditionally male characteristics like aggression.
"They [females] are trying to drink up to a norm of how they think guys drink," Linowski said. "Men tend to create the social scene around drinking, and then the women participate in it. I think a lot of it is bound up in our sexist culture and our level of what it means to be a man or woman."
