T-shirts that glorify teen drinking
The story sounded matter of fact, almost flat, as if the father had worn it smooth from turning it over in his head every day for several weeks now. His 16-year-old daughter, a sophomore at a California public school, was in Texas last month visiting her sister, a college student. The high school girl chugged herself into a drunken, self-destructive hysteria, threatening suicide, lashing out. When the sister took her to the hospital, her blood alcohol level was 0.21, nearly three times the legal limit.
The father later learned his daughter had downed a margarita before heading to a fraternity party, where she threw back five to six shots of vodka, followed by beer and wine. It was the second time in a year the girl had landed in a hospital after a drinking binge. The parents had put her in counseling and more closely monitored where she was and with whom. But now it had happened again.
“I thought she had gotten a grip,’ the father said.
I keep hearing these stories from parents, or at least from the parents who talk. And I remember my own high school days, when I was a binge drinker myself. I shudder sometimes to think how lucky I am to be alive and intact, and I shudder again to imagine my teenage son someday putting himself in as much danger as I did.
So when a friend told me about the latest T-shirts at Abercrombie & Fitch, I figured she was exaggerating. As exploitive as this company is, with its history of employing whatever slithery tactics necessary to hook young customers, the T-shirts my friend described seemed too ignorant and irresponsible even for Abercrombie.
Yet there they were on a table at the San Francisco Centre store, just as she had said: Stacks of adorable, “high-quality’ T-shirts for the pre-teen and teen set, each one celebrating the pursuit of drunkenness. Well, not only drunkenness. Some celebrate the pursuit of sex and drunkenness.
“Don’t Bother/I’m Not Drunk Yet,’ one says.
“Bad Girls Chug. Good Girls Drink Quickly.’
“If You Can Read This You Need Another Cocktail.’
“Sotally Tober.’
OK, so drinking kills 1,400 college students a year through accidents, violence or poisoning. And parents of high school students sit up on weekend nights, barely exhaling until they hear the comforting click of the front door. Never mind all that. This company — the standard bearer of cool for many teens — is telling kids that getting stumbling drunk is, like, totally awesome.
As I looked at the T-shirts on the table, and at two teenage girls happily debating which one was funniest, I thought about the hundreds of sad and scary e-mails I received in the past two weeks from parents, students and teachers about teens and alcohol, particularly about the connection between drinking and sexual assault.
Today’s teens have the best of everything and, in some ways, the worst of everything. They have amazing access to knowledge. They have conveniences we never dreamed of. But they also have been cheated of large chunks of childhood, pulled by movies and TV, music and marketing, into an adult world.
The job of teenagers is to navigate a sea of expectations and temptations and arrive safely on the other side. It is a perilous enough journey without marketing mercenaries in New Albany, Ohio, luring them toward the roughest waters.
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is joanryan@sfchronicle.com.