on college campuses,

i have witnessed a fair amount of drinking to impress, and boasting coming from female students, as well as male students. i am sure that generally all well meaning people would like our dates to drink in moderation (especially after we inevitably find out how much binge drinking impairs basic intimacy like kissing). i am sure women have known this for millinia, but nothing can be as annoying as having someone impose their attention on you in an intoxicated state, and men are probably just now beginning to pick up on this. one friend of mine who had a monumental crush on me ruined her chances early on by consistently talking up her alcohol consumption (which latter came out as an attempt to impress me). perhaps this change in culture will provoke men to examine their own behavior, as they say, nothing like a dose of your own medicine.

I was WAY off on the spin I thought you'd put on this article. I thought it was very affirming toward women - please don't let others' expectations of you guide your behavior. A very positive message. But you twisted this in a way I never would've thought, and never would've expected.

Frankly, I'm still not sure where it came from.

Haha, much agreed. Seems to me that the study presented was fairly ambiguous and that the "offensive assumptions" are entirely assumed by the author and force-fed into the implications of the study. Perhaps the author has some misdirected rage to vent. She should relax and have a drink, or ten ;-)

Your article quotes the author of the study as saying, "The message to college girls is: Hey, your perceptions about what you think men want in a date, a friend or a sexual hookup are not very accurate."

The beginning of the article says that the study showed that women thought their dates wanted them to drink more than the dates actually want them to. Therefore, his conclusion is correct. The womens' perception about the (drinking) behavior they think men want in a date is wrong.

Your sarcastic response to the quotation is misplaced.

This really takes the wrong, long road around the issue. Why does the author look at this through a "prism of oppression"?

It's a serious issue: female college drinking has increased rapidly in the last 10 years, and college women drink almost as much as men these days. This is damaging to women, because a unit of alcohol is about twice as potent when drunk by a women, compared to a man.

The point of the study seems simple, and you get there with a straight line of logic: A woman will be more attractive to a man if she does not embark on unhealthy binge drinking during a date. That's what men think. (How about a thumbs up for the men here?) Two or three cocktails is fine, and more than that is just unattractive. Two or so glasses of wine is good - drinking a bottle is bad.

I would have thought that this study has information which is just good to know - men are not wanting drunk, legless dates. Good to know, assuming that the author approves of a woman being healthy, and being attractive to a man during a date at the same time. Is there a problem with that?

The author's prism is, I think, very outdated.

Are we drinking because we're liberated or because we're oppressed?

Those of us who are smart and know who we are as people are drinking at whatever level we're comfortable with, within healthy limits, when it fits the lives we wish for ourselves, without worrying much what dates, poll-takers and gender-partisan columnists think.

I don't drink because I'm liberated. I don't drink because I'm oppressed. I drink because I enjoy it--especially a cool fruity Riesling with friends on a warm summer night--but not to the detriment of other things that I want out of life.

The article seems to say that girls need to adjust their drinking to better fit their dates expectations: since boys want them to drink less, then the girls are drinking too much for the wrong reasons.

perhaps college boys want their dates to drink TOO LITTLE. Maybe these college boys are wrong and the girls are right.

the point of the study is...?

... cocktails is too much for anyone to drink--male or female.

It seems that the young are not quite as liberated as we think, and that many have difficulty enjoying sexual relations without having to drink a lot of alcohol to overcome inhibitions.

This is great news for the alcohol industry, but bad for everyone else.

400 plus words of snark before we get to this "All sarcasm aside". The rest of the article is about 150 words. Why? Where is the editor?

And what do we get in the snark?

A new study, conducted by Loyola Marymount University, has found that 71 percent of (presumably heterosexual) college women overestimate the amount of alcohol their boyfriends and dates would like them to consume. About a quarter assumed men would like them to knock back five or more cocktails on a given night. But, as it turns out, the average guy would rather see his lady friend drink approximately half as much as the women estimated.

Here is the classic Broadsheet writer reporting on the reporting of a study. If you want to know if they are heterosexual read the damn study yourself. How can a news agency as large as salon not have access to medical journals?

According to the study's lead author, Joseph LaBrie, "The message to college girls is: Hey, your perceptions about what you think men want in a date, a friend or a sexual hookup are not very accurate." Uh, thanks, Professor LaBrie. Your revelation has changed the way I think about men, women and alcohol forever.

Oh snap you got him, you go girl. If you read the damn survey which is 6 pages and available for free you would know why they looked into the subject. College age males numbers of heavy drinking is dropping while female rates are raising and they are trying to find out why.

Pardon my sarcasm, but didn't we learn, just a few months ago, that women's binge drinking could be blamed on the excesses of feminism?

Well since that article is about an editorial and this one is an actual study they are worlds apart. It is ironic that Salon bashed Bush for being anti-science yet broadsheet is as anti-science as any religious fundie.

And now we're supposed to believe that ladies are overdoing it at the bar because they're trying to impress their dates with unseemly levels of intoxication? Well, which is it? Are we drinking because we're liberated or because we're oppressed?

Well read the damn study before giving your ignorant ass reply maybe you find out. It answers some of the questions you have. But you go on feeling empowered by your ignorance because you told those nasty male scientist off.

As LaBrie tells it, women drink "in pursuit of intimate relationships and positive attention from their male peers." And here I thought my occasional night at the bar was about relaxing with friends or breaking the tension of a rough day at work when, in reality, I've just been drinking to please my boyfriend. Shows what I know! But, to be fair, maybe LaBrie isn't talking about me. As he kindly allows, "While not all women may be drinking simply to get a guy's attention, this study may help explain why more women are drinking at dangerous levels." See? Not all of us drink to look sexy... but the ones who don't are exceptions that prove the rule.

If you are going to use an idiom at least use it correctly. Again since you have not read the study yourself you have no idea what the study actually showed. It answers most of your questions.

Of course, the study manages to get in a swipe at pop culture, too. Here's a sentence I never thought I'd see in an academic article: "When it comes to drinking college men are not looking for the girl gone wild." Aha. So that's what this is about. LaBrie is just looking out for all those poor co-eds who have been brainwashed by soft porn and the antics of Britney, Lindsay and Amy Winehouse.

That quote does not appear anywhere in the actual survey. That quote according to a live and google search comes from a headline written about the article from the website Physorg. No one at all involved in the study actually said anything about pop culture. This is hack writing in the extreme.

All sarcasm aside, LaBrie's study includes a few fairly offensive assumptions. For one thing, it presumes that women act the way they think men would want them to. I feel compelled to point out that just because a lady believes her date would like her to binge drink doesn't mean she's actually going to do it.

Do you know what else is offensive assumptions evolution to fundamentalists. Just because something is actually happening like say male college students drinking less while female college students drinking more and lets go on to say that the average female gets drunker at the same amount of BAC as an average male does not make it anything other than a fact. Trying to find out why is not offensive what is offensive is believing in an ideology so much that you ignore anything that contradicts it.

And here's a thought: Most college students drink. There is, in fact, a great deal of pressure on campus -- for both sexes -- to get wasted. So when you ask a college girl how much she thinks her date would like her to drink, she may overestimate. I'm willing to bet, though, that if you also asked her how much she thinks her female friends would want her to imbibe on a girls' night out, you'd get a similarly inflated number.

Actually most of what you said is a fact is nothing more than bullshit that is not backed with facts. The number of kids that drink heavily in school is very small. If there is indeed great pressure to get wasted the majority of students don't go along. Actually no, the study shows that females believe it is males that want them to drink more not there female friends.

I want my star for actually doing the job of editor.