Crossbench Comment:

Girls Gone Wild

September 2007

Is there anyone else who is sick of reading about female celebrities going wild, getting drunk, causing car accidents, and ending up in jail?

Why should they feature on the front cover of magazines?

Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan are girls gone wild. Although these girls never asked to be role models, gossip magazines and websites have moulded them into ideal figures for impressionable young girls by repeatedly publishing photos glamourising their late-night shenanigans.

Lindsay Lohan was arrested for drugs and alcohol once again ? weeks after her release from rehab. Britney Spears, who has two young children and recently divorced, is still on the party circuit after her time in rehab. Nicole Richie, who is four months pregnant, awaits her Driving Under the Influence trial and we all know that Paris Hilton spent three and a half weeks in jail for driving with a suspended licence. These girls are being famous for mostly being famous and vacuous.

Young girls are growing up with these stars and celebrities as role models. Their antics are displayed across magazines, blogs, and the evening news.

These media role models can have a profound effect on the behaviour and expectations of young Australian women.

Today, the paparazzi dictate who's in and who's out. The media's focus and glamourisation of substance abuse in Hollywood makes it difficult for young women to understand the consequences attached to regularly downing shots or snorting cocaine.

These false role models convey false messages to young girls. Young women's power in show business is constructed through their appearance and sexual availability.

With this lack of passion about crucial issues, what does that mean for the future generation of young women in Australia?

The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women?s Health (Young and Powers 2005) reveals that 5% of women aged 18-23 drank at risky or high-risk levels for long-term harm, that 18% drank at risky or high-risk levels at least weekly.

The study found that risk drinking among women of this age group occurred more often among:

• Australian born women and those of English speaking backgrounds,
• those separated, divorced and widowed,
• women having difficulty managing finances,
• current smokers,
• women who were not or had never been pregnant,
• women who repeated self-harm,
• current illicit drug users, and
• women who had more sexual partners.

Over the last 10 years (1993-2002), an estimated 2,463 young people (aged between 15 and 24 years) died from alcohol attributable injury and disease caused by risky/high risk drinking in Australia.

Over 100,000 young people were hospitalised for alcohol-attributable injury and disease over a nine-year period. The most common causes of alcohol-attributable death for young people are road injury, suicide and violence.

One quarter of females (25%) aged in their 20s drink at high risk levels for short-term harm at least once per month and 85% of the total alcohol consumed by 14-17 year old females was drunk at risky/high risk levels for short-term harm.

Over the ten years 1993-2002, an estimated 501 under-aged drinkers died from alcohol-related injury caused by risky or high-risk drinking, and in 1999-2000, there were 3,300 14-17 year olds hospitalised for alcohol-related conditions.

It is increasingly evident that general alcohol consumption and high-risk binge drinking is on the rise among females: A major study of women in Australia indicated that 87% of women surveyed had at some time drunk alcohol.

Over a third of those women were characterised as hazardous drinkers, while 4% were characterised as drinking "harmfully" and 1% were classified as being "dependent." The highest proportion of hazardous, harmful, drinkers was amongst young women aged 17-24 years.

Evidence suggests that young women are increasingly participating in binge drinking (defined as 5 or more standard drinks on one occasion). Research shows that teenage drinking is starting earlier among girls and includes a "binge drink" pattern of heavy intake and consumption of mixed drinks with high alcohol content.

The reasons for drinking amongst teenage women were reported to include: social perspective; living with peers at home or on the streets; peer pressure; relief from stress; and as a remedy from boredom.

(Patterns of Alcohol Consumption in Young Australian Women. H. Jonas, A. Dobson and W. Brown Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 2000 (24), 2: 185-191)

Most of the drinkers (94%) usually drank less than weekly or 1-2 days per week, with 33% usually drinking 3-4 drinks on a drinking day, and another 33%, five or more drinks on a drinking day. 53% of these younger women reported drinking five or more drinks per occasion (binge drinking) about monthly or less often; and 17%, weekly or more often.

Australian society has to turn this around. Getting those role model girls off the celebrity magazines covers is a start. I promise not to read anything, anywhere about Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan and any other wild girls. They might not miss me, but then again, I certainly do not miss them!

Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.