Negotiating Femininities in the Neoliberal Night-Time Economy by Emily Nicholls

Author:Emily Nicholls
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319933085
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Urine and vomit are substances that transgress the boundaries of the body; and in the case of vomit, something that is meant to be inside is suddenly—and often quite violently—outside. As Russo notes, making a ‘spectacle’ of oneself is often concerned with transgressing boundaries and exposing oneself (1995: 57), and the urinating or vomiting body violates boundaries of the ‘clean and proper body’ and may provoke ‘disgust and contempt’ (Graefer 2014: 117). Several participants directly mentioned the very public nature of such displays, with Jade describing women ‘crawling round the streets and being sick’, and Gail suggesting that women’s drunkenness was often judged more harshly than men’s as ‘women are meant to maintain more control over their bodies and their actions in a public place’. These practices blur distinctions not just between bodily boundaries but also between public and private space, as supposedly ‘private’ practices such as urinating or being sick are brought into an arena where women’s bodies are highly visible. These kinds of highly public, bodily consequences of drunkenness were still seen as particularly problematic for women; for example, some participants—whilst also disapproving of men urinating in public—felt this was somehow even less acceptable for women, echoing Cullen’s (2011) argument that the corporeality of drunkenness and associated bodily practices such as urinating in public are seen as more acceptable for men than women. For example, Gail suggests that urinating in public is seen as ‘really not-classy and disgusting when women do it…whereas [with] men it’s like “oh ok”’. In several of the young women’s most vivid descriptions of inappropriate drunken behaviour, we also see substances that are ‘out of place’, for example, vomit in a bin, and urine in a sink, on the street or on clothing:I think it would be more the acts of unfemininity, like throwing up in a bin and all that [laughter]…. I’ve seen women do things like weeing in the sink cause there’s a big queue for the toilet… things like that.

Emily: So why is throwing up in a bin, why do you say that’s an act of unfemininity?

Umm…. it’s just horrible, isn’t it? But I wouldn’t say that throwing up in the loo is unfeminine, it’s more just the context of it, isn’t it? And that it’s public.

Claire, 25, working-class non-student

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