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College Alcohol Use and the Embodiment of Hegemonic Masculinity among European American Men

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Abstract

This article concerns alcohol use as it pertains to the construction of White masculinity through an analysis of students’ accounts. Seventy-eight face-to-face interviews were conducted with volunteer female and male, African American, European American, heterosexual and homosexual students at a mid-sized university. Results suggest that the meaning of public drinking is to express a form of masculinity. In students’ gendered descriptions of their own and peers’ drinking behavior, alcohol use among White men was found to symbolize the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity. Masculinities were constructed via drinking stories, the body’s ability to tolerate alcohol, and the relevance of drinking too little or not at all, which symbolized weakness, homosexuality, or femininity. Implications for social policy and future research are discussed.

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Notes

  1. In 2000, a university settled with the parents of a student who died of alcohol poisoning; they gave $1.25 million for a scholarship and $4.75 million in compensatory damages. More recently, this university settled a wrongful death suit with the parents of another student by agreeing to fund a limited number of students in pre-orientation programs (Rivoire 2005).

  2. To put these individual stories into context, Hingson et al. (2002) estimated that in 1998 that more than 1,400 students aged 18–24 enrolled in 2- and 4-year colleges died from alcohol-related injuries (including motor vehicle crashes). Of the eight million college students in the United States, more than two million drove vehicles while under the influence, and over 3 million rode in a car with a drunk driver. Five hundred thousand full-time 4-year college students were unintentionally injured while under the influence of alcohol, and more than 600,000 were hit or assaulted by a student under the influence. More than 70,000 college women experienced date rapes perpetrated by another student who had been drinking.

  3. Note that AA students in the present study did not drink as often or as much as EA students. This student was an exception. Perhaps his identity as an AA college student athlete explains his use of drinking symbolism to compensate for hegemonic masculinity given his required association with EA college men.

  4. “Heavy” alcohol use, as a term, is based on research that suggests that the amount of alcohol consumed on average by those who where interviewed (college students) exceeds that of the general population and is often referred to as “heavy alcohol use” (Johnson et al. 1998).

  5. Socially legitimated hegemonic models of masculinities are found on college campuses, and thus these sites provide an ideal setting for research on the questions posed in this study.

  6. It is interesting to note here that the gender gap in drinking for young people in the US appears to be closing for this age group (Dawson et al. 1995). This may be in line with research that suggests that it is more acceptable for women to adopt traditionally masculine activities than it is for men to adopt activities traditionally reserved for women (Schur 1984). However, women in the present study were subject to social control from other women and men. Although drinking was tolerated, women were likely to be stigmatized more readily for heavy drinking often referred to as “sloppy” drinking.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Dr. Kathy Feltey, Dr. John Zipp, and Dr. James Messerschmidt for their contributions to this article. I thank Dr. Tricia Wachtendorf for assistance with conducting and analyzing interviews. I also thank Dr. J. Michael Cruz for his assistance with analysis and Lori Tuttle and Jodi Ross for their editorial assistance. To the ASA Minority Fellowship Program and the Department of Sociology at the University of Delaware, I thank you for funding support. I thank the anonymous reviewers and Dr. Chrisler for their constructive comments. Finally, I thank all the participants of the study for sharing their insight and for their willingness to tell their stories.

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  1. Department of Sociology, The University of Akron, Olin Hall 260, Akron, OH, 44325-1905, USA

    Robert L. Peralta

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Peralta, R.L. College Alcohol Use and the Embodiment of Hegemonic Masculinity among European American Men. Sex Roles 56, 741–756 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9233-1

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