Note: *Name has been changed for confidentiality
‘Girl blows mud at festival.’ That was the first thing I saw yesterday when I logged into Facebook. It was a video of a young woman about 20 years old, defecating on the ground at a festival. She was in front of a crowd and being filmed. One male festivalgoer was even standing behind her sniffing at the air whilst she was being filmed.
Women’s etiquette, attitude and behaviour in society have changed drastically in the past few decades. So what is going on?
The young woman in the video was wearing a singlet and skirt, had sat down on the ground, pulled down her knickers and proceeded to poo on the ground. At the same time she tried her best to push a boy away from her who was pretending to sniff the air. When she had finished, she pulled up her knickers, stood up and stumbled around before walking away – clearly intoxicated.
This kind of extreme behaviour is not an isolated incident. You only have to click through to a website such as ‘embarrassing nightclub photos’ to see girls doing un-lady like things, such as hitching up their skirts and urinating in the gutter.
Fighting, drug taking, alcohol abuse and not so lady like behaviour are all on the rise. The rate of female assault nationally increased by 49% from 2006/7 to 2009/10.
Jessica* is 21 and lives in Sydney. She frequents festivals and nightclubs and would rather take drugs than buy alcohol. “I don’t drink when I go to festivals as alcohol makes me tired. Even if I wanted to drink it’s way too expensive. I can pay $25-$30 for a pill or cap and I am charged for hours.”
In fact Jessica has smuggled drugs into festivals, for herself and other people. “I wrap them up in glad wrap, wash my hands, then I wrap them again. I add a third layer and in it I include herbs like pepper and nutmeg – just whatever is in the pantry. Once everything is wrapped properly, I cut the string from a tampon and tie it to my package. I insert it in my vagina like it’s a tampon, so if I do get searched I can say I have my period and can show them the string to prove it. It sounds silly but I never want to be caught and judged by my family and friends.”
Other girls use things such as coffee and chili in the home made ‘packages’, hoping to mask the smells from any police drug dogs. Some also have the idea that things such as sunscreen on their skin can mask the smell.
This behaviour may seem absurd or even frightening to some girls, but for more girls than you think, it is totally the norm. “Parents have no idea what its like to go out clubbing or to festivals these days, so many people are smacked out of their brains. I try to be sensible and I think if you can’t control yourself, you should go home,” Jessica says.
Expert Psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson (www.lissajohnson.com.au) from Sydney says that the potential for damage to a young adult’s brain, which is still forming in the late teens and early 20s, is very real. Bingeing on recreational drugs is particularly risky; researchers debate whether even one binge may cause lasting damage to brain chemistry. “People often say: ‘I’ve taken drugs and I’m OK’, but that may not be true. The effects of drugs can be subtle yet profound and can manifest as personality traits or social and emotional issues, such as lack of motivation, disorganisation, anxiety, mood problems etc. People tend not to attribute these things to drugs,” Dr Lissa Johnson said.
Dr Johnson explains that in some ways girls doing these kinds of things are ‘giving the finger’ to some of the pressures and injustices that contemporary young women face. She says cyber bullying is an ever-present possibility, and young women are more likely than men to be bullied on sexual grounds or for a lack of decorum. Perhaps these girls are saying: ‘bring it on – you can’t humiliate or embarrass us. We can’t be shamed’ – there might be a quality of self-protection by pre-emptive self-deprecation.
It‘s no big secret that some members of the glammed up celebrity world are into partying and taking drugs. Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss and Nicole Richie have all admitted to taking drugs – and that’s just to name a few. And with an explosion of social media in the past few years allowing us to view celebrities on a more intimate level, this has perhaps had an impact on changing behaviour and attitudes in young women.
“We are only beginning to grapple with (social media’s) psychological implications, and parents have no precedent for helping their daughters to navigate life in a social media world. It is normal for young people to experiment with their adult identity and to push against the boundaries of social expectations. For young women that often means pushing against the boundaries of gender roles. Historically young people had only an imaginary audience to play to. Now they have real audiences and lasting records of their youthful experimentation,” Dr Johnson said.
So there is a chance that this behaviour only seems more rife of late because of the possibility for it to be broadcast to the world. A few examples of poor behaviour could be spread via the Internet internationally and a whole generation could be judged on it. The minority may appear the majority, but that is not necessarily the case.
The Internet is now flooded with videos and pictures of girls ‘baring all’ – wearing limited clothing when they go out, getting drunk, taking their clothes off and there are some really vicious girl fight vids.
A police officer from Kings Cross LAC who cannot be named says: “Girls fighting, taking drugs and peeing in the gutter is so common. That is the least of our worries with all the other things they are doing.”
Dr Johnson says that social media is fascinating and a new field of research for psychologists – so new, that they are only beginning to understand it and its effects. She says for the first time in human history any person can create and manage a public profile, whereas before that was left for the celebrities. They haven’t even begun to understand what the long-term psychological impact may be.
So social media may exemplify pressures in society and whilst the ramifications of social media and its affects on young women are yet to be fully understood, it is still one of the massive factors in us seeing these types of behaviours.
Gender equality has been increasing in many areas Dr Johnson explains. A recent Home Office review of the Sexualisation of Girls in the UK found that young women and girls are constantly feeling pressure to conform to what society defines as beautiful at very early stages. This premature sexualisation can lead to self-esteem issues, as the girls get older. Research in America has indicated that narcissism in young men and women has been rising, while empathy has been declining.
Perhaps this increasing gender equality also has something to do with the women acting more like men. People are a lot less likely to think less of a man for urinating in the gutter or on a tree compared to a woman. Dr Johnson says: “It may have a quality of ‘We are tired of tottering around trying to look super-sexy and perfect in our mini-skirts and high heels. We have bodily functions too. Here – take this!’”
But a change may be in the air in young Australian women. Dr Johnson says research in Australia paints a different picture. “Ongoing longitudinal research from Melbourne University is finding that young people in Australia (men and women) place a high value on family and friends, and have a high rate of volunteering and community-mindedness which continues to increase as they get older. The main change that has been documented among young women in Australia is a higher participation in post-secondary education. So perhaps this generation of Australian young women has their feet more firmly on the ground than we give them credit for!”
At least down-under, we appear to still value the more important things.
chloeamandabailey 