双语达人:女性为何也会酗酒(1)

A few summers ago, I stuffed my car full of the last flattened cardboard boxes from a cross-country move and headed to the recycling depot of my suburban New Jersey town. I pulled up behind a queue of slender women at the wheels of shiny SUVs. Their eyes concealed by giant sunglasses, they hopped from their seats to their open trunks and, one by one, reached for the bags that are the totems of upper-middle-class life: silver ones from Nordstrom, plain ones from Whole Foods. Out poured wine bottles, clanking into the rusted recycling truck.

几年前的一个夏天，我把长途搬家后剩下的最后一批压平的硬纸板箱塞满我的车，然后前往我所在的新泽西州郊区小镇上的回收站。我停在一队耀眼的SUV车后方，开车的是一群身材苗条的女士。她们的眼睛隐藏在硕大的太阳镜下，她们从座位上下来，打开后车厢，一个接一个去拿象征中产阶级上层生活图腾的那些袋子：Nordstrom的银色袋子，全食超市(Whole Foods)的普通袋子。葡萄酒瓶从这些袋子里倾泻而出，叮叮当当地落进锈迹斑斑的回收车里。

In Portland, Ore., where I lived for six years, I would watch most Sunday nights as a neighbor deposited two giant Merlot bottles in my recycling bin. Her house was a block away, and she had her own bin─but apparently mine seemed like a more discreet place to stash her empties. In New York's Westchester County, where I had lived previously, women would pass around a flask at dreary school functions. Alcohol and motherhood were intertwined, so much so that after I had my third daughter in the anxious autumn after 9/11, I received bottle after bottle of wine as baby gifts.

在我住过六年的俄勒冈州波特兰(Portland)，几乎每个周日晚上我都会看见一个邻居在我的垃圾箱里扔上两个大的梅乐(Merlot)酒瓶。她家离我家一个街区远，她也有自己的垃圾箱，但显然把空酒瓶藏在我这里似乎更谨慎。在我之前住过的纽约州韦斯特切斯特郡(Westchester County)，女人们会在沉闷的学校活动期间拿出一瓶酒轮着喝。酒精和母亲的身份交织在一起，二者结合得如此紧密，以至于我在911后那个焦虑的秋天生下第三个女儿后，人们送我一瓶又一瓶葡萄酒作为婴儿礼物。

The growing female predilection for wine seems at first glance like a harmless indulgence for harried mothers who deserve a break. There are T-shirts with a spilled wineglass that say, 'Not so loud, I had book club last night.' Nearly 650,000 women follow 'Moms Who Need Wine' on Facebook, and another 131,000 women are fans of the group called 'OMG, I So Need a Glass of Wine or I'm Gonna Sell My Kids.' The drinking mom has become a cultural trope, from highbrow to pop: Jonathan Franzen's Patty Berglund wanders through the first half of 'Freedom' with a ruddy complexion he calls the 'Chardonnay Splotch.' Wine is so linked to the women of 'Real Housewives' that several cast members have introduced their own brands. That's no accident: According to the Wine Institute, an industry trade group, women buy the lion's share of the nearly 800 million gallons of wine sold in the U.S. annually─and they are its primary drinkers.

越来越多的女性开始偏爱葡萄酒，乍看之下这对过着紧绷生活的妈妈们来说是无伤大雅的放纵，她们放松一下是应该的。有T恤上印着一个洒出酒的葡萄酒杯，上面写着“别那么大声，我昨晚参加了书会。”有近65万名女性在Facebook上关注了“需要酒的妈妈们(Moms Who Need Wine)”账号，还有13.1万女性是名为“噢天啊，我需要一杯酒，否则我会卖掉我孩子 (OMG, I So Need a Glass of Wine or I'm Gonna Sell My Kids)”（的组织的粉丝。从知识界到普罗大众，“喝酒的妈妈”已经成为一种文化隐喻：在乔纳森•弗兰岑(Jonathan Franzen)的小说《自由》(Freedom)的上半部分中，帕蒂•伯格兰(Patty Berglund)一直带着一种被作者称为“霞多丽斑点”(Chardonnay Splotch)的红润面色。另外，酒和“家庭主妇真人秀”(Real Housewives)如此密不可分，以至于几位剧组人员都推出了自己的红酒品牌。无独有偶：据行业贸易组织美国葡萄酒协会(Wine Institute)统计，在美国每年售出的近8亿加仑(约30亿升)葡萄酒中，女性购买的比例更大，而且她们是饮酒的主力军。

Indeed, more women are drinking now than at any time in recent history, according to health surveys. In the nine years between 1998 and 2007, the number of women arrested for drunken driving rose 30%, while male arrests dropped more than 7%. Between 1999 and 2008, the number of young women who showed up in emergency rooms for being dangerously intoxicated rose by 52%. The rate for young men, though higher, rose just 9%.

的确，据健康调查显示，现今饮酒的女性比近代历史上任何时候都多。在1998至2007年这九年间，因醉酒驾驶被捕的女性人数上涨了30%，而男性人数却下降了7%以上。1999年至2008年间，因严重醉酒被送往急诊室的年轻女性人数上涨了52%，而年轻男性的人数虽然更多，但只上涨了9%。

These numbers are not driven solely by young women living it up on spring break. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of binge drinking─that is, having four or more drinks for women or five or more for men within two hours─revealed a surprising statistic. While the greatest number, 24%, of binge-drinking women are college-age, 10% of women between 45 and 64 said they binge drink─and so did 3% of women older than 65. The college-age binge drinkers and the senior binge drinkers overdid it with a similar frequency, about three times a month.

这些数字的上涨并不只是因为春假狂欢的年轻女性。美国疾病控制与预防中心（Centers for Disease Control and Prevention，简称CDC）最近一项针对酗酒（指女性两小时内摄入四杯或以上，男性摄入五杯或以上）的研究得出了出人意料的数据。24%的酗酒女性是大学生，这个人群比重最大；而年龄在45至64岁的女性中有10%酗酒，65岁以上女性中有3%也表示自己酗酒。大学生和老年人群会反复酗酒，频率相似，大概每个月三次。

Gallup pollsters have repeatedly found that the more educated and well off a woman is, the more likely she is to imbibe. White women are more likely to drink than women of other racial backgrounds, but in the past few decades the percentage of women who classify themselves as regular drinkers has risen across the board. An analysis of the drinking habits of 85,000 Americans in 2002 found that 47% of white women reported being regular drinkers, up from 37% in 1992. The percentage of black women who said they drank regularly rose from 21% to 30%, and the percentage of Hispanic women who said the same grew from 24% to 32%. (American Indian and Asian-American women were not included in the study.)

盖洛普(Gallup)民意测验多次发现，女性受教育程度越高、处境越优越，就越容易饮酒。白人女性比其他族裔女性更易饮酒，但过去数十年里，认为自己经常喝酒的女性比例整体有所上升。2002年一项针对8.5万名美国人饮酒习惯所做的分析发现，47%的白人女性表示自己经常喝酒，较1992年的37%有所上升。表示经常饮酒的黑人女性比例从21%升至30％，西班牙裔女性的比例从24%升至32％。（该研究未纳入美国印第安人及亚裔女性。）

In one sense, the rising rates of alcohol consumption by women are a sign of parity. But this is one arena in which equal treatment yields unequal outcomes. Women are more vulnerable than men to alcohol's toxic effects. Their bodies have more fat, which retains alcohol, and less water, which dilutes it, so women drinking the same amount as men their size and weight become intoxicated more quickly. Males also have more of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. This may be one reason why alcohol-related liver and brain damage appear more quickly in heavy-drinking women than men.

从某种意义来说，女性饮酒比例的升高是男女平等迹象的一种。但这是一个平等对待却会产生不平等结果的领域。对于酒精的毒性反应，女性比男性更易受影响。女性体内脂肪更多，会留存酒精，而起稀释作用的水却比较少，因此同样身高和体重的女性和男性摄入相同量的酒时，女性醉得更快。男性体内的乙醇脱氢 也更多，这种物质可以在酒精进入血液前分解酒精。这或许也是为什么酒精导致的肝脏和大脑损伤在嗜酒女性身上比男性更快出现的一个原因。

Still, modern women haven't caught up to the drinking habits of America's early settlers, whose only safe beverage was alcohol. Historians estimate that colonial men and women drank about a gallon of low-alcohol beer or hard cider a day. In a collection of 500 recipes that Martha Washington left to her granddaughter, 50 were for boozy drinks, plus a couple of hangover cures.

尽管如此，现代女性还是赶不上美国早期殖民者的饮酒习惯，当时他们唯一的安全饮料就是酒。历史学家估计，殖民时期的男性和女性每天喝大约一加仑（约3.8升）的低度啤酒或苹果酒。在玛莎•华盛顿(Martha Washington)留给孙女包括500份食谱的集子里，有50份是酒的配方，还有好几种解酒方子。

The growing sales of wine to women can be traced to some clever marketing decisions in the 1960s by California's vintners. Wineries had all but perished during Prohibition, and the beverage was considered the drink of poor immigrants and Skid Row drunks. Americans, accustomed to more straightforward spirits and beer, were slow to warm to wine's complexities.

葡萄酒针对女性销售量的增加可追溯至20世纪60年代加州葡萄酒商精明的营销决策。酿酒厂在禁酒时期(Prohibition)纷纷没落，葡萄酒被认为是贫穷移民及贫民窟酒鬼才喝的东西。习惯于喝更直接的烈酒或啤酒的美国人花了很长时间才开始喜欢葡萄酒复杂的味道。

Wine also felt off-limits to women. It was consumed mostly in restaurants, where waiters offered men the wine list, the first taste and the cork. Strategists saw a growth opportunity in the vast numbers of postwar housewives. 'We used to joke that if we could just get a bottle of sherry into the kitchen, we'd be off and running,' says Harvey Posert, one of the industry's early promoters.

葡萄酒对女性来说也是禁区。葡萄酒大都是在餐厅消费，服务员会把葡萄酒单、试饮杯和软木塞递给男性客人。有战略眼光者看到了葡萄酒在战后大量家庭主妇人群中的增长机遇。行业早期推动者之一哈维•波泽特(Harvey Posert)说：“我们以前开玩笑说，如果能把一瓶雪利酒弄到厨房去，我们就飞黄腾达了。”

Vineyards got an unexpected boost from Jacqueline Kennedy, who in 1962 led 56 million viewers on a televised tour of the White House. In the dining room, the camera panned to the elegantly laid table, lingering for a few seconds on the crystal glasses next to each place setting. Few could afford the first lady's designer clothes, but the crystal, manufactured in West Virginia, was a small piece of Camelot glamour that women could own for themselves. It took the Morgantown Glass Co. factory years to fill all the orders.

葡萄园因为杰奎琳•肯尼迪(Jackie Kennedy)而意外得到了提振。1962年，她引导5,600万电视观众参观了白宫(White House)。在餐厅，镜头摇到精心摆放好餐具的餐桌前，在每份餐具旁的水晶杯上停留几秒钟。很少有人能买得起第一夫人的名牌衣服，但产于西弗吉尼亚的水晶杯却是女人们能拥有的可感受到卡米洛特(Camelot)宫殿般豪华的小物件。Morgantown Glass Co.玻璃工厂花了好几年时间才完成了所有订单。

Getting female buyers for the wine, though, was another challenge. In California, where laws allowed wine to be sold in supermarkets, Robert Mondavi's marketers hired middle-age housewives to stand at in-store tasting booths. The saleswomen offered shoppers sips from bottles that would pair perfectly with what they had planned for dinner. The friendly older women helped turn the younger women into confident consumers.

不过让女性买葡萄酒又是一个挑战。在加州，法律允许超市销售葡萄酒，于是罗伯特•蒙达维（Robert Mondavi）酒庄的市场推广人员雇佣中年家庭主妇站在店里的试喝摊位旁边。女销售员为购物者挑选能与她们所计划的晚餐完美搭配的葡萄酒，并让她们品尝。那位友善的老妇人帮助年轻女性们成为有信心的消费者。

Women's magazines offered tips on how to order, serve and drink the stuff; McCall's magazine, in 1977, featured wine as essential to an 'Anti-Stress Diet.' Meanwhile, women in California were beginning to make wine, too, experimenting with tastes and textures that appealed to them.

女性杂志提供点酒、倒酒和喝酒的技巧；1977年，McCall's杂志将葡萄酒标榜为“抗压食谱”的必需品。与此同时，加州的女性也开始酿酒，探索自己喜欢的口感和质地。

Today, wine is certainly in American kitchens. It's there for enjoyment, of course, but also as a respectable antidote to modern stress─especially for women.

如今，美国厨房里必定会有葡萄酒。当然是为了享受，但同时也是应对现代生活压力的一剂体面的良药，尤其是对于女性。

Some social scientists link the rise in female alcohol consumption to the changing role of women in society. Rick Grucza, an epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who studies alcohol-use disorders, correlates women's drinking to the rise in female college attendance. Others suggest that many women continue unhealthy postcollege drinking patterns in male-dominated industries such as finance and technology. Still others find a link among women who step away from their careers to be at home. 'The baby's crying, they're not getting paid, they're bored and anxious─and feel guilty that they're bored and anxious,' says Mary Ellen Barnes, a psychologist in Rolling Hills Estates, Calif., who treats many female heavy drinkers. Drinking several tall glasses of wine can make those feelings recede─at least for a few hours.

有社会学家将女性饮酒量增加与女性在社会中角色的变化联系起来。路易斯华盛顿大学医学院(Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis)专门研究酒精使用障碍的流行病学家里克•格鲁恰(Rick Grucza)认为女性饮酒与女性上大学比例的上升成正比。还有人表示，许多女性大学毕业后会在金融和科技等男性主导行业继续不健康的饮酒习惯。还有人则发现与离职回家的女性人群有关。加州Rolling Hills Estates治疗过许多女性嗜酒者的心理学家玛丽•艾伦•巴恩斯(Mary Ellen Barnes)说：“孩子在哭，又没人付她们薪水，无聊又焦虑，而且她们为自己无聊和焦虑的状态感到内疚。”喝几杯葡萄酒可以使这些情绪消退──至少能维持几个小时。

Does that amount to a drinking problem? Doctors around the world differ. The National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Department of Health and Human Services say that for American women, anything more than a drink a day is risky. In countries such as France, Italy and Spain, where life expectancy for women is longer, authorities set the safe threshold at double that─and sometimes higher.

这是不是酗酒问题呢？世界各地的医生们看法迥异。美国国家酗酒与酒精中毒研究所(National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism)以及美国卫生及公共服务部(Department of Health and Human Services)表示，每天喝一杯酒以上都是有风险的。在女性预期寿命比较长的法国、意大利和西班牙，政府将安全标准定在两杯，有时更高。

Many of the women whom I interviewed said that the strict limits set by American law helped to drive their drinking underground. A few glasses slide into a whole bottle, which becomes an embarrassing habit that needs to be concealed.

在我采访过的女性中，很多人说美国法律规定的严格标准让她们的喝酒变成了地下行为。从瓶子里倒出几杯酒成了需要隐藏的见不得人的习惯。