According to a newly published study from the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, women are rarely perceived as being as drunk as they actually are. Researches polled 145 undergraduates and asked them to describe levels of intoxication in hypothetical situations. The results found that descriptions have little to do with actual levels of intoxication, and for the most part, men are consistently seen as the drunker sex. Usually, the study reports, people described women as “tipsy” or “buzzed” (and probably drinking Skinnygirl Chardonnay through a straw) while men get trashed, plowed, obliterated, or wasted. So, is the moral here that women can drink all they want and still be perceived as delicately buzzed rather than “the girl who needs her friend to help her home?” Probably. But, as The Atlantic Wire helpfully points out, there are serious dangers to that.
