Post #4: Alcoholism

As I was thinking about what subject I wanted to focus on for this post, I decided to complete a Google image search of temperance movement political cartoons. I selected alcohol addiction based on what I found in my search. I find alcohol use and alcoholism particularly interesting because of my many interactions with it. On both sides of my family, the males are or were alcoholics. The majority of my older male relatives are now dead because of a combination of poor lifestyle choices, smoking, and alcohol use. I also work in a hospital and so am constantly taking care of people in end stage liver disease who are dying or patients who are withdrawing from alcohol. This happens much more often than you would imagine, and not just in older populations but in people in their 30s and 40s. So, I've always found alcoholism fascinating because as a society, we have decided that this highly addictive and destructive substance should be legal, yet other drugs should not.

As I was looking through the Temperance images, a pattern started to emerge. Almost all the images contained either a drunk heading towards to the point of no return (the drunks are always males) or a women (usually a mother with children around her) facing off with an alcohol lobbyist/brewer. I've inserted an example to the left.

Almost all the messages claim some sort of sacrifice on behalf of a mother and her children because of alcohol use by her husband. I understand where this is coming from. Women from this time period very rarely worked outside the home and so were completely dependent on their husbands for financial support. But the Temperance movement are using women and children as a selling point for prohibition. Aren't they taking advantage of these groups as well by using them to further their own goals?

I started to reflect on modern alcohol advertisements and how they use women to sell a product as well. I've inserted an example to the left. From my own viewing, I know alcohol advertisements are often the most sexualized and demeaning images of women produced. But really, it's not much different than what the Temperance movement was using women for 125 years ago. One women is being used to illicit pity and guilt while the other is used to illicit desire and fantasy.

This plays into how alcohol use has changed context in those 125 years, and how the public has come to view it. In the past, it was seen as a morally corrupt thing. One of the reasons it was viewed that way was because of how it impacted the family unit. Now, alcohol use is seen as normal and desirable because beautiful women will want to spend time with you if you drink Budweiser. Either way, both sides are using women to further their own agenda.