It's hard to say what's more mixed during Spring Break – the drinks or the messages sent to young women.
The American Medical Association says Spring Break can be hazardous to your health, especially if you're a woman trying to drink like a man or one cavorting wildly with a lot of drinking men. The U.S. State Department says bad judgment and risky behaviour can ruin a vacation.
But MTV says it's time to get your drink on. And ads targeting the party crowd have figured out this bunch doesn't want free samples as much as it wants an approving nod that says all bets are off when it comes to getting it on.
What's a girl to do? Listen to the AMA and the State Department, or go nuts in Cancun or South Padre on the Texas Gulf Coast?
You can hardly blame girls for wanting to go where the boys are – they've been doing it since Jan and Dean sang about two girls for every boy, and for the same reasons.
It's a rite of passage, an unsupervised trip into the great big world.
It's a time for the beautiful to be seen, whether they're breaking from school or just from their job at the checkout line. It's a chance for the average and not-so-beautiful to see how the other tenth lives – Spring Break isn't invitation-only.
It's the promise of a romantic fling, the sea and the sun and shoring up memories to recount – preferably to poor saps who couldn't get time off from jobs that pay for tuition or who spent the break safe at home with Mom and Dad.
But today's girls aren't just going where the boys are; they've gone wild, for all to see. Throwing caution to the wind often results in throwing up, and romance takes a beating from guys slurring indecent proposals while wearing T-shirts bearing "beer goggles" jokes. Ingenues find flings can lead. to heartache even Linkin Park can't put into words – or STDs and police reports. Booze cruises, high balconies and beer-stocked pickup beds beckon, and there's nothing like ending up in the drunk tank or the emergency room to spoil a good story.
Of course, not every girl takes a vacation from common sense, but it's not too much of a challenge to see why Girls Gone Stupid is popular this time of year. They have plenty of help. The Spring Break culture has morphed into a commercial kegger where clothing is not just optional, it's discouraged – and becoming an amateur adult-entertainer is encouraged.
Promoters know it and keep the spirits flowing.
But it's not just Spring Break that's gone south. Americans reward the redemption of those who went raunchy. Look at the New York Times' nonfiction paperback bestseller list: Not only is "A Million Little Pieces," James Frey's big lie, still a best seller, it's closely followed by Koren Zailkas' "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood," an account of how girls use alcohol to be brave and get what they call a life while ultimately destroying themselves.
Denouncing demons by recounting a selfcharted course into decadence glamorizes and rewards stupid choices with instant celebrity.
But that's where most of the messages are coming from – the culture.
Certainly not from parents who believe their responsible daughter, a serious student who is definitely going to grad school, would never be among the butt-floss-wearing horde grinding it to "My Humps" on MTV Spring Break. But there are a lot of girls out there, and they are all someone's daughter.
That's where the AMA and the State Department come in with a message that bears repeating. The message isn't so much for the Breakers – they're not listening. They're at Target buying swimsuits.
It's for the parents bankrolling the trips to Cancun or paying the AAA dues on the cars their girls are driving to South Padre. They should know the risks before they send their daughters into the great big world. They need to hear the warnings and see the ads, MTV, the wet T-shirt contests and "The Real Cancun."
And they need to understand that warnings are like boats against the tide where Spring Break is concerned. Anyone can make a mistake, but unprepared and uninformed girls confused by mixed messages go stupid a lot easier than those who are nurtured and given the life skills to make the right choices about sex and drinking, at Spring Break or any other time of year.
That kind of dialogue starts long before the spring semester.
By Maria Anglin of the San Antonio Express-News
