"Queer Beer"

A bit of a rant today Space Travelers. This has been bothering me as long as I've been aware of it (which is now about a decade): The bear trap.

When I was becoming curious about alcohol in my teenage years, and began experimenting I quickly discovered that some alcoholic drinks were enjoyable, and others tasted like piss. What I also picked up on (like the observant youth I was) is that men and women had different drinking expectations, and whoever the authority on this was remained hidden in the shadows.

Drinking was an experimental endeavor in high school. I understood drunkeness only to the capacity that you'd seen others act abnormally. Even in the case where I might observe an individual sick or hung over, I had no ability to empathize. Wanting to feel what it was like to drink and be inebriated was far more alien than the more readily understandable media message about drinking: Holding a beer made you look cool, tough, and likable. As a awkward young man who was convinced he was alone in awkwardness, beer seemed like it made sense as a part of the formation of who I'd like to be.

One problem, I couldn't stand it. Beer sucked. Every time. I began looking for a new drink which could offer the exploration outside of sobriety and simultaneously offer me the social reward that I was pretending not to want. Casually. What I found instead was that the rejection of beer seemed to be in part a rejection of manhood. It was as if beer itself was a part of the blueprint of the modern man. I didn't understand this right of passage.

The next step was trying to find a beer I liked, because the types of beer that I had access to at high school parties (the type of beer that is sold in 30 packs) was scoring pitifully with me (and still does). Once outside of the more commercial hemisphere of the beer landscape, I found it much more difficult to navigate what I was supposed to try and how to even start determining what I liked. In college, I did find a few beers I liked (I remain rather loyal to Delirium Tremens). Despite finding some tolerable candidates, and an exclusive list of beers I moved into the enjoyable column, I started to wonder if I had simply traded one beer trap for another? Had I taken the elitist bait?

Admittedly, the dilemma was significantly smaller at this point. I had made excellent friends with wine, and had something of a friends with benefits relationship with a gin and tonic made with Hendricks Gin (two limes for me cause I'm fucking special). Still, I wanted to figure out where beer and I stood and if we were more than just frenemies with a common social circle. I began to wonder if there were other men like me who felt like me, that they were staying in this relationship because they didn't know how to get out. Things weren't terrible, but where was the spark?

To recap where I'm at now, let's watch some commercials.

When I was young, I understood that drinking was as much social as it was utilitarian.



As I experimented, I learned that men drink beer, and that it was cool. Damn cool.



Then I learned that not drinking beer, made you less a man. If you wanted to sip on a Zima (do they even make this stuff anymore?) or a Smirnof Ice, you're being made a cuckold by a beverage while you sip your "queer beer." I believe "bitch beer" as was the popular phrase in the jock strap community (saints, all). It makes me wonder sometimes. How many gallons of the beer consumed in a given day is done in the name of not being a "pussy?" Hell, even drinking the wrong beer is a white flag these days.



I'm a little wiser now. Don't get me wrong here, I still struggle with beer-gender. Typically, it's more about when I'm not drinking beer. There's some sort of artifact thought in the back of my head "should I be drinking a beer instead?" The wiser part of me is the part that reminds me that what I'm experiencing is very powerful and effective marketing. Rationally, we all know that beer has fuck nothing to do with a person's sexuality, yet it's so simple to get caught up in the meme of beer glory and heaven, owned and operated by the St Pauli's girl.

When I think about beer-media right now, I try to make it into something positive/constructive. As a feature on the gender landscape, I think my struggle with male self image as it relates with beer must in someway be a exercise in empathy for me. The intense media pressure to behave withing certain social norms and obtain degrees of material success is something that is not alien to women. Many women struggle with their self image and how they square peg the the round hole of main stream media acceptance.

Dear Space Travelers, be conscious of the media you digest and how you digest it. This really isn't about beer. It's about the car we're supposed to have, the job we're supposed to have, and the endless chase after six pack abs. The first message of an ad is that you lack something. I'm here to say, you bought a DVR so you could skip the commercials, so do it. No DVR? You can find something to do for four minutes that won't insult your self worth.

Cheers.