Spin the Bottle: Sex, Lies and Alcohol

In its portrayal in popular culture, alcohol offers a release from inhibitions and a path to happiness, wealth, maturity, creativity, athletic success, independence, and sexual freedom. In reality, the abuse of alcohol diminishes and destroys those very qualities and is linked to 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 sexual assaults among students each year.

Using numerous examples from Hollywood movies, MTV Spring Break, sitcoms, and advertising, as well as interviews with college students, award-winning media critics Jean Kilbourne (Killing Us Softly 3, Slim Hopes) and Jackson Katz (Tough Guise) discuss the way that alcohol abuse has been normalized in the lives of millions of young people.

Spin the Bottle is the first educational program to step beyond an analysis of “binge drinking” to focus on techniques that alcohol marketers use to link the product to the fragile gender identities of young men and women. It also offers young people concrete strategies to counter the ubiquitous presence of alcohol propaganda and, in so doing, inspires them to take back control of their own lives from the influence of cynical manipulators.

Spin the Bottle is available from the Media Education Foundation

JEAN KILBOURNE, EdD (jkilbourne@aol.com) is a Visiting Research Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women, is the author of Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and the creator of many award-winning films, including the "Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women" film series.