No Wonder We Grew Up To Be Wine Moms
On the diet culture of Dry January, in Trump’s America.
I wrote last week that January diet culture noise has been quieter this year, possibly because of Ozempic, possibly because of the state of the world. But one conversation that does not feel quiet right now is the annual Dry January debate.
Dry January is not new; I first reported on it in 2019. Giving up alcohol is probably the second most common New Year’s Resolution (after losing weight ofc), so Dry January gets a lot of media buzz every year. And sobriety experiments can have real value: Alcohol is optional (unlike food) and abstinence (even in a temporary harm reduction way) can be the best way for lots of folks. Normalizing sobriety as a thing a lot of people do supports alcoholics in recovery, absolutely, but it’s also about helping all of us put our bodies and brains first, rather than letting social pressures and marketing drive our decision to drink or not.
The problem is that we moralize the hell out of alcohol. And that turns sobriety into a diet.
