We're halfway through January, which for many people is Dry January. It's pretty much impossible to not know that, given the endless social media posts and ad campaigns about temporarily abstaining from alcohol, writes Tressie McMillan Cottom in a New York Times essay. Cottom has the occasional drink and is not joining the Dry January crowd:
- "Some of my reasons are petty. I don't like cute social media campaigns and I cannot stomach self-righteousness about consumer choices. Do or do not, as Yoda might say. But please shut up about it, as I definitely would say."
Her essay tracks the cultural and medical shifts toward sobriety and notes a "marked decline in my own taste for alcohol." If people imbibe less and become healthier, Cottom is all in favor. Her problem is with the judgmental nature of Dry January—and more generally the push for "clean" living—the way it "compels people to talk about it, to proselytize it, and ultimately to perform it." If those who take part are "clean," it means those who do not are dirty. "So, please do not ask me if I'm clean or call the month 'dry,'" she writes. "I accept the science about drinking and I do not care if you abstain, but I reject the cultural politics of being clean and sober when I have never been dirty and I have never been an addict." (Read the full essay, in which Cottom sees worrisome cultural comparisons to the old temperance movement.)
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uBlock 
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Ghostery 
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