Last year a group of activists founded the Consortium of Loose, Forward, and Pub-Going Women in India. It was not formed for fun, but in response to the the hyper-conservative Sri Ram Sena and the group's violent campaign to chastise bar-hopping women in Southern India by beating them physically.
In America calling yourself a loose, forward, pub-going woman is simply your alignment with the status quo, the freedoms afforded by third-wave feminism. We can now dress badly, drink until we black out and wake up with whomever caught us falling (1). Nonetheless, going out to a bar (as the consortium organizers in India worked so hard to defend) is a public stage to demonstrate women's liberation.
In America, there have so far, been few pop-culture patron saints of this excessive, debauched proof of freedom. Though pop singers mention clubs, these spaces always seem abstracted. The 'club' is less an actual venue than an a romance that is really just a backdrop for meeting that one special someone.(2) You are not going to be annoyed by stuff they say to you, and you are not going to get beligerantly drunk.
But in 2009 someone gave us a more realistic reflection of a teenage-bar hopper; one that celebrates the parental dissapproval, binge-drinking, the run-in with the law, and the morning-after eye-crust. These are freedoms we take for granted. Hello Ke$ha, patron saint of the American Chapter of the Consortium of Loose, Forward and Pub-Going Women.
(1) Beyond the circular arguments and the moralizing that "hooking up" (Tom Wolfe's term here) incites in some ways, bar culture is now the 21st century version of "coming out" to your town, society. You may find this charming or you may find this offensive. But there it is, public space.
(2) The club in these videos is not a place where people you know are. It is a mysterious anesthetized zone where you meet good-looking strangers only.
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