Sexual Politics of the Keg

So, it’s finals, which means I probably shouldn’t have been out partying all weekend, but nonetheless, here I am today, haggard, slightly bruised and wildly unprepared for my two exams and three papers due this week. However, I once took a course in cultural anthropology, so I consider it my academic duty to go to parties, observe the social interactions of other youths and report them back to the world.

By CC Staff

Thus, I present to you my scholarly dissection of the sexual politics of the keg. This past Friday, I went to my friend’s birthday party. Since I knew the host of the party, I considered myself a VIP and budged the keg line, edging out frat boys in pastel-colored shorts and backwards caps to stake my claim. Once I reached the keg, I started to do what I needed to do when Dude #1 called me out. “HEY!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing? Let me do it for you.”

Um. Okay. I know I may look young and weak, but as a scholar I at least know how to pump a keg. I may not be an engineering major like Dude #1, but come on, it’s like buttering bread.

I then realized, though, that this wasn’t about physics. This was about sex, and we were suddenly back in the middle ages. I was the only girl within 20 feet of the keg (I was also the only girl not wearing a mini-skirt and a halter, but it’s laundry week). The rest of the chicks stood giggling and talking about their favorite pastel short-clad homeys in the living room. The guys manned the keg: It was their chivalrous duty to dispense alcohol to the mini-skirted lovelies under the guise of hospitality, but with the hope, or perhaps even the expectation, of sex.

I wasn’t having it. I can’t say I made many friends at that party, but such is the life of an academic-feminist beer drinker. Mary Tyler Moore would be proud.