Hold the Olives, Please

Starving yourself to live? How about starving yourself to get a better high? Behaviors once relegated to the horrors of college excess are seeping into the mainstream and now there's a word for it: Drunkorexics. Women (usually) who either starve all day to offset the calories they drink or who use drinking as a means to relax them enough to be able to eat. I had read stories of mixing slim fast with tequila before going out at night, but I've never seen it in action. Quite frankly, my friends and I are much more likely to down our drinks with chicken wings and pizza, not diet drinks.

But I can relate to the anxiety of wanting to fit in socially while also worrying about the caloric cost. I've been known to assiduously eat whole grains and veggies for weeks and then down the liquid equivalent of two big macs over the course of an evening. (Hopefully the dancing that inevitably ensues burns off some of the Coors Lite.) But I don't mean to make light of yet another pernicious societal side effect of the beauty myth. Binge drinking for women has grown more socially acceptable in the past ten years. Coupling this trend with the alarming statistics on eating disorders and unhealthy body images has led to an entirely new class of disorder. Add to the mix rampant media images of our fave party girls doing coke and checking into rehab at the same rate the rest of us visit Ikea, and you've got a recipe for super skinny and drunk disaster.