Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol

by Mallory O'Meara

Overview

From Los Angeles Times bestselling author Mallory O’Meara comes a lively and engrossing feminist history of women drinking through the ages

Strawberry daiquiris. Skinny martinis. Vodka sodas with lime. These are the cocktails that come in sleek-stemmed glasses, bright colors and fruity flavors—these are the Girly Drinks.

From the earliest days of civilization, alcohol has been at the center of social rituals and cultures worldwide. But when exactly did drinking become a gendered act? And why have bars long been considered “places for men” when, without women, they might not even exist?

With whip-smart insight and boundless curiosity, Girly Drinks unveils an entire untold history of the female distillers, drinkers and brewers who have played a vital role in the creation and consumption of alcohol, from ancient Sumerian beer goddess Ninkasi to iconic 1920s bartender Ada Coleman. Filling a crucial gap in culinary history, O’Meara dismantles the long-standing patriarchal traditions at the heart of these very drinking cultures, in the hope that readers everywhere can look to each celebrated woman in this book—and proudly have what she’s having.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781488075919
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	10/19/2021
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	569,750
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Mallory O'Meara is an author, screenwriter and a producer for the independent film company Dark Dunes Productions. Whether it is for the screen or the page, she seeks creative projects imbued with horror and monsters. A New England native, she now lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction 13

1 Drunken Monkeys and Discovering Alcohol: The Dawn of Time 18

2 Cleopatra and Her Inimitable Liver: The Ancient World 34

3 Hildegard's Brewnuns Just Want to Have Fun: The Early Middle Ages 54

4 Li Qingzhao and the Devil's Schoolhouse: The High Middle Ages 74

5 The Deviant Mirth of Mary Frith: The Renaissance 90

6 The Vodka Empire of Catherine the Great: The Eighteenth Century 109

7 The Widow Clicquot and the Deliciously Feminine: The Nineteenth Century 140

8 Ada Coleman's American Bar: The Twentieth Century 171

9 Gertrude Lythgoe, Queen of the Bootleggers: The 1920s 192

10 Tequila, Trousers and the Legacy of Lucha Reyes: The 1930s and 40s 229

11 Sunny Sund the Beachcomber: The 1950s 252

12 Ladies Night with Bessie Williamson: The 1960s and 70s 273

13 The Joy Spence Anniversary Blend: The 1980s and 90s 297

14 Julie Reiner behind the Bar after Three: The 2000s 318

15 Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela's Bold Brew: The 2010s 333

Epilogue 348

Acknowledgments 351

Sources 353

Index 373

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/09/2021

“Who decided that drinking was a gendered act?” muses screenwriter O’Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon) in this thorough, and thoroughly entertaining, history. Using detailed portraits of 15 women—“all of ... illuminate different facets of what it was like to drink through the ages for a woman who wanted to have a drink”—she dismantles false tropes around femininity with panache. Her subjects range from the 12th-century Benedictine mother superior who realized hops could keep beer fresh, to Catherine the Great, who convinced soldiers to overthrow her husband by promising them vodka. Throughout, O’Meara uses what might seem lighthearted trivia to build spot-on social critique: “The double standard that drinking women face is deeply rooted in male anxieties about... women acting like people, not property.” Elegantly woven into each cheeky chapter is rigorous historical context; a profile of the 19th-century widow who popularized Champagne, for instance, also educates readers on cocktail culture in the United States before dovetailing with the story of Japanese sake revolutionary Tatsu’uma Kiyo. O’Meara glides easily from the 17th-century pulquerias of Mexico to the feminine “fern bars” of the 1970s, making sure to not to forget the queen of girly drinks: the Cosmopolitan. Provoking both thought and laughter, this serves as bracing refreshment from a master textual mixologist. Agent: Brady McReynolds, JABberwocky Literary Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] thorough, and thoroughly entertaining, history… Elegantly woven into each cheeky chapter is rigorous historical context… O’Meara glides easily from the 17th-century pulquerias of Mexico to the feminine “fern bars” of the 1970s, making sure to not to forget the queen of girly drinks: the Cosmopolitan. Provoking both thought and laughter, this serves as bracing refreshment from a master textual mixologist.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review


"Fun facts abound in O’Meara’s volume... A unique, entertaining resource to bolster culinary and women’s studies collections." –Library Journal


"Feminist and very funny... O'Meara deftly blends in equal measures of social history, gossip, and solid research, and adds enjoyable footnotes... women have discovered, invented, advanced, championed, and celebrated alcohol. Ladies? This calls for a drink." –Booklist


“This is a book that should be on any beverage alcohol enthusiast’s shelf.” –American Whiskey Magazine


"An exhaustively detailed yet breezy history set against the arc of overall women’s rights around the globe." –Kansas City Star


“[In Girly Drinks] Mallory O’Meara… returns to the realm of historically overlooked women who did extremely cool sh*t with a feminist history of drinking through the ages.” –Lit Hub

“This book feels like having cocktails with some of the most fascinating–and dangerous–women in history. Cheers!”—The Guardian

“An insightful, entertaining feminist history of women and alcohol through the ages.” –USA Today


"At last, the feminist history of booze we’ve been waiting for! After centuries of being excluded, ignored, or treated as accessories, Mallory O’Meara has put women at the center of a global history of alcohol. From winemakers and distillers to activists, leaders, and change-makers, Girly Drinks takes us on a whirlwind tour of the role women have played in what we drink, and how, when, and why we drink it."—Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist


"Girly Drinks is anything but—a raw shot of boozy history that stings as well as it soothes!"—Patton Oswalt


"With this lively book Mallory O’Meara has provided a real service, giving us not only a long-overdue new perspective on a great many familiar issues, but also raising all kinds of other issues that are unfamiliar and shouldn’t be."—David Wondrich, author of Imbibe


"Cheers to Mallory O’Meara and her serious yet seriously entertaining treatise on the history of gendered drinks. Girly Drinks will introduce you to queens and nuns, bootleggers and bartenders, telling their stories and proving the point that all drinks are girly drinks."—Jeanette Hurt, author of Wisconsin Cocktails and Drink Like a Woman

“As if being a woman today isn’t enough cause for a drink, Mallory O’Meara has compiled an addicting history of women and the alcohol that fills their glasses. This book left me positively inebriated (not sorry) with excitement about the underrated cultural footprint women have made in the world of alcohol, from the goddesses who let it flow freely at parties, to the women who stomp grapes with their feet, to every successful female reclaiming and owning their rightful space at the bar. Cheers, ladies, this one’s for you!”–Brittany Gibbons, New York Times bestselling author of The Clothes Make the Girl (Look Fat)?


Praise for The Lady from the Black Lagoon

"If you loved Hidden Figures, you'll love this much-overdue biography of Disney's first female animator, and Hollywood's only woman (still) to design a monster for a major motion picture." —Town and Country


“There's never a dull moment in this beautiful, heartfelt tribute to a pioneering special-effects designer and animator and passionate call for change in the industry that forgot her.” —Booklist (starred review)


“Engaging and compelling…. A fierce and often very funny guide to the distaff side of geekdom.” —Los Angeles Times

“O'Meara's chatty, impassioned book, The Lady from the Black Lagoon, lifts Milicent Patrick out of the mire of obscurity. O'Meara is a dogged researcher and a fierce partisan…Patrick's story [has] resonances for today, when women in Hollywood still find themselves in the company of monsters.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR “Fresh Air”

“Captivating and exhaustively researched…This is a fascinating slice of Hollywood history with a feminist slant, correcting a sexist wrong from decades ago and restoring Patrick to her rightful place of esteem.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“O’Meara achieves her goal. Thanks to her persistent efforts, The Lady from the Black Lagoon pulls Milicent Patrick and her considerable accomplishments out of the murky swamp of overlooked history and back into the light.” —New York Times Book Review


“Like the creature, The Lady From the Black Lagoon is a hybrid — part biography, part memoir, part detective story and part #MeToo pushback against the film industry’s deep-rooted patriarchal tendencies, highlighted in revelations of sexually predatory behavior by male actors, directors and moguls.” —The Washington Post


"An incisive criticism of the erasure of women in Hollywood through the lens of the life and legacy of Milicent Patrick." —Bustle

"Fascinating...This is a book that O'Meara was born to write, and she seamlessly meshes her own life story with that of her heroine in a way similar to how Julie Powell paid tribute to Julia Child in Julie and Julia...Even if you're not a fan of horror films, The Lady from the Black Lagoon is a riveting, sincere Hollywood saga that will quickly win your heart." —BookPage (starred review)

From the Publisher

11/01/2021

Starting out with the early days of civilization and moving into the present day, O'Meara (host of the podcast Reading Glasses and author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon) traces a global history of women and alcohol. Readers might think of the "girly drinks" of the title as cocktails with little paper umbrellas, but O'Meara's is an amusing, feminist history of alcohol that offers insight into distillers, brewers, activists, and leaders throughout history. The book's 15 well-researched historical accounts include profiles of Cleopatra, Catherine the Great, and Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, the first Black woman in South Africa to open a microbrewery. The author also discusses the Japanese "belief that a female deity…created the sake making process," and a history of champagne features Widow Clicquot and Madame de Pompadour (King Louis V's mistress) who is credited as an influential champagne promoter. O'Meara has interesting insight about One Hundred and One Beverages (1904) by May E. Southworth, which is believed to be the first cocktail book written by a woman. Fun facts abound in O'Meara's volume, but she also considers more serious matters, like the impact of the temperance movement and American Prohibition. VERDICT A unique, entertaining resource to bolster culinary and women's studies collections.—Barbara Kundanis, Longmont P.L., CO

Library Journal