Drink Pink!

Tart sent me this article (filed, naturally, in Reuters' "Oddly Enough" section) about a new Russian vodka designed especially for women, which its designer touts "as a glamour product for upwardly mobile women in booming Russia … designed to be sipped with salad after a workout in the gym." What makes it a vodka just for women? Well, the pretty label with the butterflies, of course.



"Women need a drink of their own," says creator Igor Volodin.
Says Tart: It's widely known that regular alcohols are not intended for the delicate sex; I mean, the bottles are so...unpink.

Says I: If I've said it once, I've said it a nonillion times—the only thing that could make watching Sex and the City reruns even better is getting drunk on a ladies' vodka while hanging out with Carrie and the gang!

Says Tart: We need a drink that wears a dress and comes with free samples of nail polish and laundry detergent.

Says I: Next time we go for a walk on the beach and a quick douche, it will be great to have our own vodka to drink afterwards, instead of the yucky man vodka.

Says Tart: The time is now! It's time to open up alcohol consumption to the girls! Somebody assemble the baseball bats and call Tom Hanks!

Says I: Calgon and ladies' vodka, take me away!

All sarcastic bitchery aside, here's the not-funny part:

Damskaya or "Ladies" vodka worries doctors, who fear a fresh wave of female alcoholics in a country already suffering one of the world's worst drink problems.

The Moscow Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry says Russia has 2.5 million registered alcoholics, but adds the real figure is seven times higher -- more than 10 percent of Russia's population of 142 million.

Yuri Sorokin, a psychologist running a Moscow rehabilitation center for drug addicts and alcoholics, said 60 percent of those he treats for alcoholism are women…

Sorokin said he expected an influx of new patients in about six months.

"When such strong marketing experts are involved, I will never be jobless," he sighed.

So drink up, ladies! And remember—if you get black-out drunk on your pretty new ladies' vodka and some shithead rapes you, it'll be your fault. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

But at least you won't have a hangover.