The meme pops up on my Facebook news feed after a stressful day, when I'm frazzled by the demands of working motherhood.
It is short, authoritative and, until recently, I would have found it funny: 'Stop posting your problems on Facebook and start drinking alcohol like the rest of us.'
In a flash, I'm transported back to the evenings before I stopped drinking nine months ago, when downing wine was my instinctive solution to every worry.
This reminder of my old life, timed as it is, leaves me sorely tempted to start again. Had I not learned to manage my cravings — were I one of the 32.9 per cent of adults recently revealed to be drinking at risky levels — I would undoubtedly have caved.
As I force myself to remember the reasons I gave up — better mental health, reduced anxiety, improved productivity to name but a few — my temptation segues into curiosity.
Why has Facebook shown me this meme in the first place? It looks like it has been posted by someone I know — but it hasn't. Instead, I discover, it's from a Facebook page called Wine Time that two of my friends 'like', meaning, thanks to the platform's algorithm, it is more likely to appear on my own feed.
Followed by more than 768,164 people, since 2014 Wine Time has posted more than 6,000 memes — quirky photos with funny captions overlaid on them — endorsing alcohol.
It targets its 85 per cent female audience by promoting wine as an empowering substance that deepens friendships and boosts confidence. Downsides, from hangovers to blackouts, are all part of the humorous draw.
'Blackout binges in my teens and 20s had morphed into less extreme but arguably more insidious drinking in middle age, when alcohol seemed to offer a way to 'take the edge off' everyday life,' Antonia Hoyle writes
In one meme, there's a tumbler of red wine alongside the caption 'because kids'.
Another has a picture of two women drinking with the words, 'Friends bring happiness to your life . . . best friends bring alcohol.' Others explicitly endorse binge drinking. Take this imaginary conversation captioned on a picture of two female friends. 'Bestie: We met for coffee, recommend how did we end up blacking out?!
Me: I took your idea and made it better' [accompanied by a smattering of wine emoji].
I have spent nine months learning how detrimental my relationship with alcohol could be — how, far from boosting confidence, it fractured friendships and sabotaged my self-esteem.
Blackout binges in my teens and 20s had morphed into less extreme but arguably more insidious drinking in middle age, when alcohol seemed to offer a way to 'take the edge off' everyday life.
Until feelings of burnout and paranoia grew so strong I wondered if a life without alcohol might not be happier.
Now, I feel angry that an account that so unapologetically normalises alcohol abuse among women is allowed to exist. I realise it is far from the only social media account advocating alcohol as a feminist activity.
You've probably seen some of the memes yourself — from 'Wine is to women, what duct tape is to men, it fixes everything' to 'What kind of wine pairs with smashing the patriarchy?'
And while Wine Time has no overt links to the alcohol industry, the major alcohol manufacturers, having saturated the male market, are now subtly exploiting a similar narrative to sell their products to women.
In a research paper published this year — 'Pretty in Pink' And 'Girl Power': An analysis of the targeting and representation of women in alcohol brand marketing on Facebook and Instagram — academics studied 2,600 social media posts from alcohol brands between 2019 and 2020.
They found gendered marketing is widespread.
The 'pinkification' of products has been well-documented (think the huge growth of rose wine and #drinkpink promotions) but brands also show alcohol as 'an essential component of female friendship', emphasising its importance by talking about 'besties' and 'BFFs'.
They encourage us to tag each other in their social media posts, and bill alcohol as a way of turning back time and relinquishing responsibilities.
As I entered middle age, I swallowed this sales pitch unthinkingly to legitimise my drinking and most women still do. ('Aren't you worried you'll lose all your friends?' and 'How do you deal with stress if you don't drink?' are two of the most common questions I'm asked since quitting.)
Antonia says that 'the major alcohol manufacturers, having saturated the male market, are now subtly exploiting a similar narrative to sell their products to women'
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