Why Do All Women Drink Wine in American TV Shows?

From “Dallas” to “The Good Wife,” a history of women, wine and emancipation.

In the United States, wine reveals a history of girls and emancipation. Don’t believe me? It’s what American TV shows have shown us, from “Dallas” (broadcast between 1978 and 1991) to “The Good Wife” (2009-2016).

From Shameful, Solitary Alcoholism…

In the beginning, there was a girl who hid to drink. She lived in a big house. It was a long time ago, in the 1980s. Sue Ellen possesses nonetheless all the accessories that prove her success: the negligent, mega-rich power-husband, the house with a pool, the jewelry, the wardrobe and the blow-outs for a client grown accustomed to the Dallas luxury department store Neiman Marcus. Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen, describes her as the “first desperate housewife” as she considers her character’s life, ruled by the ostentatious lifestyle of opulent idleness, which is underscored by a hyperbolic consumption of alcohol.

This addiction takes the place of an identity. If alcohol alleviates the despair of a poor little rich girl, this fragility is never acknowledged. To maintain the fiction of her identity as a privileged woman, Sue Ellen hides her bottles of bourbon, gin or wine under the couch cushions. Her character is the heir to the drunken Native American of the classic Westerns: the drunkenness eases despair without managing to completely wipe away the character’s awareness of his own degradation.

The dependence-withdrawal-relapse cycle is a plot device for the series. Dallas’s return in three later seasons (2012-2014) once again used Sue Ellen’s alcoholism, her battles for sobriety and her repeated relapses as a montage to promote the last season.

… to the Emancipation of Girls

But since the end of the original series of Dallas, heroines have become more assertive within the landscape of television. This assertiveness is a result of women collectively. Female solidarity is no longer something out of the ordinary; it has become a permanent fixture of fiction on the small screen: a plethora of groups of female friends has followed “Charlie’s Angels” (1976-1981), the most recent of which is “Girls” (2012 – present). The evolution of the female model (or stereotype) represented within these shows reflects a change in morality.

And if Bree Van de Kamp’s Chardonnay appears to be an echo of Sue Ellen’s bourbon, “Desperate Housewives” (2004-2012) were able to drink openly. They drink together during a girls’ poker night or take out a bottle of white wine to celebrate success or forget a failure. In this Californian suburb, wine has two uses, an antidepressant to be consumed alone or as an accompaniment to impromptu girls’ nights. In both cases, the emphasis is still on drinking at home.

In New York, they have gone beyond that. “Sex and the City” (1998-2004) and “Lipstick Jungle” (2008-2009) author Candace Bushnell’s heroines drink socially and without anxiety. Active women with enviable careers, they go out often. While Carrie Bradshaw and her posse opt for cocktails, the women in “Lipstick Jungle” are wine lovers.

Wine Glasses as Fashion Accessories

Wine, a distinctive sign and social marker, is characteristic of a social milieu, that of a comfortably well-off urban class, as well as a feature of the active woman. They drink red wine in a glass that is impressively large in comparison to its French counterpart – these glasses appear to be capable of containing half a bottle. It’s what is drunk during an evening out with friends or with a partner, as well as what is drunk alone. The typical scene that is played out over and over again in TV shows is that of an elegant woman returning home at the end of the day. The children have not gotten back yet, so she has some time to herself. It’s 5 p.m., 7 p.m., 10 p.m. The first two things that she does are take off her shoes and pour herself a glass of wine.

This moment is filmed as “me time,” a break in the day which allows her to take off her social persona and relax. If the size of the glass could suggest some kind of fashionable alcoholism, the drinker takes this glass without shame or remorse. It is legitimate. This legitimacy is certainly reinforced for the viewers, both male and female, through repetition of this image, throughout TV shows, since the middle of the 2000s.

… to the Emancipation of Women

Onscreen, wine accompanies arrival into the adult life of independent women. It becomes a marker in the fiction of female emancipation, a long way away from the solitary comfort Sue Ellen found in it. In the series “The Good Wife” (2009-2016), it plays an even more heightened role. In seven seasons, the show portrays the evolution of a wife becoming an individual, a woman who stands on her own two feet by herself, without a group of friends or a husband. The wife of an ambitious politician who falls victim to his infidelities, Alicia reacts to this by returning to her career as a lawyer, which she abandoned 20 years earlier.

As she gets home later and later, her time monopolized by her new career, she makes the double gesture iconic of active urban women: stepping out of her pumps and pouring herself a glass of wine. And if the show later evokes her dependence on alcohol, it is the character of Alicia who does so with a sense of self-derision that shows her attempts, in spite of everything, to remain in control. The final episode of the series sees her leave her spouse who, as he shares a last glass of wine with her, admits that he has never really liked wine: he only ever drank it to make her happy.

A Glass of Red as a Distinctive Mark of a Woman in the Process of Recapturing her Existence

As a product that was long banned in the United States during Prohibition and whose sale and consumption is still heavily controlled on both sides of the Atlantic, wine appears to have gained an autonomy that is as much linked to legislation as it is to production and distribution. Contemporary fiction has turned it into an iconic product, less desirable than legitimate, and indispensable to the array of all accomplished women. Wine has become a narrative element indicative of social success and female accomplishment. From now on, recognize the appearance of this glass of red in TV shows – perhaps with your own glass in hand. Because the influence of images on our own behavior is another story…