Wine company 1, news editors 0

When women talk about anything – even their lunch – it’s apparently gossip. At least, that’s the bullshit this stupid story from News.com.au wants you to believe: Women gossip five hours a day. And you can’t argue, because it’s a study by a wine company.

I don’t get the headline. Why can’t I argue about it?

The story is yet another Daily Mail re-write. News.com.au is full of them. They even re-write British crime stories, which makes absolutely no sense.

EVERY cliché about gossiping women has been confirmed by a new study into how much time women spend talking and what they talk about.

Ah, no, it doesn’t confirm anything of the sort. It does say that women spend five hours a day talking about stuff – which most people who work with other people would do. And since it is very clearly not a peer-reviewed study, all it does confirm is that news websites can be relied on to uncritically give your wine company a free plug.

Now, the FIRST question a journalist should ask when given a media release by a wine company about a “study” is: why would a wine company be interested in this? The answer, of course, is a very simple Google search away:

Keen to try and bottle up the energy and buzz created when girls have a get together FirstCape Café Collection is looking for the UK’s Queen of Chat, the chattiest, most fun, engaging and bubbliest female, to reflect their lighter style wine range.

So pick up a bottle of FirstCape Café Collection – available from all major retailers (RRP £3.99) – on your way home tonight and let the chat begin.

Yes, that’s right. FirstCape wines has a new wine range to promote, and just got free coverage in the UK and Australia. They must be laughing their arses off while rolling in the handfuls of cash that they saved on advertising.

Women drink so they can’t smell vaginas?

A story in the Herald Sun today claims women need alcohol to have sex:

MILLIONS of women drink alcohol before having sex because they lack confidence in their bodies, a study reveals.

Almost half of those questioned said they preferred sex while under the influence of alcohol because it helped them lose their inhibitions and be more adventurous.

Millions? The study involved 3000 women, so by millions you mean thousands, right? And by “almost half” that means less than half. So less than half of the women surveyed said alcohol helped them lose their inhibitions. Which means that more than half didn’t say that. But don’t let that get in the way of a highly-clickable story about women and sex.

Four out of 10 had been tipsy when sleeping with a partner for the first time.

Considering that most dates would involve dinner and a bottle of wine, that says more about the dating process than women needing to drink to put out.

The study found 75 per cent of women liked to drink before getting into bed with their husband or boyfriend, and 6 per cent had never had sex sober.

That six per cent aside, I wonder how the question was asked. I like to drink, and when I drink I usually do it in the evening/night and then I go to bed. I live with Man Friend and he also goes to bed. But that certainly doesn’t mean what the researcher is suggesting.

Now to the company behind the study: Femfresh. They make a “delicately fragranced, gentle deodorising mist specifically formulated for everyday intimate use”. It’s euphemistically called Feminine Deodorant. Why not just call it Vagina Wash? By the way, has anyone read Wetlands by Charlotte Roche? Now there’s a woman in touch with her vagina.

Last week The Daily Mail ran a story claiming that women can’t keep secrets.

Ever wondered how long a woman can keep a secret? Well the answer, it seems, is less than two days.

Researchers found that they will typically spill the beans to someone else in 47 hours and 15 minutes.

Well, now that you mention it, I hadn’t wondered how long women can keep a secret for, because all women are different.

A study of 3000 women aged between 18 and 65 also found that four in ten were unable to keep a secret, no matter how personal or confidential the news was.

Four in ten, eh? So less than half of the women surveyed shared secrets. But that didn’t stop Michael Cox, the UK director of Wines of Chile – who commissioned the study – making a dick of himself: “It’s official – women can’t keep secrets. That means every single Brit who has confided in a friend should be worried because they don’t know where their secret is heading.”

The ethics of Twitter

Here’s a question: When you’re out with a friend and they post Twitter updates during the conversation, apart from being rude, is it a violation of privacy? Is it any worse than repeating the conversation to other people later?

I may be the only journo not on Twitter because I think it’s a load of wank. People talking about their Twitter posts bores me almost as much as hearing about their iPhone apps. And when journos write opinion pieces about how they’re addicted to Twitter – six months after it became popular – it reeks of lame. Yawn.

Anyway, when do social media rules evolve and are they based on the real world?