“We should go home,” my friend mouthed over the bassy reverb of T2’s “Heartbroken.”
We were in a club—a late-night bar, strictly speaking—in east London, the sort of place you only go when everywhere else is closed and you don’t want to pay entry. It was objectively gross: you had to peel your feet off the sticky floor with each step and armpits were in your face like it was 8:30 a.m. on the train. But I was two sips into a tequila lime soda, and my eyeliner had miraculously remained intact all night. “One more song!” I shouted back, before reluctantly following her into the street-lit glow of Dalston. We were greeted by the night’s various characters: art students in micro-minis sucking on vapes, couples crouched over kebabs wiping chilli sauce from each others’ chins, a drag queen boarding the bus, a nurse speed-walking home from the night shift, groups of friends laughing and crying and kissing. It made me think of that viral photograph taken in Manchester on New Year’s Eve which everyone compared to a Renaissance painting: chaotic, but still beautiful.
I’ve been doing this—going out, that is—almost every weekend for more than a decade. There have been different stages to my party-girl lifestyle. There was the drinking-in-parks as a tweenager era. The period when I used a fake ID to get into nightclubs, concealer smeared all over my lips (why?). My freshers year, when I made “Never Have I Ever” my whole personality. But now, in my mid-20s, being a “party girl” isn’t as easy as it used to be. While I can still go out multiple nights on the trot, these days I actually do need eight hours of sleep to function properly the next morning. There’s no more doing shots after 1 a.m. unless I want to spend the following day in bed with debilitating nausea. And there’s certainly (usually, anyway) no after-parties, the scenes of which defined my early 20s: a tinny Bluetooth speaker in a random kitchen and a hot stranger to lock eyes with across the room.
The physical toll of clubbing I can deal with, though. What I’ve found more difficult to accept is the subtle shift in my peers’ attitudes. Now, if I share my weekend plans, I’m often met with raised eyebrows followed by comments about “staying in” to accommodate half-marathon training or the I Kissed a Girl finale. After the age of 25, it’s as if partying regularly is no longer considered cute and carefree; instead, it’s rebranded as unhealthy, chaotic, avoidant, surface-level, over-indulgent, even tragic. Your priorities are wrong, people say—even if you happen to be doing well in your career, are mentally stable, exercise regularly, maintain solid relationships, and have enough money in your bank account to get you through each month. “Should I be more sensible?” I thought, with horror, when I realized that all the fun I’d been having was, in some of my friends’ eyes, embarrassing.
In journalist Emma Warren’s book Dance Your Way Home, she talks about how dance floors reflect both the times and ourselves: “Each time we move we share information about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going.” I’ve come to realize that if you’re inherently a party girl (or, indeed, a party woman), partying is how you create yourself and your relationships. Partying is about self-expression; partying is necessary. People like to say that going-out friendships are surface-level, but the chats I’ve had on night buses have been deeper and more meaningful than any coffee catch-ups; random hype women in ladies’ loos have boosted my confidence more than any amount of likes or views. Being in a crowd and moving your body to music (even if it is aughts bassline) is so natural; there’s a magic about it that prompts us to take off our corporate and domestic masks and be the most raw versions of ourselves. Partying is a privilege—a liberty not all of us have, and one we should savor, not shame.
Of course, a lot of the judgement around partying stems from its associations with alcohol and drugs. Even if you find deep, genuine joy in the music, fashion, and art embedded within clubbing subcultures, partying isn’t considered a “proper” hobby in the same way that crochet or the cinema or yoga is. And, yes, partying as you get older can be less straightforward. Your time is more precious, your freedom more sacred. But that doesn’t mean it can’t still be a meaningful part of your life, that doing it makes you morally inferior to #cleanliving members of the 5 a.m. club. My mum, now in her 50s, still goes clubbing on the regular. Maybe some of us are just meant to be party girls. Maybe we’ll never grow out of it—and maybe that’s how it should be.