‘Touch of Glass. The Blonde in the Black Dress Who Lost Her Curves.’

Since the millennium we’ve witnessed the people of Ireland take to the polls to shape our country into the cosmopolitan alcoholic melting pot seen today. We’ve experienced the fanfare, hysteria, and all-round ballyhoo of referendum after referendum. From the two cracks at the Lisbon Treaty in 08/09 to the more recent and ever enduring slogans of ‘My Body, My Choice’ and ‘Yup The Gays’, the Irish public have never shied away from the democratic process. Despite the aforementioned responsibility and civil duty ‘Bunreacht na hÉireann’ bestows upon us, nothing could legislate for the civil injustice that was callously perpetrated in 2012 and moreover how its brutality and absurdity has been normalised since.

In the midst of a crippling recession, a nation in turmoil, high stool occupancy plummeting, and the father figures of the boom left with nothing but their y-front jocks – Arthur Guinness proved yet again that even the most beloved Protestant couldn’t be trusted. The Guinness family had besmirched the catholic peasants who line their pockets and failed in their democratic and civil duties.  The grumblings and gurgling’s could be heard from the racked organs of public house patrons nationwide. An inequity had transpired that would unsettle the most unsettled of bellies.

The blonde in the black dress had lost her hips

– our Guinness glass was being phased out.

It is said that ‘the nest is never bigger than the bird’ and in an age of body positivity and the championing of plus size women, the burly voluptuous figure men across the island had been accustomed to handling had been cast aside with contempt. Our rubenesque female icon had been banished from view. Our Adele of 2008, our Megan Trainor of 2014, and our current day Lizzo was now to be forced into a corporate pencil skirt fit for some low-income undereducated receptionist who struggles with telling DPD and DHL apart.  We had lost our grip, literally.

The existence of our very own vessel for tears and container of sin had been called in to question. Under what grounds? None. Time after time it had proven its capabilities. Whether that be the familiar four finger grip which allowed the inside of the palm to sit plush against the glass ensuring that a warm hug from a cold pint was delivered. Or indeed, the unwavering symmetry not seen since the pyramids giving her balance and poise of a USSR gymnast to ensure that even an 8.6 magnitude earthquake could not fracture the cream dome.

Tradition is there to be loved, not understood so the next time a moustache twisting craft beer hipster pushes this neoliberal woke ‘New Guinness Glass’ on you, hold your burley age old companion aloft and remind him of Megan Trainor circa 2014:

‘If you got beauty beauty just raise 'em up

'Cause every inch of you is perfect

From the bottom to the top’