Alektorophobia - My journey as a sufferer of hen(party) dread

Some people fear spiders, some people fear snakes, I fear hens. Not the feathered, clucking kind, but the kind dressed in a cheap white veil with a L-plate dangling from around her neck. This kind of bird not only unleashes a feeling of terror in my very core, but brings with her an entourage of terrifying beasts. Yes, my fear of lawyers has been overtaken by a new and debilitating condition - fear of hen parties.

You're enjoying a romantic meal with your partner or a quiet drink with a friend and suddenly there's an eruption of high pitched giggling and a stench of alchopops. In they stumble, a group of 18-65 year olds, dressed as school girls. A hen party has arrived.

Throughout this article I shall refer to hen, rather than stag parties in order to avoid undermining my arguments by sounding like a man-hating feminist, however most of the points can be applied to both male and female bachelor parties.

Here are the ten things I hate most about hen parties.

1. The shrieking

The average vocal range for women is around about 170 to 220 Hz, so why when you sit six or more women around a table within one month of a wedding, do they all become sopranos?

2. Crowd behaviour

When amongst a crowd, people start to lose their sense of identity and behave in ways they might not ordinarily consider. Mavis sees Tracey snogging a stripper despite having a half-decent boyfriend at home, and suddenly administering a quick hand-job behind The Walkabout while Mr Mavis stays at home minding the kids, doesn't seem like a major indiscretion after all.

3. "Last night of freedom" mentality

If you see marriage as a cage, perhaps instead of having a night of behaving like a bitch, you should just save your fiancee the upcoming decade of your resentment, and call off the wedding to go and work as a barmaid on an 18-30s cruise liner.

4. Lists of things to do before you get married

Snogging a bald guy is not a prerequisite for a successful marriage. I know the Ann Summers hen party check list rates it highly, but trust me, very few divorces have occurred because the wife just could not get over the fact that she'd never get smoochy with with a guy with a shiny head. And if you find you really can't live with wondering what it might have been like, give your husband a few years and you might find your questions answered within the marriage.

5. The "Centre of Attention" friend

Look at a bachelor party, any bachelor party, and you will find one person who's loving it a bit too much, and it's never the spouse-to-be. Usually it's a married friend, reliving her days as a singleton, or a mother-in-law who regrets how sober hen parties were in her day. Sometimes it's a dried up divorcee who loves the attention that belonging to a group of younger, hotter women, gets from men. The Centre of Attention Friend flirts with everything that moves and instigates hen party pranks.

6. Hen Party Pranks

Some pranks are humorous. Leaving a young woman handcuffed naked to a lamp post in a dangerous area of London, is not. Likewise liberally pouring sambouka over somebody's face and setting fire to their eyebrows, is edging away from the realms of funny.

7. Destroying the ambiance of an otherwise pleasant coastal town

Imagine a night out in Newquay or Torquay without any large single sex gangs. Imagine relaxing moonlit strolls along the seashore, imagine quaint local bars and restaurants, imagine quiet camp sites on the cliffs. Then fill that world with vomit, ambulances and people yelling "Oi! Get 'em off!"

Go and hen it up in your own town you drunk slappers.

8. The scale of modern hen parties

"But I haff to go to her hen party," Tiffany cries at her boyfriend as she packs a jumbo box of condoms, "it's tradition!" What's traditional about 10 days in Ibiza dressed as a Playboy bunny?

9. The outdated nature of single sex friendship groups

It's the 21st century; friendship groups are made up of men, women, women who used to be men, men who dress like women at the weekends... Many couples live together for years before getting married and therefore share friends. Same sex couples can wed.

Does it really make sense to send all of the men off to a strip club with the groom, and all of the women to a Lambrina factory with the bride?

10. Hen parties are followed by weddings

See 10 things I hate about weddings.

In conclusion...

The incidence of alektorophobia is increasing in society, with more and more sufferers being driven out of bars and restaurants by gaggles of hens. Those with a higher than average IQ are more likely to suffer from alektorophobia than those with a low IQ.

If you think you may be suffering from alektorophobia, doctors recommend that you avoid nightclubs, fancy dress shops and lingerie stores until October, purchase earplugs for essential pubbing trips, and comment on this blog.

4 Comments

"Some people fear spiders, some people fear snakes, I fear hens. Not the feathered, clucking kind, but the kind dressed in a cheap white veil with a L-plate dangling from around her neck."

It turns out, now you mention it, that I fear all hens in all their forms. That includes but is not limited to: dodgy kebab van chicken mcnuggets that threaten to give my flatmates food-poisoning and ruin my pristine bathroom, noisy clucky foul beasts with half eaten feet and yes, bachelorettes.

Yeesh, my (extremely heterosexual) female friend was given a lap dance by a complete stranger in the name of 'ten things you HAVE to do before you're married', I found it extremely funny but my friend was fairly mortified.

Posted by Helen D on Monday 23rd August, 2010 at 19:23

Who writes these lists? Did the late Hans Eysenck draft one or are they more Freudian-inspired?

It seems odd that my psychology BA syllabus chose not to mention that there are definitive guides on how to prepare yourself for such a popular type of elongated interpersonal relationship.

Posted by Sha on Monday 23rd August, 2010 at 20:13

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