By TOM RAWSTORNE

Last updated at 00:53 10 November 2007

Lying motionless on the cold road with her skirt rucked up around her chest, student Samantha Jenkins celebrates her 21st birthday in a style that has become synonymous with young, British womanhood.

Having popped out for a few celebratory drinks, by the time she returned home she was so drunk she couldn't even stand.

Over she went, and as she hit the floor there was a friend, camera phone in

hand, to record the event for posterity.

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But far from being embarrassed by her behaviour, Samantha has become something of a poster girl for a generation of hard-drinking ladettes.

Once she had sobered up enough to operate her computer, the art student could hardly wait to post the offending photographs on Facebook, the internet social networking site, for everyone to see.

"I find it funny," says Samantha. "If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?"

Meanwhile, over on video-sharing site YouTube a click or two quickly brings up a segment of footage entitled "Twenty Six Second Bottle of Wine".

And while the production techniques and cheesy backing-track certainly

won't win any Oscars, 18-year-old Colette Murray certainly lives up to the billing - downing three-quarters of a litre of strong alcohol in less than half a minute.

What happens next one can only imagine but when the camera cuts back to the Scottish teenager, five minutes have passed and the booze has had the inevitable effect.

Huddled in the corner of a sofa she is seemingly unconscious, unable to move.

Idiotic behaviour? Undoubtedly. Exceptional? Far from it.

In villages, towns and cities the length and breadth of Britain, women are matching men drink for drink - with shocking consequences.

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The numbers dying at an early age from alcohol abuse have almost doubled in 15 years, while unplanned teenage pregnancies and alcohol-fuelled female crime have all soared.

But what makes it so much more depressing is the way in which this behaviour is increasingly being glorified as an "achievement" - something to be celebrated, a way of enhancing one's social standing.

And, of course, in the 21st century, what better way to spread the word than through the internet?

"There is nothing surprising with young people going out for a drink - I think most people have done it," explains Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent.

"But there is a problem if young people are using drunkenness itself as a way of reaching out and communicating, of forging camaraderie and bonds.

"People have always wanted to be noticed but in the past it was by the way you dressed, the job you did, the impression you made by the way you talked and the language you used.

"Today it is all about posting a picture on the internet and stating: 'Hey, don't I look outrageous.'

"It's very sad, almost tragic, that young people feel they have to become caricatures of themselves and go to such desperate lengths for the simple sake of being noticed."

Of all the online groups dedicated to the glorification of female inebriation, "30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night" is almost certainly the most popular with 150,000 members worldwide.

Part of the Facebook phenomenon (6.5million active users in the UK alone and growing by the day), it was set up by an American student and as its name suggests has as its basis a 30-strong list of telltale signs that the "sisterhood" should recognise as being indicative of home-time.

They include having "no idea where your friends are", sitting down and the room starting to spin, passing out at a party and waking up with "writing all over your face and limbs", making out with five different guys, stripping off and falling over.

The site has clearly hit a nerve with its target audience.

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Members are able to post their own comments on the site and tens of thousands have done so.

There's Stephanie from Portsmouth: "OH MY GOD! I need to have these reasons tattooed down my arm - I think over the course of the weekend I could at least check off 20 of them - he, he, he."

And Becky from the Midlands: "The falling down one happened to me in Magaluf - I ended up with blood all down my arm - it didn't hurt 'till I noticed it HA!"

Then there are the so-called discussion boards where users can post their observations under specific headings such as: "Funniest/Stupidest things you did while drunk."

Over to you, Purdy, from Nottingham: "When I was 18 me and my friend told a stag party that we were lap dancers.

"We ended up doing the stupidest moves ever and we still don't know how but we ended waking up with about £100 stuffed in our bras."

Or how about What Age Did You Start Drinking?, a topic that Vicki, a British public school girl, has contributed to: "I think it would have to be on a leavers' trip in Year 8!! So age about 12/13!!! Went down hill from there!!"

But most eye-catching are the 5,000-odd pictures posted on the site.

These include women, the majority identified by name, vomiting in toilets or over themselves, collapsing on the ground, urinating in public or inadvertently exposing themselves.

Some of the images are shocking. Most are deeply depressing.

And what is extraordinary is that the majority of these pictures are posted onto the web by the subjects themselves.

Professor Furedi believes social networking sites are used by young people to signal that they are "out there" and that they want to be noticed.

"Although there is now a fairly deeply entrenched drinking culture amongst young people where basically people drink for its own sake, it is also being used as a way to show people what a daring, risk-taking, funky young person they are," he says.

"Part of the statement young women are conveying is that they are as daring and as laddish as young men are.

"But at the same time the way young women get plastered and binge drink is a little bit different.

"In the case of men there is a long tradition of demonstrating that you are one of the lads and that you don't care about the consequences.

"With young women it is almost a way of making a statement that you are in control of your identity, like a positive affirmation of who you are.'

The existence of the "30 Reasons..." group on Facebook site only become more widely known earlier this week.

After details of it were revealed in the Mail a number of other publications picked up on it and it was soon making headlines around the world.

Bizarrely, many of the women who had posted their pictures on the site - a public forum - were outraged to find themselves and their behaviour being discussed and dissected.

Ashley Spellmeyer, an American pictured seemingly unconscious in an empty bath, is typical: "I don't think this is funny at all, it's only funny to everyone else.

"I'm not like that on a typical night or at all any more and it was posted jokingly.

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"I wouldn't care so much if my name wasn't turned into national smut.

"I don't want to risk losing the person I love or embarrassing my parents."

Another, who had posted a comment on the site which was reproduced in the Press, responded angrily: "I only joined the group in the first place because the comments on it made me laugh and reminded me of either something my friends have done or I MIGHT have done about two years ago."

As for Samantha Jenkins, the girl pictured down and out on her 21st birthday in June, she insists that her behaviour was exceptional - and therefore justifiable.

"We had gone out for a few at a local pub, but in the end it didn't turn out to be a few," the third-year student at the University College for the Creative Arts, in Rochester, Kent, told the Daily Mail.

"Everyone just bought me a drink. It was just drink after drink that got bought for me.

"On the way back home, outside a friend's house, I tried to get out of the car and I fell over.

"I do not go out and get that drunk all the time, that is the most drunk I have ever been.

"I think a 21st birthday is a night you can go out and get drunk.

"I find it funny because it was a one-off. Everyone has times in their lives when they have one-offs."

Doubtless some will agree, and some will disagree.

But it's a big step to understand why anyone would subsequently want to post evidence of their behaviour on the internet for all the world to see.

Samantha explains that a friend had introduced her to the "30 Reasons..." website and that she decided to put her pictures on there herself "for a laugh".

She thought nothing more of it until earlier this week when the site gained wider notoriety.

"I found out it was in the newspapers because I had lots of messages from people that I had never met before saying things like 'you must have been really gutted that your photos were in the paper'," she says.

"I was shocked but did laugh it off and my mates just thought it was funny.

"My parents are fine, they are happy with the way I am, that I am not like it all the time.

"It was my choice to put it on Facebook. I know what Facebook is.

"I know that if I put a photograph on the group I am allowing people to see it.

"I do not care what people think, personally I would never judge anyone because everyone gets drunk."

And she adds: "Maybe some girls do drink too much, but they are treated unfairly.

"Boys can go out and get drunk but if we do it, we should be ashamed of our actions."

That argument is one that's been bandied about a lot over the last few days - that bras were burned so that women could be free to copy even the most idiotic behaviour of their male counterparts.

But the truth of the matter is that these female galleries of drunken shame are newsworthy for two very good reasons.

Firstly, young women in Britain really are drinking harder and more often than ever before. Statistic after statistic backs this up.

Secondly, while Samantha is clearly an intelligent and articulate young woman who has quickly learned to drink responsibly, others, particularly the very young, are not so blessed.

Earlier this month it emerged that the number of under-18s being treated for alcohol abuse has soared by 40 per cent in a year. More than half are female.

Further, a report found that young girls are drinking nearly twice as much alcohol as they were seven years ago.

It showed that female drinkers aged between 11 and 13 consumed an average of eight units a week, equivalent to four large glasses of wine - more than a bottle.

This is 83 per cent more than they were drinking in 2000.

That they are doing so is partly to do with the cheapness and availability of alcohol but also to do with its glamorisation by "ladette" celebrities such as Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss.

TV programmes such as Booze Britain and Ibiza Uncovered coupled with the posting of pictures on the internet only serve to reinforce the message that drinking is cool - that it's all just "a laugh".

Andrea Carey is a 34-year-old mum of three from Darlington.

She wasn't laughing earlier this year when she discovered that her 14-year-old daughter Casey had gone missing.

"She had told me she was going to a friend's for a sleepover but when I rang to say goodnight to her, she wasn't there," said Andrea.

"It turned out the friend had told her mum she was having a sleepover with us.

"For two hours I and the other parents frantically searched for the girls.

"Finally we found them, along with a number of their friends, in a nearby field. They were all completely drunk.

"She had been sick and her tracksuit was caked in mud. I was furious.

"Not only was I concerned for her health - after all, you occasionally hear about youngsters dying from excess drink - I worried that anything could have happened to her.

"She could have been attacked and she would have known nothing about it."

Looking back, Casey, who wants to be a nurse and takes her GCSEs next year, accepts that what she did stupid but says she was egged on to do it.

"It's seen as cool for girls to drink or get totally drunk at the weekends," she says.

"Often you hear them saying: 'I can't wait to get trashed at the weekend' - it is something they look forward to.

"It's as if it makes girls look cooler and more daring.

"They think it will get them lots of attention and impress people, especially boys."

And come Monday morning, they'll all be talking about one thing - the latest photo doing the rounds on the internet.

"Although they say they are, it's hard to know whether or not they are really embarrassed at all by it," she says.

"Often I think that secretly they are pleased.

"That they are proud of everyone seeing them legless. It's sad, I guess. Really sad."