Ain’t no such thing. But people keep saying it like it means something. Guys make jokes about it. They order them when they don’t know what to get their date. Dads order them for their daughter. But you know who doesn’t order girl drinks? Girls. They order whatever the fuck they want and sometimes that’s a glass of whiskey neat and sometimes it’s a Cosmo and never are they furnished with gender proclivities. That umbrella means diddly squat.

If you’re a man ordering for a woman and you don’t know what she wants, ask her what she fucking wants. Don’t assume. If you’re a woman ordering for another woman, see above.

If you’re a woman ordering for yourself and you’re panicking because the bartender is staring at you with those blank dead-fish eyes because he’s enduring a full whirling infinity while you try to settle on your drink order, don’t choke and say “just make me a girl drink,” because he fucking will.  

Tell him to come back. 

Think about what you want (what you really, really want) then tell him. Even if you don’t know what it is. He’ll know. And look, nobody here is judging you. A Cosmo is a fucking delicious cocktail. So is a Lemon Drop. Those drinks endure because they taste good.

HOW DID GIRL DRINKS BECOME A THING?

Somewhere in the late 70s and early 80s someone with a tiny dick and a lot of latent issues tagged a bunch of drinks as girly drinks. But before that? Nobody thought about it. Ask your grandma. Believe me, she drank like a goddam soldier. She pounded Canadian Club straight and knew her way around a Rusty Nail.

And look, all this is being written by an aged, broken, hopelessly CIS white privileged gray-haired old punk so take it all with a grain of salt. The gist of it is this: there’s no such thing as a girl drink and if somebody orders a girl drink out loud in a bar, take a little advice from John Waters on what to do when you go home with somebody who doesn’t own any books: don’t fuck ’em.