2008 Woodie Awards
The Hookup Culture
"Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible; sex is becoming the primary currency of social interactions."
Elizabeth A. Terry
Issue date: 4/3/07 Section: Life
Men need not oblige. Women, please tell me you know of that which I speak, in that there is an attack on us that graces the pages of a new book which is climbing the charts and book reviews. Hitting bookstores everywhere in the last month Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, by Laura Sessions Stepp explains the seemingly disastrous effects of the "hookup" culture on high school and college women.
Yes, she is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and works for The Washington Post's Style section, but is she really relevant to women? She might have daughters that are of the high school age, but that doesn't mean she knows anything about our generation. Or does she?
She attacks the sexual and romantic lives of America's young people.
There is a comparison and contrast of Stepp's generation to ours, and although she does interview college students, high school girls, she slips in her agenda through their mother's viewpoints.
Stepp interviews high school and college-aged women all across the board in efforts to portray the "hook up" culture and the sexual lives that women as a whole live. She writes about rap music playing in the background of a date auction at George Washington University, a sex columnist at Duke University, and drunken sexual escapades (from Beer Pong and "Never Have I") of competitive and athletic high school girls from Washington, D.C. in efforts to encapsulate this generation's women.
Excerpts like, "Young people have virtually abandoned dating and replaced it with group get-togethers and sexual behaviors that are detached from love or commitment - and sometimes even from liking… Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible; sex is becoming the primary currency of social interactions."
According to many UNCG students it seems that Stepp might be right about some in this generation, and maybe women are being formulated into the hookup mindset.
Yes, she is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and works for The Washington Post's Style section, but is she really relevant to women? She might have daughters that are of the high school age, but that doesn't mean she knows anything about our generation. Or does she?
She attacks the sexual and romantic lives of America's young people.
There is a comparison and contrast of Stepp's generation to ours, and although she does interview college students, high school girls, she slips in her agenda through their mother's viewpoints.
Stepp interviews high school and college-aged women all across the board in efforts to portray the "hook up" culture and the sexual lives that women as a whole live. She writes about rap music playing in the background of a date auction at George Washington University, a sex columnist at Duke University, and drunken sexual escapades (from Beer Pong and "Never Have I") of competitive and athletic high school girls from Washington, D.C. in efforts to encapsulate this generation's women.
Excerpts like, "Young people have virtually abandoned dating and replaced it with group get-togethers and sexual behaviors that are detached from love or commitment - and sometimes even from liking… Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible; sex is becoming the primary currency of social interactions."
According to many UNCG students it seems that Stepp might be right about some in this generation, and maybe women are being formulated into the hookup mindset.
Be the first to comment on this story