ChickSpeak

Everyone glistens with sweat under a strobe light, struggling to stand as they gulp down beer from red Solo cups.

It’s a typical party scene, familiar to many college students. Sometimes, these parties are in a private apartment or a residence hall. Complete inebriation is one thing they tend to have in common, though. Often, so is a hook-up.

“Hook-up” is a vague term that could mean anything from intense kissing to sex, and it’s the potential of a hook-up that seems to facilitate these party scenes. The result is a casual, no-strings-attached encounter that could end with a goodbye or an exchange of numbers for a future rendez-vous.

The appeal? No commitment necessary.
While casual sex is nothing new, for most young people the hook-up has replaced dating and courtship.

Laura Stepp is a reporter for the Washington Post and author of the book “Unhooked.” In her research for the book, she followed nine women for a year across six different colleges, closely studying their relationships and hook-ups. Stepp said she observed women who got exciting highs from going home with people they barely knew.

At first, the lack of commitment was exhilarating, Stepp said. Over time, though, the negative side of casual hook-ups began to emerge.

“The occasional hook-up does not do much harm,” Stepp said. “But as a pattern and as a social norm, young people are suffering.”

Stepp said girls are fooling themselves into believing casual hook-ups are satisfying. As the excitement of a hook-up wears off, women wonder why they aren’t getting asked out on dates, she said. Soon, the weekend rolls around again, with new prospects, and the women meet new men, permitting the cycle to continue.

“Girls and women will realize they are selling themselves short. We need to see some changes,” she said.

A little less sex in the city
Only in the last decade has the hook-up phenomenon started to draw attention.

Appropriately, its first major recognition came in 1998, on the pilot episode of HBO’s “Sex and the City.” Fictional character and relationship guru Carrie Bradshaw investigated whether women could have sex “like men.” After her own experience of casual sex with an ex-boyfriend, Bradshaw said she felt “powerful, potent and incredibly alive.”

Soon, it appeared as if society was willing to accept the notion that women could be sexual without being involved in a committed relationship. Books like Amber Madison’s “Hooking Up: A Girl’s All-Out Guide to Sex And Sexuality” and “The Hookup Handbook: A Single Girl’s Guide to Living It Up,” by Jessica Rozler, gave weight to the apparent shift in beliefs.

But others took note that, perhaps, some weren’t emotionally capable of handling sex without attachment.

On Oct. 16, 2003, Stepp wrote an article for The Post titled “Modern Flirting,” which became the precursor to her book, “Unhooked.” The article described what women had lost in their venture for a sexual revolution.

“In the spirit of gender equality, many a young woman has disregarded the slow, subtle arts of flirtation and charm that females have used successfully on males for millennia, and replaced them with quick, direct strikes,” Stepp said.

The “direct strike” appears to be the hook-up; and women being those in pursuit was the new trend.

David Givens, an anthropologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, who specializes in the study of body language, said survival instincts between men and women has helped blur the gender lines.

“Before, the workplace was overwhelmingly male in the corporate world,” Givens said. “For women to survive in the boardroom with men, they had to assume more aggressive mannerisms and clothing styles. One example is the pump. Women clunk down the hallways in their high heels. It is a way to seem more powerful.”

This aggressiveness translates outside the workplace as well, in women’s sex lives. Women approach men more directly in sexual encounters in an effort to prove their equality, Givens said, but this method sometimes fails.

“In general, if your approach is too aggressive,” Givens said, “it just scares the partner away, whether it is male or female.”

Dating makes a comeback
Kerry Cronin is a professor at Boston College and director of the Lonergan Institute, which helps students consider post-college decisions. There, she teaches a one-credit weekly course called Vertices, which is designed to help students think about their lives and the transition into adulthood. The course has gained popularity, which Cronin credits to one assignment in particular.

“I started talking to students a couple of years ago about friendships and romantic relationships,” Cronin said. “It came to my attention the students weren’t dating, and the whole hook-up scene was brought to my attention. I began to suggest that students go out on dates. It started six semesters ago that I would give them the assignment to go on a traditional date.”

The first semester, she said, out of 10 students, only one successfully went on a date.

“It was shocking,” she said. “Most interesting to me is, the hook-up has become more of the social script for this generation. I say this to students all the time. It is going on with students in their 20s, and it doesn’t end there. The only difference is, as they get older, they are doing it with money. Students are usually surprised and disappointed. “They have an idea that hook-ups are just for college and later it could be more normal. But it is not changing.”

The students who do complete the assignment often discover they enjoy dating, Cronin said.

Stepp said dating allows for women and men to practice healthy relationship habits. Dating allows for partners to exercise trust, respect and communication with each other, she said.

Givens also said he believes dating is crucial for the future success of a relationship.

“Courtship is natural,” he said. “It is natural for two people to go back and forth, to give and take, over a period of time. If it is hurried, there are problems. In the end, it doesn’t feel as if you are winning a prize because it is just kind of given to you.”

For the full article, check out The Northeastern News, The Student’s Newspaper of Northeastern University. Original publish date of this article is Jan 28, 2008.