Teenage Girls and the hookup culture:
Everyone is worried about teenage girls. They are something like a barometer of the nation's moral pressure. Thus, their behavior matters, for all of us.
It is fair to say that the mindset of teenage girls in not my strong suit. To me their culture is an alien territory. Beyond the one time that I saw a Taylor Swift video I am thoroughly ignorant of what matters to them.
Which is, I suppose, as it should be.
That does not mean that I or anyone else should simply sit back and ignore the experience of a group of young people that represent America's future. One of the reasons that these young people are at a cultural impasse is precisely that too many older people have systematically abrogated their responsibility to provide them with guidance and counsel.
I am persuaded that when people tell pollsters that they are worried about America's moral decline they are talking, primarily, about the behavior of teenage girls. Adults are most often anguished to see these are come of age by being exposed to pornography, by participating in sexting, by hooking up, or by starring in Girls Gone Wild.
Surely, this has an ethical dimension, but perhaps not as you might guess. As Caitlyn Flanagan says, that: "the wishes of girls, you have to remember, have always been among the most powerful motivators in the lives of young men. They still are." Link to Flanagan's article, "Love, Actually" here.
If girls are induced to make hooking up their most predominant mode of relating to boys, then they will be giving their sexual favors to a certain type of guy, one who is called a pick up artist.
But what happens to another young man, the one who works hard at his studies, who is preparing himself for success in the world, who does not spend his weekend taking a course on how to pick up girls? Isn't he going to be overlooked, and thus, devalued, by young women who are settling for hookups.
The hookup culture thus undermines a work ethic.
And if the model of the modern relationship is something called friends with benefits, what does that say about the values of commitment, loyalty, and fidelity.
Clearly, many young people have been induced to act as though these values do not matter, because they have learned the amoral lesson that it is alright for two people to exploit each other if they have agreed that they are not exploiting each other.
Using people, even when mutually agreed upon, is not the royal road to good character.
Meantime, Flanagan offers a useful analysis of how the hookup culture started, and how it took hold with the unintended connivance of mothers.
It began in the late 1970s with a generation of feminist mothers who had decided, quite consciously, to bring up their daughters differently.
In Flanagan's words: "... a large number of modern mothers were committed to helping their daughters incorporate sexual lives within a normal teenage girlhood, one in which sex did not instantly and permanently cleave a girl from her home and her family."
It might seem dated by now, but these mothers took it for granted that their daughters would experience their sexual awakening within the context of a relationship, with a boyfriend.
In her words: "This set wasn't in the business of providing girls and young women the necessary information and services to allow boys and men to discard them sexually. Their reaction to the kinds of sexual experiences that so many American girls are now having would have been horror and indignation."
What started out as a permission slip for teenage girls to have sex with their boyfriends morphed into the hookup culture.
Unintentionally, so.
We are dealing with unintended consequences. Feminists decided that the double standard was unjust. Mothers everywhere bought this idea and taught their daughters that they had as much of a right to sexual pleasure as any boy did. If the unintended result was the hookup culture, then surely they bear some responsibility.
It may well be that they have now learned why there is a double standard and why feminine sexuality should never be confused with masculine sexuality.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Especially when you try to impose your ideals on reality.
But how did the hookup culture take hold? Flanagan lays a goodly part of the blame on parental inattention. Speaking for the mothers of teenage girls, she offers her perspective: "[Today's girls] ... just spent the better part of a decade being hectored-- via the post-porn Internet-driven world-- toward a self-concept centering on the expectation that the very most they could or should expect from a boy is a hookup. We didn't in particular stand in the way of that culture; we left girls along with it, sat idly by while they pulled it into their brains through their ubiquitous ear-buds and their endless Facebook photo albums and text messages. We said more or less: 'Do your best.'"
As you know, I make every effort to avoid blaming it all on Steve Jobs. Between the late 1970s and the aught years, we had a president whose decadent behavior became public knowledge. Keep in mind that even before the advent of internet porn many children grew up wondering what a semen-stained dress was. And remember that people rushed forth to defend Bill Clinton's behavior. And whose defenses went above and beyond the issues of the impeachment.
And why not mention that hooking up became standard sexual practice at a time when the nation became so drunk with optimism and cheap money that it came to believe that the good times would roll on forever. Hooking up makes more sense when everyone is flush with cash. And when people have lost the sense that they have to work for what they have.
Now, however, people are more likely to restrain their spending habits, to value frugality over profligacy, to prefer monetary abstinence over bulging credit card balances.
After all, the message of the financial crisis, as it is the current lesson of the European sovereign debt crisis, is to live within your means. Hooking up would be living beyond your means.
This afternoon I was reading David Rosenberg's opinion that while the economic recession looks to have ended, the economic depression has not. If Rosenberg is correct, perhaps it is a stealth depression that has brought young people to their senses and has begun to put an end to the hookup culture.
Of course, there is a psychological component to hooking up. Flanagan describes girls hooking up as engaging in what would have to be called counterphobic behavior.
Addressing the issue of why girls feel the need to become drunk before hooking up, Flanagan writes: "Unlike the girls of my era these girls are preparing themselves for acts and experiences that are frightening, embarrassing, uncomfortable at best, painful at worst. These girls are not embracing sex, all evidence to the contrary. They're terrified of it."
If they are engaging in acts that terrify them, they must believe that not hooking up is even more terrifying. What could be more terrifying than hooking up? Perhaps it is the thought that you are abnormal if you are not sexually active; that you are neurotic if you are not actively exploring your sexuality.
The hookup culture notwithstanding, Flanagan still believes that girls want we will call the boyfriend experience. If they do not have it in reality, if it is becoming increasingly elusive in their everyday lives, it continues to exist in fiction. She cites the example of Anita Shreve's book, Testimony, and girls love for movies like High School Musical and singers like Taylor Swift.
She concludes that these girls are beginning to see that hooking up is not at all what they want out of life, that it is not bringing them closer to their goals. Now, it seems that they are asserting their own character and embracing abstinence. For Flanagan this gesture will be a crucial part of American moral renewal.
In her words: "And now the girls have had enough. We've sunk pretty low, culturally speaking, when we've left it to the 14 and 15 year old girls of the nation to make one of the last, great stands for human dignity. But they're making it, by God."
stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com
It's sex o'clock in America
By Raquel Welch, Special to CNNMay 8, 2010 9:44 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Raquel Welch: The Pill has altered society in ways good and bad
An upside has been empowerment of women in life decisions
Welch: Downside is loss of caution and discernment in choice of sex partners
Editor's note: Raquel Welch is a Golden Globe-winning film, TV and stage actress who has starred in 45 films, including "The Three Musketeers," "Kansas City Bomber" and "Myra Breckinridge." On Broadway she starred in "Woman of the Year" and "Victor/Victoria"; and on TV in the Golden Globe-nominated miniseries "American Family." Her new book is Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage
(CNN) -- Margaret Sanger opened the first American family-planning clinic in 1916, and nothing would be the same again. Since then the growing proliferation of birth control methods has had an awesome effect on both sexes and led to a sea change in moral values.
And as I've grown older over the past five decades -- from 1960 to 2010 -- and lived through this revolutionary period in female sexuality, I've seen how it has altered American society -- for better or worse.
On the upside, by the early 60's The Pill had made it easier for a woman to choose to delay having children until after she established herself in a career. Nonetheless, for young women of childbearing age (I was one of them) there was a need for some careful soul searching -- and consideration about the long-range effects of oral contraceptives -- before addressing this very personal decision. It was a decision I too would have to face when I discovered I was pregnant at age 19.
Even though I was married to the baby's father, Jim Welch, I wasn't prepared for this development. It meant I would have to put my career ambitions on hold. But "the choice" was not mine alone to make. I had always wanted to have Jim's babies, but wasn't at all sure how he would react. At the time, we were 19-year-old newlyweds, struggling to make ends meet. But he was unflinching in his desire to keep our baby and his positive, upbeat attitude about the whole prospect turned everything around. I have always loved Jim for how he responded in that moment.
During my pregnancy, I came to realize that this process was not about me. I was just a spectator to the metamorphosis that was happening inside my womb so that another life could be born. It came down to an act of self-sacrifice, especially for me, as a woman. But both of us were fully involved, not just for that moment, but for the rest of our lives. And it's scary. You may think you can skirt around the issue and dodge the decision, but I've never known anyone who could. Jim and I had two beautiful children who've been an ongoing blessing to both of us.
Later, I would strike out on my own, with my little ones, as a single mother to pursue a career in the movies. It was far from ideal, but my children didn't impede my progress. They grounded me in reality and forced me into an early maturity. I should add that having two babies didn't destroy my figure.
But if I'd had a different attitude about sex, conception and responsibility, things would have been very different.
One significant, and enduring, effect of The Pill on female sexual attitudes during the 60's, was: "Now we can have sex anytime we want, without the consequences. Hallelujah, let's party!"
It remains this way. These days, nobody seems able to "keep it in their pants" or honor a commitment! Raising the question: Is marriage still a viable option? I'm ashamed to admit that I myself have been married four times, and yet I still feel that it is the cornerstone of civilization, an essential institution that stabilizes society, provides a sanctuary for children and saves us from anarchy.
In stark contrast, a lack of sexual inhibitions, or as some call it, "sexual freedom," has taken the caution and discernment out of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner. Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity. No one seems immune.
As a result of the example set by their elders, by the 1990s teenage sexual promiscuity -- or hooking up -- with multiple partners had become a common occurrence. Many of my friends who were parents of teenagers sat in stunned silence several years ago when it came to light that oral sex had become a popular practice among adolescent girls in middle schools across the country.
The 13-year-old daughter of one such friend freely admitted to performing fellatio on several boys at school on a regular basis. "Aw come on, Mom. It's no big deal. Everyone is doing it," she said. Apparently, since it's not the act of intercourse, kids don't count it as sex. Can any sane person fail to make a judgment call about that?
Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it's gotta be pretty bad. In fact, it's precisely because of the sexy image I've had that it's important for me to speak up and say: Come on girls! Time to pull up our socks! We're capable of so much better.
cnn.com |
