When I started writing this blog for a class, its main focus was on hooking up. I really like that I expanded my horizon to look at other issues facing women but I want to center myself back on the idea of hooking up a little bit. I think it is a really important phenomena that is facing adults – young and old. As a college student, I know that I certainly live in an environment where hooking up is the norm. It is an acceptable thing for a male or female to go out on a Saturday night with the goal of finding a short term companion. Not only is this not in the game plan for an older, single person, it might not even cross their mind that this is the reality for young people today.
We have to accept that casual hooking up is a norm in many young adults’ lives, but I think it is really worth looking into how our society evolved into this. Literary and media examples of hooking up flood my life. I can turn on my television and see Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl with his lady of day or pick up my newspaper and read The New York Times’ Modern Love College Essay Contest winner’s account of her college hook ups and “relationships.”
It’s worth seeing how these hook-ups affect our lives. We can learn from these media examples, from essay accounts of young men and women, and maybe even self-reflection.
Is this really a new phenomena? Or is talking about it what is actually new?
“A woman-of-color who writes poetry or paints or dances or makes movies knows there is no escape from race or gender when she is writing or painting. She can’t take off her color and sex and leave them at the door or her study or studio. Nor can she leave behind her history. Art is about identity, among other things, and her creativity is political.”
“If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirise our headstrong passions and grovelling vices. Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force. Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to the puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.” (23)
Being a lifelong nerd, I used to LOVE when my teachers would pass out the Scholastic fliers or when the book fair came to school. That’s why I was particularly interested when I came across this article in The New York Times. Apparently a parent interest group called The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has petitioned and finally convinced Scholastic to take the Bratz books out of its fliers and book fairs.
If you’re not familiar with the Bratz Dolls and the rest of its empire, it is a new age Barbie Doll that has a dispropriately large head and very prominent features. The dolls seem to be wearing lots of eye make-up and lipstick and “trendy”/promiscuous clothes.
I personally would never buy one of these dolls for my little niece because I don’t want to promote this hyper-sexualized image at such a young age.
Don’t you wish you lived in an age when your biggest concern was that Barbie was a little too sexy?
I’m a little embarassed to admit that I’ve seen my fair share of Hannah Montana episodes. Interning at a DV shelter last summer and babysitting the young girls in the house gave me the opportunity to watch the blonde/brunette teen queen under the guise of work. But what I’m more embarassed to tell you is that I enjoyed watching the show. It was enjoyable in that good ol’ clean fun kind of way. Fortunately, the novelty of the show eventually wore off for me. But that is certainly not the case for the millions of pre-teen girls who are absolutely obsessed with Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus.
But after reading this article on eonline.com, it seems that we might have a pre-pubescent riot on our hands if Miley decides to leave her pop star counterpart behind.
In my pop culture saturated life, I feel like I have seen this trend before. See Britney Spears and Hilary Duff. It seems like as the actress grows up, she no longer wants to be associated with the kind of clean cut persona that brought her fame to begin with. It’s almost like a teenage rebellion against parents, but instead, it is against their parent companies and young fans that adore them.
Michelle Obama blogs! I really admire what she’s trying to do with keeping women’s issues and rights in the forefront and hopefully she’ll continue to do so. Check her blog out at www.blogher.com
Here’s a little snippet from her first blog post:
“We all need to do our part to keep women’s issues at the forefront of the national debate. That’s why communities like BlogHer are so important. It’s not just a forum or sounding board; it’s an energetic space that lets women know they’re not alone. It’s our own national virtual roundtable. But we need to take these online conversations offline as well. I’ll do my part, and so will Barack. But we need you all too.”
Can men and women be just friends? For years my friend Kelvin has been trying to convince me that there is no such thing as a platonic relationship between men and women. He claims that at least one party must have been attracted to the other party at some point in the friendship. My comeback has always been that I have had many guy friends who were just friends. His rebuttal was that they’ve probably had crushes on me and I just never knew about it. I suppose that boost to my ego made me start thinking more seriously about his claim.
So, say you make the decision to hook up with a friend and let’s also say that it wasn’t the clearest, well thought out decision you’ve ever made. What happens now? I love this clip from How I Met Your Mother because it does a great job of showing the awkwardness that could potentially arise the morning after Barney and Robin hook up.
After thinking about the Jonas Brothers and other assorted teen stars and their promise rings, I wanted to learn more about the concept of virginity and losing it. So, I started reading Virginity Lost: An intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences by Laura M. Carpenter. In Carpenter’s research for the book, she found that the people she interviewed almost always defined or described their virginity in one of three categories: a gift, a stigma, or a step in the process.
So how would you define it for yourself?
Don’t worry, there’ll certainly be more about this book, but I just wanted to get started thinking broadly about it.
One of my favorite Sunday activities is to read the weekly essay for the Modern Love article in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times. One of the reasons that I started reading about it was after hearing about the college Modern Love essay competition.
This week’s essay is “So tell me everything I know about you” by Joanna Pearson. She recounts what happens when after meeting a guy in a bar, she goes home and googles him. She finds out all sorts of regular details about his life: that he can run a 3:59 mile, his college GPA, a few of his published articles, etc.
This was particularly interesting to me because as computer savvy people who wouldn’t know what to do without Google, college students are prone to this problem. We live in a world where facebook is an addiction and we can learn someone’s favorite movie/book/music and stalk their life through photos way before we get to meet the person.
I think that Pearson makes a great point in urging people to let relationships develop naturally. We should be able to learn details about a person by talking to them, not by reading about them on a computer screen.
Being a lifelong nerd, I used to LOVE when my teachers would pass out the Scholastic fliers or when the book fair came to school. That’s why I was particularly interested when I came across
I’m a little embarassed to admit that I’ve seen my fair share of Hannah Montana episodes. Interning at a DV shelter last summer and babysitting the young girls in the house gave me the opportunity to watch the blonde/brunette teen queen under the guise of work. But what I’m more embarassed to tell you is that I enjoyed watching the show. It was enjoyable in that good ol’ clean fun kind of way. Fortunately, the novelty of the show eventually wore off for me. But that is certainly not the case for the millions of pre-teen girls who are absolutely obsessed with Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus.
Michelle Obama blogs! I really admire what she’s trying to do with keeping women’s issues and rights in the forefront and hopefully she’ll continue to do so. Check her blog out at 
One of my favorite Sunday activities is to read the weekly essay for the Modern Love article in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times. One of the reasons that I started reading about it was after hearing about the college Modern Love essay competition.