(4) Foreword [by Alicia]

"Our society is obsessed with sex, but no one wants to talk frankly about sex. Even now, I’m writing under a pseudonym, not because I’m ashamed of what I’ve done, but because I need protection from the stigma society places on those who publicize the messy details of their skirmishes with sex and love. If I could sign my name to this foreword without fear of losing my job or getting slandered in the media down the road, I would. I’m proud of how I’ve learned from my failures as well as my successes. I suspect the other young women in this book feel the same way."(8)

(8) Introduction

"In the spring of 1998, the principal of a suburban Washington, D.C., middle school called about twenty-five parents to a special night meeting. There, over the annoying hum of the fluorescent bulbs found in eighth-grade classrooms around the country, she announced that as many as a dozen girls had been performing oral sex on two or three boys for most of the school year. The thirteen-and fourteen-year-old students were getting it on at parties, in parks and even in a couple of neighborhood parking lots."(8)

"I remember, to this day, what one girl in particular told me.
“I did it first in the fall with a boy I kinda liked, thinking it would make him like me,” she said. “It didn’t. Then I did it a couple more times in the spring at parties. We would go outside, then come back in and sit around and talk about it. It was no big deal.”
Now, in 1964, my eighth-grade girlfriends and I were no prisses; we had secret places around town where we went to kiss and neck with our boyfriends. But when did teenaged girls—everyday girls, not just the “fast” girls or the “loose” girls—start skipping the smooching and go straight to giving head? How did they come to believe that offering their services to guys they barely knew “was no big deal”?" [mijn nadruk] (9)

"Four months later, she sat across a table from me in a campus coffee shop, her hair pulled back by a Burberry plaid headband. She sketched out the rest of that year at college. She’d had a series of sexual encounters, and none of them amounted to anything. She depended on alcohol to get ready for boys and, when things didn’t work out, to take the edge off her disappointment. Her grades were falling, putting her at risk of losing her scholarship. She had had several sessions with a psychiatrist, who prescribed an antidepressant that made her groggy.
“I’ve dug myself a pretty deep ditch,” she admitted.
Would she participate in a date auction again, knowing what she knew now? I asked.
“Absolutely,” she said. “It was so much fun. The energy, the hype…The next day everyone was saying, ‘Those water polo girls were outrageous.’…I knew I was an object, yeah. But I didn’t feel like a piece of meat at all. If it was in any way degrading, I never would’ve done it.”
Listening to her in the spring of 2005, my mind went back to 1968 again and I found myself making generational comparisons once more. Sure, we used to leave our college dorm windows cracked so our boyfriends could sneak in. But we were terrified of being found out and wouldn’t think of taking off our clothes until the guys were inside and the lights were off. Now girls were stripping in the student center in front of dozens of boys they didn’t know, pantomiming sex onstage and later doing the real thing without saying much, if anything, to their partners. When did conversation and negotiation drop completely out of the picture?
Clearly, young women have changed not only the way they relate intimately to young men but also the way they think about intimacy." [mijn nadruk] (13-14)

"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. High school and college teachers I’ve talked to, as well as researchers, remark on this: 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 interaction. Some girls can handle this; others, like Morgan, are exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually by it. They struggle largely outside the awareness of parents who either don’t know what is going on or are vaguely aware but don’t know what to do." [mijn nadruk] (15)

"The crucial thing to remember in all of this is that hooking up, in the minds of this generation, carries no commitment. Partners hook up with the understanding that however far they go sexually, neither should become romantically involved in any serious way. Hooking up’s defining characteristic is the ability to unhook from a partner at any time, just as they might delete an old song on their iPod or an out-of-date “away” message on their computer." [mijn nadruk] (16)

"This book explores, through the eyes of real girls and young women, how complex this unhooked culture is, how firmly entrenched and how it has affected the thoughts, feelings, behaviors and aspirations of this generation—including those girls who want no part of it. Of particular interest to me, having come of age during the women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, is that the new sexual landscape has been designed in part by girls, to the delight of guys who no longer have to work very hard for girls’ attention or their bodies."(17)

"On another morning I watched a half-dozen girls who had just graduated from an exclusive Virginia high school padding around a North Carolina beach house in camisole tops and low-slung pajama bottoms, cooking breakfast for guy friends and listening to music that would make their mothers blush. It occurred to me that these young women did not worry, as their mothers did, about showing off their imperfect bodies. They did not shy away from talking frankly about sex. As they move through college and into jobs, they might be less apt to worry, as their mothers did, about compromising their identity or independence in bed. These were good things.
But who, I wondered, was telling them that they were worth taking more care with—that they deserved to take care with themselves and insist that boys take care with them, too? Who was reminding them that sex, in any form, is more powerful when you don’t throw it around, more satisfying when it’s savored with someone you love? Who was asking them to think seriously about their goals for happiness beyond the law degree or to consider that having sex with lots of men might limit their ability to sustain a long-term commitment as well as their ability to conceive children? Who was helping them see that loving relationships are uniquely satisfying and manageable—and need not tie them down for the rest of their lives?" [mijn nadruk] (18-19)

[Die tweede alinea is erg normatief en is in feite weer een pleidooi voor 'liefdevolle exclusieve relaties'. Maar waar is de onderbouwing voor dat dat beter zou zijn en dat het andere slechter is?]

"As I explained my research to acquaintances in my neighborhood, church and job, I would often hear something along the lines of “What is wrong with these girls?” That is not the right question. The question should be how this came to be, and what, if anything, should be done about it. Loving may be as basic as breathing, but loving well is a learned behavior. Who and where are young women’s teachers?"(19)

[O nee, iemand die naar de kerk gaat. ]

"The need to be connected intimately to others is as central to our well-being as food and shelter. In my view, if we don’t get it right, we’re probably not going to get anything else in life right."(22)

[Ook al zo'n stelling die eerst maar eens onderbouwd moet worden. Combineer het met religie en we krijgen hier minstens stiekem een pleidooi voor nette exlusieve relaties, monogamie, huwelijk met het argument van 'ik ben zo gelukkig getrouwd'.]

"How, I wondered at the time, can we expect young people to make good decisions about their sexuality—the essence of what it means to be female or male—when adults they know resist discussing it publicly and thereby deny its central place in all of our lives?"(25)

[Goed gezien. Maar: wordt dit weer een pleidooi voor 'over seks praten, maar het niet doen'?]

"To observe this culture in depth, I interviewed dozens of young women, ages sixteen to twenty-one and white, black, Latin, Asian and Middle Eastern. These girls had grown up in various communities across the country and attended public and private schools and universities on the East Coast. Slightly more than half of them had been raised by two biological parents. They shared one significant demographic: Their families were at least moderately well-off. This meant that regardless of race, ethnicity or the address they called home, they dressed similarly, shared the same jargon, listened and danced to the same music, used the same technology to communicate and related to their friends and families in similar ways."(25)

[Waarom die keuze? Nogal belangrijk. ]

"Whether they’re looking to hook up serially or, less often, for something more substantial, what young women want most is control over the guys they’ve set out to conquer."(31)

[Dat vind ik vreemd. Eerder was hookup iets van 'geen commitment'. 'Controle willen' is heel iets anders, is het tegengestelde.]

(35) Section One - Hooking Up: What It Means - Jamie’s story

"My eyes lit up. Here was someone who could look back on her hooking-up experiences with the maturity that comes with age—and from the perspective of someone who had moved into something more permanent."(41)

[Want zo moet het zijn? Dat je van losse relaties naar permanente relaties gaat?]

"Parents of Duke’s 6,500 undergraduates pay a lot of money annually to send their kids there—about $40,000 the year I observed Jamie. Although almost half of the students receive financial assistance, many students come from families of means, and Jamie, I would learn, was no exception."(42)

"“The girls made all the effort. The guys didn’t have to do anything.”"(47)

[Een erg belangrijke uitspraak die alles zegt over rolpatronen.]

"Feelings are discouraged, and both partners share an understanding that either of them can walk away at any time."(49)

[Dat is misschien het idee, maar is dat ook werkelijk zo? ]

"So how is hooking up different from what we used to call “casual sex”? Casual sex always meant intercourse—and it was the exception in college even during the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s, when most of these kids’ parents were dating." [mijn nadruk] (49)

[Waarom zou casual sex altijd neuken betekenen? Ik zie dat niet.]

"When they actually describe intimate encounters, they do so in terms of performance—and how well they perform—rather than how they feel about what they’re doing or why they chose to do it."(56)

"“Come on,” some students say to such comments. “We use condoms.” (And indeed they do, more frequently than past generations.) “Can’t we just enjoy sex without grown-ups getting on our case? Sex without love may be meaningless, but on the list of meaningless things that are fun, it’s pretty high up there.”" [mijn nadruk] (57)

"Certainly, traditional dating can be found on campuses as well, particularly those with active religious affiliations or located in the South."(60)

"Sexual trends among older youths, once established, tend to be imitated by younger kids. At the time, little data existed to expand on these accounts because squeamish federal bureaucrats, who dole out most of the dollars for research on sexuality, had told surveyors not to ask about oral sex, anal sex, heavy petting or sex with a homosexual partner—in short, most of the sexual behaviors included in the catch-all phrase “hooking up.”" [mijn nadruk] (60)

[Typisch]

"What puzzles older adults, and even girls themselves when they’re being honest, is why incredibly smart, talented and seemingly confident young women would let themselves be used when what they’re doing isn’t making them particularly happy."(68)

[Dat is de hamvraag, ja. Om er bij te horen?]

"One subject girls talked about a lot was the power their mothers either had or didn’t have with the girls’ fathers, or, in one girl’s case, a stepfather. Their mothers tended to either depend a lot on their husbands, financially and emotionally, or be completely independent. Marriage as a true partnership, particularly an affectionate partnership, seemed an elusive concept. From what they saw at home, to tell a man “I need you” was like saying “I’m incomplete without you.” A young man might say that and sound affectionate, they said. But to an ambitious young woman, who had been taught from childhood to define power on her terms and defend it against all comers, need signaled weakness." [mijn nadruk] (74)

"The truth is that some of these girls see themselves as winners in almost everything else in their lives and fear they might be losers when it comes to love."(76)

"Girls today largely accept hooking up, if not for themselves personally, for other girls. Some girls, such as Jamie, say they hook up primarily because their girlfriends do."(77)

[Daar is ie dan.]

"In survey after survey, teens say parents influence their decisions about relationships and sex more than anyone else, including their friends."(79)

[Dat middenklassemilieu begint wel op te vallen. En is dus zeer beperkend voor de conclusies die getrokken kunnen worden.]

"What I do know for all the girls in this book, as well as those in my last book, is that Mom’s was the primary voice. And that when pressed, girls admitted wishing for more time with, and attention from, their dads."(80)

"As important as what kids hear from adults is what they don’t hear. For example, evidence suggests that comprehensive sex education in middle and high school delays sexual activity and reduces teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. But as Jamie pointed out to me, instructors sometimes assume sex happens only with a boyfriend, or they feel comfortable talking about sex only within a committed relationship."(81)

[In de VS horen kinderen / jongeren een heleboel niet, behalve: zie van seks af totdat je getrouwd bent. Dus:]

"... it shouldn’t surprise us that young people turn to the media for education and guidance in the area of life they arguably think more about than any other."(83)

"A half-hour spent scanning a newsstand tells a lot about how the commercial interests of New York and Los Angeles think young women should act around young men: part aggressor, part supplicant, rarely the partner. Cosmopolitan, the most popular magazine among college-aged women, is particularly prone to extremes. One issue, to give a random example, carried articles titled: “Boost His Body Confidence!” “A Dinner He’ll Die For!” “When He Moves On Before You Do!” “Clue In to His Carnal Cravings!” Nothing in this issue suggested what a woman might expect a man to do for her."(86)

"Work at the University of Southern California has shown that a significant majority of young people now make most of their social engagements through digital means. Text messages and instant messages are not only convenient and private but enable girls and guys to make bold suggestions at the last minute—and terminate further relationships without the emotion of face-to-face conversation."(87)

"When a girl believes that she cannot risk her time, emotions or independence on commitment, hookups are an easy substitute in which the benefits outweigh the costs—until someone comes along who takes her breath away. Then she simultaneously wants to hold on tightly and run away as fast as she can. No matter how much she resists, she finds herself thinking only about the person she hopes will be her partner. Neuroscience is teaching us that her reactions, based in her biology, are not just the fantasy of poets but also nature’s way, long ago, of making sure our species survived." [mijn nadruk] (89)

[En daar hebben we hem weer. Alsof een of andere voortplantingsdrift de reden is om iemand echt belangrijk te gaan vinden en verliefd te worden. Onzin. ]

"Their confusion was understandable. Unlike other nationalities, Americans use the word “love” for so many things—new friends, comfy old bathrobes, the coffee shop down the street—that it has become virtually meaningless. For much of the last century, outside Hollywood movies, the concept of romantic love, along with tenderness, patience and thoughtfulness, has lost much of its luster."(91)

"Austin, raised in a Christian home with conservative values, seemed more interested in getting to know her than getting her into bed. When they finally did have sex that summer, she discovered a depth of intimacy unlike any she had experienced."(96)

[Is dit een pleidooi voor het christendom? ]

"She was gaining enough distance from her relationship with Austin to realize it had taught her some things about what she wanted in a man. He should be intellectual, have attended good schools and know how to treat her well. It would help if he were good-looking, had money and were someone whom, as her mother put it, she “couldn’t keep her hands off of.”"(107)

[Vreselijk, al die rijkelui's verwachtingen. ]

(109) Section Two - What It Looks Like, What It Feels Like

"Whether they’re looking to hook up serially with anybody who appeals to them or, less often, for a more substantial relationship, what they want most, as Jamie illustrated, is control: They want to decide who, when and, above all, what happens between them and their partners, sexually and otherwise."(110)

"The prize from high school on is the feeling of power they get from setting their sights on a boy, seducing him and walking away at will, the better to avoid commitment, distractions and being hurt."(111)

[Dit lijkt me onjuist. Waar baseert ze zich op? En hoe klassegebonden is dit? Wreekt zich hier die keuze voor de gegoede burgerij?]

"This traditionally male social scheme has been reconstructed by girls who took a good look around and decided that it was better to be predator than prey, better do unto others before they do unto you. The fatal flaw in this scheme is that when girls believe this, they lose their bearings when the tables are turned."(111)

(112) High School - Stories of Sienna, Anna and Mieka

Over Sienna:

"She came into my life online, taking issue with a newspaper article I had written about “players,” another term for teenaged bad boys. “Your article made it seem that girls are helpless, lovesick Ophelias at the whim of men who objectify and play them,” she said. “What you failed to acknowledge is that girls are capable of the same cruel behavior, and possess the power to be players and break hearts, too.
“A new revolution of women is emerging,” she continued. “Girls are retaliating against the boys who once played them by using them. I know several girls who pride themselves on being ‘lady pimps,’ claiming to have no emotional attachment to guys, going out with multiple boys at one time and manipulating them for their own benefit. Fellow girlfriends approve of this behavior and encourage each other.”(...) Off the playing field, the goal, she wrote, “is all about getting/hooking up with the hottest, most well-known guys, and girls will spend a lot of time strategizing and manipulating their way into getting those guys.”" [mijn nadruk] (113)

[Dat is triest en het gaat hier over de leeftijdsgroep 14-18. In plaats van een vriendelijk alternatief te zoeken voor dat botte en wrede mannengedrag nemen deze vrouwen mannengedrag simpelweg over. Niet bepaald een vooruitgang. ]

"Like the college women I would talk to later, Sienna and her friends were under a lot of pressure to “do it all”: to make all A’s (which required two to three hours of homework a night), play varsity sports year-round (which required traveling on weekends) and take part in community service or work at a paying job. Commitment to a boyfriend, carried out with the same intensity, seemed like one expectation too much. It’s one thing, I thought, for older adult women to seek perfection in their jobs, childraising and housecleaning. It’s something else again for fifteen-yearolds to already be victims of what Judith Warner calls, in her book about motherhood, “Perfect Madness.” As I listened to Sienna that day, and later to other girls, I couldn’t help but wonder whether any of them had had a real childhood."(116)

[Maar hoe komen ze aan die attitude? Weer het rijke milieu waaruit ze komen? ]

"Playing guys got you the respect girls in middle school crave most: that of other girls."(122)

[Dat lijkt me ook onjuist, even snel ben je een slet voor de andere meiden, iemand die je moet vermijden.]

"In the winter of freshman year, she attended what she called her “first real high school party,” meaning a party where liquor was served. Alcohol was the guest of honor at virtually every party she went to after that, and weekends started on “Thirsty Thursday” night, just as they do at Duke and other colleges. Hearing Sienna’s stories over the year, I realized that it is in high school where the notion takes hold that if you’re going to drink, you might as well get drunk—like if you’re going to hook up, you might as well hook up with several partners. The idea of moderation in either drinking or sex is, for some students, a foreign concept." [mijn nadruk] (122)

[Dingen doen onder invloed, dat zegt veel over het niet nemen van verantwoordelijkheid.]

"n the CDC sample, teens from white, middle-and upper-income families like Sienna’s were more likely to have engaged in oral sex than other groups."(125)

"After that second party, Sienna came home and collapsed on her bed, crying. She had limited herself to soft drinks and water that evening because as the proud new owner of a driver’s license, she had driven herself to the party. Like anyone who has been the only sober one in a crowd, she discovered how foolish, even mean, drunks can be. “I saw way too much,” she told me." [mijn nadruk] (130)

"Theirs was not simply the behavior of a handful of spoiled, rich kids. In one eighteen-month study, James Moody, a sociology professor at Ohio State University, found similar connections when he mapped the sexual relationships of a largely white public high school in the Midwest. He expected to find a core of sexually active students with a few branches. Instead, he found long chains of associations including one that tied together 288 of approximately 1,000 students in the school. His diagram resembled a necklace with assorted clusters of baubles attached—a student in one circle being intimate with a student in another circle and so on. This, he said, had serious health implications." [mijn nadruk] (131)

Meer over Anna:

"To this generation of girls, the word “boyfriend” suggested being tied down to someone—or worse, unable to function independently."(142)

"Words that some girls use to describe the guys they’re hooking up with carry this attitude of ownership. I’ve heard girls call guys “my toy,” “my plaything,” a “filler boy” (until the real thing comes along), even “my bitch.” It’s as if they think that by speaking as coarsely as guys sometimes do, they will be perceived as having as much power. And if such words are used on them, the words won’t carry the same sting." [mijn nadruk] (145)

"For all their professed sense of control, however, both girls admitted harboring feelings of self-doubt. Anna explained:
“In school, a girl will ask herself, What did he mean when he said ‘Hi’ that way? Did he really call me for homework? Did he hold my hand a little longer than normal when he handed me that pencil? (...) I had to ask myself, If girls battle the same insecurities their mothers did earlier, how much power have they really gained?" [mijn nadruk] (146-147)

[En daarmee haalt ze dus onderuit wat ze voorheen nog zo stellig beweerde. Dat is de pest van interviews. Wat mensen zeggen is niet altijd in overeenstemming met wat ze voelen. Andere auteurs zoals Cohen leggen juist een enorme nadruk op alle onzekerheid op die leeftijd en in die context.]

"For another hour, Anna and her friends dished about sex as nonchalantly as they might discuss their daily calorie intake or workout routines."(151)

Vervolgens komt Mieka aan het woord.

"But when it came to guys, Mieka’s attitude, strategies and language closely resembled those of the better-off white girls. She knew the kind of boy she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after him. She would play him, shrug off any effort on his part to make a commitment and avoid any word, such as “boyfriend,” that might hint at deeper feelings."(161)

"But she was afraid that if she did give him her heart, he would disappoint her, much as her father had. She needed him but suspected she couldn’t count on him.
Jonetta Rose Barras wrote about this phenomenon in her book Whatever Happened to Daddy’s Little Girl? Women whose fathers desert them, physically or emotionally, tend later to go from man to man, seeking to fill a hole that Barras says only gets “larger and deeper.” Each time a man rejects them, or doesn’t come through for them in some way, they think it’s because something is wrong with them. So they search out another man to fill the void, only to be disappointed again." [mijn nadruk] (167)

[Psychologie van de koude grond, wat een oppervlakkigheid.. ]

"Girls the age Mieka was when she first started having sex typically have sex with men a couple of years older, but most of these men were considerably older. Since she was a minor, any one of them could have been charged with statutory rape. When I told her this, she looked puzzled, as well she might. In the black community, she knew, it was not at all uncommon for young girls to have sex with older men. Indeed, national studies show the same tendency. They also show that black girls have intercourse in slightly larger proportions than white girls (though the gap is narrowing), starting at younger ages. Similar proportions of white and black girls report having one-night stands. (Hispanic girls are less likely to have sex and less likely to have one-night stands, although they start having sex at younger ages than white girls.)" [mijn nadruk] (168)

[Ook de wet zit vol waarden en normen vanuit de blanke middenklasse groep.]

"There was something sexy about Robert’s swagger, Tonya admitted, adding, “I don’t like soft boys I can walk over. I like boys who give me a challenge.” I thought back to Sienna describing how nice boys gave girls “the yucks.” Women, young and old, have forever been attracted to the bad boys of the world, but since when did flirting mean taking them on in a physical fight?"(172)

[Weer zo'n ondoordachte bewering. Je stelt natuurlijk geen vragen meer bij wat die meisjes doen als je daar zelf ook al van uitgaat.]

[Ik bedenk net dat het eigenlijk interessanter zou zijn om dezelfde meiden tien jaar later te interviewen. Waarschijnlijk zitten ze dan netjes in een exclusieve relatie en hebben ze kidneren en denken ze totaal anders over relaties, liefde en zo meer. ]

(182) College - Nicole’s story

"Having the upper hand, making the better deal, outfoxing your opponent—the campaign to capture the young man of one’s choice and then drop him at will assumes a decidedly more serious tone once high school girls get to college. Using sex—intercourse, especially—to get revenge makes a young woman feel powerful. With guys, there’s always the risk of feeling powerless, and she can’t afford that: She needs to be powerful in order to both attract guys and keep them at arm’s length so she can stay focused on herself and her studies."(184)

[Die stelling komt dus steeds weer terug. Ik geloof er geen bal van dat dat een algemeen fenomeen is. ]

"These students, like their counterparts at Duke, tend to come from families of means: With tuition, room and board at about $45,000 a year, GW is one of the priciest universities in the country. So what you find among GW’s 10,000 undergraduates are many who have been given much and expect to give back much to the world. Nicole was one of them." [mijn nadruk] (186)

[Het eerste (given much) is zeker, het tweede (to give back) is volslagen nonsense. Via liefdadigheid zeker.]

"She would make out with William, doing everything but intercourse. “I wasn’t ready for that,” she said. Her best friend, Libby, had sex with a longtime boyfriend the year Nicole and Libby were high school seniors." [mijn nadruk] (189)

[Seks hebben is dus neuken, 'making out' is alles behalve neuken en is dus geen seks hebben en dus ben je dan nog maagd. Heel verwarrend taalgebruik waarmee de auteur geen enkele moeite heeft. Zie ook verdeerop:]

"“Have you ever had sex?” she asked.
“Yeah,” James said. “Seven times. And you?”
Nicole had not but was ready to. At eighteen, she was older by a year than the age at which girls, on average, first have sex. She didn’t know that, but she did know that she was embarrassed to admit that she was a college freshman and still a virgin. Virginity in college implied that, no matter how hot you were, you didn’t want or like sex. “I was tired of waiting,” she said. “James and I were together, and I wanted to know what it was like.”" [mijn nadruk] (192)

"But as I thought more carefully about how Nicole talked about James, I realized she didn’t feel much lust or love for him. Sex with him “felt like something,” she told me, “but it wasn’t very interactive.” She was not the first girl to talk to me about sex in disappointed terms, and that made me sad. Here these girls were, targeting boys, planning and executing their strategies, risking pregnancy, disease and heartbreak—and being let down time and again by sex that wasn’t as satisfying as they had hoped it would be. One of their goals, as well as one of their best weapons, wasn’t what they expected."(194)

[Als je op de hoogte bent, is dat heel logisch en kun je er iets mee. Maar dat is waarschijnlijk het punt: niemand van die jongeren is op de hoogte.]

"She felt hot, sexy and ready to pick up where they had left off. But she also was afraid of being turned down, thus the beer. “Liquid courage,” she and her classmates called it."(200)

[Weet zo'n voorbeeld van alle onzekerheid. Controle? Niet echt. ]

"Surveys consistently show that girls experience more negative feelings in sexual situations than guys do. But a pitcher of beer can do wonders to ease fear and feelings of insecurity. Plus, as Patty explained to me, if you wake up the next day alongside someone who is “coyote ugly” (“You’d rather gnaw off your arm than be with him”), you can slough it off by saying, “I was sooooo wasted. I don’t remember anything.”
A hangover is a small price to pay for exoneration. Alcohol is the social lubricant that fuels the unhooked culture, beginning in high school and particularly in college, where intercourse becomes more common. Moderate drinking among college-aged students has declined slightly over the last two decades, but binge drinking, defined as five or more drinks in a row for men, four or more for women, has remained constant." [mijn nadruk] (201)

"As dates and serious boyfriends have dwindled in number, girls have become each other’s life-support systems."(213)

"Occasionally I wondered if these girls ever took time out to be by themselves and reflect, apart from their girlfriends. They swarmed in clusters on the quad, in the coffee shop and in the dorm—piling in threes and fours onto a single bed and laughing at all the crazy stuff they had done that day. They sent instant messages to each other on the computer (a kind of giant conference call) and text-messaged each other on their cell phones a dozen times a day." [mijn nadruk] (213)

[Dat eeuwige erbij willen horen is fundamenteel voor een hoop ellende. ]

"Animal data, including human data, strongly suggest that anxious females cope by seeking support from other females, a tendency thought to be based in the primitive need to protect offspring."(215)

[De auteur kom heel vaak met dit soort verklaringen uit de evolutionaire psychologie, ze neemt die kritiekloos over.]

"Nicole felt pleased—and nervous. At ease being the pursuer, she wasn’t sure how to feel about being pursued. He’s brilliant, she thought. He’s a second-year medical student. No way is he interested in me."(220)

[Weer zo'n voorbeeld van onzekerheid. Controle? Waar dan? ]

"Nicole’s mother, Daphne, gave her permission to fly to Las Vegas, but not without qualms. What if it did turn serious? Like many upper-middle-class parents, she viewed boyfriends as a dangerous distraction from college studies. Nicole had admitted to me earlier in the year that she took her mother’s caution to heart: “It affects me a lot. I know how hard she’s worked to get me to college, and I wouldn’t want to let her down.”" [mijn nadruk] (221)

[Typisch. Liefhebben is minder belangrijk dan presteren.]

"Nicole considered Michael’s invitation the day following their date. He wasn’t just another guy she was interested in hooking up with. He had looks, intelligence and class. She could see herself in a relationship with him—but at what cost to her independence? Her grades? Her friends? Her sanity? In her world, there was nothing like casual dating. You either hooked up with a guy or attached yourself to him. She called to decline, saying the airplane tickets were too expensive." [mijn nadruk] (223)

[En dat is het gevolg. Controle? Evenmin. Angst eerder. ]

"Of course, young women’s reluctance to give all for romantic love at this time in their lives is hardly irrational. Love is not an easy emotion for anyone to live with day after day, and for young women who work hard and play hard, it can embrace them in an almost paralyzing squeeze." [mijn nadruk] (224)

[En weer komt ze met evolps. verklaringen. Nog wel van Helen Fisher, brrr. ]

(239) Section Three - How We Got There

"Often, however, adults pass on ways of thinking and being without knowing that they do so. Their children absorb these habits of the mind and heart and then interpret them in their own way, influenced by their own experiences. This is how the unhooked culture came to be and, quite frankly, why it’s so difficult to explain. I wish I could tell you, as some people will, that hooking up is the result of a hypersexualized media, or rapacious commercial interests, or parents who don’t spend much time with their kids once those kids become teenagers. It is a bit of all three of those things and a bit of many others. I have chosen three of the others to write about—three developments in our culture over the last several decades whose influences surfaced over and over during the year that I spent with my young women. Considered together, they do not explain everything. But they explain a lot." [mijn nadruk] (240)

Die drie zijn: het feminisme, 'Parents and the Greenhouse Effect', en 'the College Environment'.

(240) Feminism - Shaida’s story

"Shaida, a bronze-skinned, black-haired Persian with a stud in her right nostril, arrived from California with a partial answer: A strong woman who desired a particular man should, provided he was willing, be able to take that man to bed and do whatever she damn well pleased. She didn’t have to love him or even know him very well. If she couldn’t do this, she wasn’t really empowered, no matter how good her grades were or which sorority she belonged to."(243)

[Dat soort 'feminisme', weet je wel.]

"Feminism is undeniably a driving force behind the phenomenon of hooking up. What it should say about sex and relationships has been a matter of debate since the birth of the modern movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Women’s liberation back then meant, among many other things, being free to have a sexual appetite and act on it with as much abandon as women assumed men did."(245)

[Raar om daar de nadruk op te leggen. Feminisme was wel even iets meer. Mannen na gaan doen is een slecht idee. Vaak werd trouwens van mannen ook het typische mannengedrag verwacht. Geen vooruitgang.]

"Feminists such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem made Americans aware of the sexual double standard and gave women permission to rethink what they wanted out of sex and relationships, including marriage—healthy developments, on the whole. They also drew needed attention to demeaning portrayals of women in the media and the prevalence of sexual and domestic violence."(246)

[Dat is meer in de richting.]

"But feminists have never spoken with one voice. By the early 1980s, new voices had emerged, some of whom said the earlier position on sex was too extreme. Power in one’s private life did not necessarily have to look like power in public life; sexual experimentation was valuable but in the context of meaningful, mutually respectful and, yes, loving relationships. These women weren’t as well-known as their predecessors and may not always have acted according to their rhetoric, but they articulated standards that forced women and men to think about their desires and behavior."(246)

[De vrije-keuze-feministes.]

"She decided to play the sex kitten to force a public debate over the fine line between being the subject of one’s life and the object of someone else’s. She hadn’t hooked up that much in high school, but found that being flirtatious came easily to her. As a freshman, she had an almost endless supply of partners to choose from. She went for the types who had rarely given her the time of day in Irvine: a lacrosse player, a football player, several fraternity guys. With each one, she stopped before intercourse. Sex, in any form, would be on her terms."(251)

[Gewoon een arrogante ergerlijke mooie vrouw dus.]

"This can be one result of being in the habit of hooking up: You don’t know how to do things differently once you realize you want more. Without a dating structure, you have had no experience in what an appropriate first step might be. And even if you ask a guy to go out for coffee, he may think you’re hoping for more."(275)

[O, wat een ernstig probleem :-( . Deze Shaida is bijzonder cerebraal en koud. Het 'rape-verhaal' verderop is nu net een voorbeeld van nee zeggen en ja doen. Ze is in feite erg onzeker omdat ze zichzelf helemaal niet kent.]

(286) Parents and the Greenhouse Effect - Cleo’s story

"Whatever she did once school was over, she wasn’t sure she wanted her plans to include Steven. “I don’t want to lose the love of my life,” she had told me privately, “but I also don’t want to compromise my experiences for anybody.”"(287)

"As much as she tried to block them out, she couldn’t help but hear, over and over, their messages about the perfect partner and the perfect time to become involved with him. Her parents, like others of their generation, had made a large financial and emotional investment in their daughter and didn’t want her to make a mistake by attaching herself to the wrong guy. Like Shaida’s mother, they preached the values of self-sufficiency and independence. Cleo didn’t want to make a mistake, either, but she wanted a boyfriend. So she hung on to Steven, who, in her mind, was good enough. And she hooked up with other guys for two reasons: virtually everyone else she knew did, and Steven, as great as he was, wasn’t Mr. Perfect. In her heart of hearts, she didn’t want to just settle. She had never had to before."(288)

[Een verwend nest dus, vast uit een rijk gezin.]

"This generation of kids, or, more appropriately, their parents, might be characterized as “maximizers,” a word first popularized in a Scientific American article. Maximizers must try everything and are rarely content, unlike “satisficers,” an oddly spelled concept from that same essay, for whom most things are good enough. Not surprisingly, maximizers tend to live in families with at least a moderate amount of money." [mijn nadruk] (291)

[Zoals ik al zei ... ]

"Parents are not the only culprits; perfectionism in this country is a viral infection nourished by the Madison Avenue–inspired notion that we can eliminate facial wrinkles and sexual dysfunction." [mijn nadruk] (294)

"My sense is that as their daughters get older, parents begin worrying that crushes may become too significant, distracting girls from more important things like algebra homework. The physical risks of sex can be addressed with a pill, patch and condom, but there’s no contraception available for the heart. So they signal their girls, either consciously or unconsciously, to “love moderately,” as Daphne put it, lest that college scholarship go to someone else." [mijn nadruk] (304)

"They might be engaging in oral sex but wouldn’t think of holding hands as they walked across campus. They were having sex but not making love."(305)

"Cleo had no vision of what good love, good sex and meaningful work looked like in combination. Like so many parents, hers refrained from demonstrating affection for each other in front of their children, leaving Cleo and Nicole to view marriage as, at best, a manageable service contract."(306)

[De puriteinse manier van een huwelijk hebben.]

"Young women from divorced or single-parent homes may have even less to go on."(307)

"Cleo said her mom had a complex series of goals and objectives for her daughters, and one of them was that they marry Greeks, preferably wealthy Greeks. A medical student or lawyer would be nice. Neither Steven nor Jack fit her bill of particulars."(308)

[De ambities van de rijken.]

"Indeed, many in their generation have. They are spectacular specimens raised in glass houses that are temperature-controlled and as disease-free as humanly possible. It is a natural desire of most parents to protect their children, and these children have been protected as no generation before them by parents who can afford it."(311)

[Noem dat maar beschermen. Zie de rest van de alinea.]

"Their opportunities for learning how to be responsible for their own wants are few."(312)

[Precies.]

"But will they make good lovers or good marriage partners? They have learned little about taking risks, making tough choices, attending to others’ needs or weathering disappointment on their own—in short, some of the tools they will need to forge strong, intimate bonds and forgo connections that are not good for them."(312)

"For girls whose mothers have decided to make raising their children their profession, the attention can be particularly intense."(313)

[Hoezo beslissen? Vrouwen horen in rijke conservatieve kringen normaalgesproken niet te werken ]

"“To find someone, that’s really scary,” he said. “Everyone wants that, but it’s for the rest of your life.” Here it was again, from a young man this time, the view that either you hooked up or you were “married.” There was nothing in between."(324)

[Wat wil je? Dat is wat de hele samenleving daar op je afvuurt over echte relaties en het huwelijk.]

(330) The College Environment - Victoria’s story

"Until this point, Victoria’s life, like Jamie’s, Nicole’s and Cleo’s, had been lovingly assembled by well-to-do parents with big dreams for their daughters and the means to help make those dreams come true. Nicholas’s phone call had pulled the bottom out of their gilded cage, and Victoria was, for the moment, in free fall.
College freshmen from privileged families go from prescribed course schedules and sports calendars to no schedules, from being restricted by V-chips and limited driving hours to no restrictions, from negotiating curfews with parents to setting their own hours. What to eat, what to study and whose bed to sleep in are only a few of the calls they make every day once they’re on campus. For those who don’t finish college, this free period before full-time employment may last only two or three years. But for those intent on at least a bachelor’s degree, it lasts four to six years." [mijn nadruk] (337)

[Waarom wordt dit gekoppeld aan rijke milieus? Geldt dat niet voor ieder een dan, die gaat studeren en een zelfstandig leven gaat leiden? ]

"The results of this freedom, on all but the most religious campuses, can boggle the minds of older adults who grew up in more regimented times. Core course requirements are looser, and students are given more ways in which to meet them. Students may design their own majors and take many courses pass/fail. In their time outside class, they can choose to invite anyone to their rooms at any hour, perform shows on campus that involve stripping down to almost nothing and slip considerable amounts of alcohol into parties unremarked."(342)

"The pendulum may be beginning to swing back, particularly when it comes to underage drinking. A recent Harvard study reported that one out of three colleges now bans alcohol on campus for any student, including those twenty-one and older."(343)

[Dat zou vanzelfsprekend moeten zijn.]

"It is safe to say that dating would not have vanished completely, nor hooking up become as common as a cold, were it not for coed dorms and unrestricted visiting hours. For adolescents thinking about having sex, opportunity matters—a lot."(344)

"Students I talked to, while not wanting tough restrictions restored, admitted there are advantages to limitations on opportunity."(346)

"Lest they be seen as moralistic preachers, college authorities have confined their oversight to physical—as opposed to physical and emotional—hazards. This is particularly true of sex. As Le pointed out, opportunities for instruction in the mechanics of sex are plentiful, but conversations about the context and aftermath of sexual relationships are not. This is in part because college authorities, like parents, are frequently uncomfortable talking about the negative, as well as positive, emotions of intimacy. So they put the entire responsibility on students to figure things out for themselves."(353)

[Die nemen dus uit preutsheid hun verantwoordelijkheid evenmin als de ouders.]

"A national study of young people, religious and secular, in which Wilcox was involved, concluded what Victoria could have told the researchers: that students of faith are less likely to be depressed, less likely to smoke, drink and have sex, and more satisfied with their families and school. This leaves one wondering whether after all the ambitious childrearing that parents of this generation of students have done—all the Discovery toys, Suzuki piano lessons, four a.m. swim practices, SAT practice classes and summer camps in faraway places—they might have done as well or better and saved a lot of money by just taking their kids to church, temple or mosque." [mijn nadruk] (370)

[Schijnzekerheid bieden helpt blijkbaar? Daar is niets op tegen?]

"Religious conservatives on campus preach abstinence and advocate virginity pledges whose overall impact is negligible, she wrote, and liberals talk only about sex and not religion."(371)

(375) Section Four - Hooking Up: Why It Matters - Alicia’s story

"Hooking up offers girls the opportunity to exert their independence, explore their sexual desires and capabilities and try to keep their emotional lives under control. But some experts in the field of adolescence, even as they acknowledge the upsides, say hooking up can also act as an obstacle to real intimacy, which they call the hallmark of a satisfying adult life. They see potential for long-term dangers to young women and young men—physical, emotional and practical—if hooking up comes to define a way of being.
Near the end of my research I was posing tough questions to these experts as well as to young women, and watching Alicia live out much of what I was hearing about. This section reflects the thinking of those specialists, with Alicia as both subject and key witness to their concerns."(377)

"One advantage a young woman enjoys today, which past generations of women did not, is that when someone catches her interest, she can do more than bat her eyelashes, tip her cigarette for a light or wait for days while he works up his nerve to ask her out."(379)

[Dat suggereert dat dit allemaal zo geëmancipeerd verloopt, een stuk empowerment weet je wel. Maar ik denk dat de rolverdeling nog steeds erg traditioneel is. Maar daar is natuurlijk weer niet naar gevraagd.]

Onder de nadelen: de soa's. En condooms worden niet genoeg gebruikt.

"So, in addition to worrying about whether her new partner will call the day after a tumble in the sack, or whether she is pregnant, a girl has to worry about how many other people he has slept with and whether he has given her a disease with lifelong implications that nothing, other than not having sex, could have absolutely prevented. She may also worry about how many people she sleeps with and whether she may be passing on a disease she doesn’t yet know she has."(381)

"Did she always insist on her partner using a condom in the past? I asked. Girls aged fifteen to nineteen report condom use more than any other age group, but even then, the proportion is only two out of five and declines in college. The young woman admitted that on a couple of occasions, she had not." [mijn nadruk] (382)

[Waarom niet? Zou ik nu vragen. De auteur doet dat weer niet, wil niet te confronterend gevonden worden.]

Je kunt seksuele intimiteit niet loskoppelen van emotionele intimiteit.

"Says Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a University of Michigan psychologist who researches depression, “Something about dating behavior and dating relationships can be toxic to girls’ health.”
Significantly, the shorter the relationship, the more likely depression will show up. Most hookups are nothing if not brief. This means that girls who hook up serially have to work very hard—harder than they may know or admit—to squash or deny natural feelings of connection, making themselves even more vulnerable to depression."(384)

[Niet voor mannen dan? Ook weer zo cliché.]

Andere problemen: anorexia vanwege de grote rol van uiterlijk, date rape (grey rape).

"Most of the students, however, were unwilling to give young women a bye. Immersed in a party culture centered on drinking and hooking up, they shrugged off encounters such as Alicia had as unfortunate instances of poor judgment and miscommunication on the part of both partners. Their questions ran along the line of, How’s a guy supposed to know that a girl wasn’t being coy when she said “No” or “Not right now” or “We should stop”? If a girl regrets what she did the next morning, does that make him a rapist?"(397)

[Dat zijn voornamelijk vrouwen, zegt ze zelf. Dus vrouwen praten zelf weg dat het om date rape gaat. Ze kunnen niet eens aanduiden dat het om geweld gaat, dat het tegen hun wil gebeurt, mannen worden verontschuldigd.]

"So why doesn’t she say that? For girls like her, as smart and assertive as they appear, the answer has to do at least in part with a poor sense of self-worth, she thinks. “I’m always scared the guy won’t like me if I don’t give him satisfaction.” She may say no once, as she did with both Kevin and Pat, “but they didn’t listen and I didn’t know how to say it again. My fear of being worthless outweighed my fear of being raped. How messed up is that?”" [mijn nadruk] (400)

[Waaruit weer eens blijkt dat onzekerheid en gebrek aan zelfvrtrouwen het kernpunt vormen, niet dat beetje meer controle dat die vrouwen denken te hebben of volgens de auteur hebben. ]

"Surprisingly little research has been done on what kinds of relationships lead to good marriages. But the traits that characterize good marriages are firmly established and include trust, respect, admiration, honesty, selflessness, communication, caring and, perhaps more than anything else, commitment. Hookups are about anything but these qualities. It’s as if young women are practicing sprints while planning to run a marathon." [mijn nadruk] (403)

[En wat is een goed huwelijk? Een huwelijk dat lang duurt? En kun je geen relaties hebben met die eigenschappen zonder dat je trouwt? En kun je geen commitment hebben terwijl je 'vreemd gaat'? En zo verder. ]

"Perhaps guys worry that the girls chasing them are taking over yet another role in life that guys used to own. Perhaps they fear that they won’t be able to live up to girls’ expectations of them in bed. (Campus counselors do, in fact, report an increase in the number of young men complaining of impotence, and the sale of Viagra and other performance-enhancing drugs is brisk among this age group.) Perhaps, even, the guys are afraid of being “tossed” themselves." [mijn nadruk] (408)

[Natuurlijk is dat zo. Mannen die daarvan geen last hebben zijn het probleem. ]

"Hooking up may be all about sex—the use of sex to land a guy or the pursuit of a guy to get sex. But it’s not about good sex, let alone great sex. It’s not about the kind that can emerge after the first wave of lust, when caring about and trusting someone allows each partner to experiment with what gives them the most pleasure. It’s not about the sex that puts a spring in your step and makes you carry yourself with self-confidence. The girls I observed almost always ended up disappointed by sex."(412)

(436) A Letter to Mothers and Daughters

[Ik had liever rationele conclusies gezien los van de briefmanier om dingen tegen de doelgroep te zeggen. ]