Off the Hook

Does just hooking up with a guy make you feel less empowered?

By Anna David

You don't have to be an expert to understand that hooking up has, in much of society, replaced dating. After all, there were a slew of stories about "friends with benefits" not so long ago, with all sorts of women swearing that these types of casual sex relationships were empowering, if not simply more convenient and low-maintenance than, say, love.

But through an admittedly unscientific survey--that is, my own experiences and consoling conversations with my other single friends--I've determined that whatever the common belief about hooking up is, these situations leave most women feeling less than empowered. I'm not saying that casual sex fills us with shame or horror or makes us feel like we should be trotting around town wearing some sort of a scarlet letter. It just isn't fulfilling. We're genetically predisposed to mate, after all, and we release oxytocin, a bonding hormone, when we get busy. Of course, I'm not saying that hooking up is a dismal experience for every woman; there are exceptions all over the place and maybe--who knows?--I'm just a sexual conservative at heart. But it seems to me that going against what our bodies are naturally predestined to do simply has to feel unnatural. 

No one, perhaps, knows this better than Laura Sessions Stepp, the Washington Post reporter whose recent book, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both, examined three groups of young women over an academic year to attempt to understand what hooking up was all about. And she determined that the majority of women who hook up only do it because it's the sole way they know of to meet men.

Of course, women aren't simply victims in this arrangement. "A very big part of it is the idea that a relationship ties you down," Stepp says. "Women don't have the same amount of time that they used to have for relationships; there are more women entering Harvard Medical School than men and higher numbers of female college graduates than male ones. Young women these days are focused on their graduate school degrees and getting jobs. Relationships are messy, time-consuming, and you get hurt."

Although Stepp's book focuses on college-age girls, she believes the behavior doesn't stop just as soon as you hang up your cap and gown. "One of the girls from my book, who is now 24, was saying that the bar scene is the same as it was when she was in college," says Stepp, who has received e-mails from 50-year-old women who say that people their age are still hooking up. "They don't date. One woman wrote, 'Some guy asked me out on a date and I was like, Woo hoo.'" 

Obviously none of this is entirely new--as Stepp says, we can actually trace casual sex back to the advent of the Pill in 1960--but she believes that shows like Sex and the City, Laguna Beach, and The OC have made it all seem "culturally okay."

So if we're not fulfilled and continuing to perpetuate the cycle, what can be done? Stepp has some suggestions. "Every single woman has male friends, and that's one place to start," she says. "Start talking to them about it. The old yoga saying, 'Awareness is key' is important here." Additionally, Stepp says, when a guy asks you back to his place, you should instead say, "Let's go out to dinner or to a movie. I don't want to just hook up with you."

Unless, of course, you're one of the exceptions.