There’s a great episode of Sex and the City (I have an obsession, I know) called ‘Are We Sluts?’ In it, Carrie Bradshaw, my main girl, is just starting a relationship with the too-perfect Aiden Shaw. They’ve gone out on a few dates when Carrie invites him upstairs, which means sex. He coyly refuses and she’s left incredibly confused. Is he gay? Does he want to be just friends? Is he religious and doesn’t practice pre-marital sex? What is going on here? It turns out that Aiden wants to wait before sleeping together because he’s a romantic and he wants to take it slow. Carrie and the girls are left feeling baffled because they completely forgot about romance.
In college, dates are hard to come by. “Oh I have a date tonight” is something that would honestly be a laughable statement to most. A date? With who, Prince Harry? Come on, when would that ever happen? While Date Week is a great effort to change this perspective, I’m pretty sure that going on dates remains something that happens rarely and, more so, something that most Bowdoin girls (and boys) don’t expect. The hook-up scene is huge and, often, people get to know each other sexually before they’re willing to be seen together in Thorne or stop to chat in the library. Thinking about all this made me wonder… do we even want romance?
While the episode is called, “Are We Sluts?”, I’m not sure that ‘slut’ is really the word that I want to use here. It’s not that I think that Bowdoin girls are all out hooking up with tons of people (although if that’s what you want to do, go get it!) but more that I wonder about the lack of romance on our campus. And no, holding your hand as you leave a party or making sure you don’t get hit by beer do not count as romantic gestures. The really crazy part of all of this is that, according to an Orient article, only 17% of Bowdoin students are happy with the scene here. The article was written in 2008, though, and as far as I can see, nothing has changed. My friend and her boyfriend went on their first date after they had been officially a couple for a month. This doesn’t seem odd to me, which actually makes me a bit sad.
Why do we settle for something so much less than what we want? I think part of it is that a lot of girls have low expectations for Bowdoin bros. Girls don’t think boys will put forth the effort and they figure that hooking up is better than nothing, so that’s what they accept. And don’t worry; I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. It’s hard to ask for something as out-of-the-norm as a date. It takes a brave person to go on a limb and ask something that could end in rejection. Because, let’s be real, there are guys here who will be dead set in not ever taking a girl out. Tucker Max and Barstool Sports have made sure of that. But I know that there are also guys out there who totally would go out on a date (shout out to a friend of mine who’s been on multiple dates with the girl he’s ‘hanging out with’!).
Is it true that all we have to do is ask? Or maybe dates aren’t what we want. Maybe we want to take a baby step and have a better system of post-hook up acknowledgement. I don’t really know, but 17% isn’t a great percentage of satisfaction. And because I’m a bit of a cliché, I’ll go ahead and quote Gandhi – “Be the change you wish to see in the world” (who thought you could quote Carrie Bradshaw an Ghandi in the same article?). Or just send that text or Facebook friend request! Who knows – maybe the class of ’11, ’12, ’13, or ’14 will go down in Bowdoin history as the class that changed the hook-up culture forever!