Kiss and Tell: Mastering the Hookup Scene

Let Me Explain to You Why We Need to Make Love.

I was recently given a proposal. Not to marry, nor to date. No, this white knight was proposing we have sex. Regularly. I was speechless. I was insulted. And I was considering it.

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One of my long-time friends, let’s call him Rob* to save us all a little embarrassment, approached me out of the blue one Tuesday night and asked me to join him in the relationship that seems to have replaced dating: hooking up. This new norm definitely doesn’t involve dates; it may not even involve any sort of admiration for the other person. But it does certainly involve frequent physical encounters of the hot, sweaty, no-strings-attached kind.

The rise of the “hookup culture” among young adults has received a lot of attention from psychologists and sociologists trying to figure out why dating has gone down the drain in favor of raunchier relationships between the sexes. “Hookup culture is pervasive primarily on college campuses, emphasizes hooking up as a sexual behavior over the establishment of relationships and sees hooking up as a way to achieve some kind of sexual pleasure without having commitment,” says Clare Forstie, a grad student at Northwestern University who specializes in gender relations.

Research on the phenomenon credits hooking up with both destroying and confirming traditional gender roles and remains largely inconclusive. “I think that it signals some erosion of the sexual double standard,” says Alice Eagly, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. “Women may have increased agency, depending on the specifics of how hook-ups come about. This change increases their relational and sexual options; they are under less pressure to fall into boyfriend-girlfriend more stable relationships,” she continues.

For Emily*, a junior at Northwestern University, the added sexual options afforded by hookups are still a poor substitute for the lack of a dating culture in college, but she figures if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. “If I could stop hooking up I would,” she says. “But I get bored.”

She’s not trying to be irreverent. The rapid decline of traditional dating has left her – and many of her peers – feeling pigeon-holed with no other alternatives. Rather than spending college on the sidelines, she’s diving into the hookup pool. She walks me through a typical hookup: “I only hookup with friends so I usually – well, get drunk – and then call them if they’ve expressed interest before…and then they come over and we do stuff,” she tells me.

It’s this vague definition of “stuff” that makes the idea of hooking up such a grey area. The phrase has become a euphemism for everything from kissing to full-blown penetration, and the inability to come to a consensus makes for a lot of confusion in conversation.

So before we can properly evaluate the pros cons, causes and consequences of hooking up, let’s classify the various varieties of sexualized encounters that populate the hookup spectrum. The simple answer: it depends on whom you ask. Hooking up can be (a) a dance floor make out to (b) sex with penetration to (c) anything in between; it can be (a) a one-time occurrence, (b) an established reoccurrence or (c) a maybe, possibly, random reoccurrence; it can be (a) nameless or (b) with a friend. Any combination of the above and their associated spectrums qualifies. (I’m currently wrestling with a triple-B situation – the most intense of the hooking up scenarios.)

Emily’s hook ups tend to be of the CCB variety – she qualifies an encounter as a hookup once there is a change in venue. After she leaves to go back to her place or his, whatever may follow has entered hookup territory. I would have to agree. It’s easy enough to find yourself in the shadowy corner of the bar or some frat house’s steamy dance floor in a lip lock with that cute guy you’ve been eying all night. Those encounters are a dime a dozen and most girls I know wouldn’t bat an eyelash at a quick make-out as part of a typical evening out.

A scene change signals intent. For one, it affords more privacy for the encounter to proceed further towards the B/C end of the sexual intensity spectrum. It also signals the woman’s agency in the affair; bringing the conquest home or stepping onto his turf is the perfect situation for the girl who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.

There is a highly visible camp of researchers that credits hooking up with giving women more agency in relationships and ultimately a focus on pursing other goals. This is why: “Low commitment sexual options can be compatible with an early career focus for women,” says Eagly. “More college-educated women in the workforce expecting to have serious, successful careers helps raise the age of marriage and child-bearing.” Emily and I both know a lot of women who approach dating this way. I for one have always admired these girls with their ability to strut into a bar and sink their talons into any guy they want without a single thought about tomorrow. It’s so badass. So confident. So, well, practical. Forstie has seen this school of thought become more prevalent in her time at university. “Young women in college might see [hooking up] as a good thing to give them more agency to focus on self-development,” she says.

I tend to agree. Gen Y grew up on a diet of “you can do anything you put your mind to” and college is the time to make all of your dreams come true before getting tied down – or so we’re told. The mere thought of a dating relationship stresses me out. Where would I possibly find the time in my already over-committed schedule? “It does have something to do with women’s ability now to focus on career versus developing relationships,” Forstie tells me. “In the past the idea was that women went to college for the MRS degree, but I think that’s falling away, especially when we think about why they have hookups as opposed to developing relationships.” My to do list is long enough without adding someone else’s needs and happiness to it. One text to Rob and I can fulfill my needs for intimacy and my desire for flattery and then send him on his merry way until I get bored again. The romantic in me feels like I should be insulted. But the ability to control and define every encounter speaks to my practicality.

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But that’s not the case for everyone. “I don’t think it’s empowering,” says Emily. “If I hookup with someone I usually feel bad about it. It’s tarnishing my friendship or if it’s someone I don’t know it’s like ‘oh my God.’ It’s an intimate act that you’re sharing with someone. It’s a big deal for me.”

Emily more readily aligns herself with the research camp that suggests hooking up is really just a way to achieve some stability in this transient life stage. Kathleen Bogle, author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus and Professor of Sociology at LaSalle University, found that many collegiate women enter the hookup scene for reasons other than just sex. Intimacy, even just for the night, is a big motivator. “It’s such a forced short-term intimacy but I still feel close to people when I’m hooking up with them,” says Emily. “That intimacy is nice because I don’t feel that on a daily basis… everyone is so focused on themselves and on school you don’t have time to make deeper connections.”

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And then again, maybe we just like the attention. Maybe it’s not about power or stability at all. Women clearly aren’t hooking up just to achieve sexual pleasure – because the truth is, most don’t. Only 19 percent of women achieve orgasm during a hookup. Men, on the other hand are orgasming at rates over double that of their partners.  The real sense of pleasure for women comes from being flattered, complimented and flirted with according to Emily and her friends. It seems kind of demeaning. But I totally get it. My inner feminist is ashamed to admit it, but I was flattered that Rob chose me. I love that he’s pursing me so intently. Who doesn’t want to be wanted? Emily sees no shame in it at all. It’s natural she tells me. “It’s nice to have reassurance… I like it when people call me pretty,” she says. “If someone doesn’t call me pretty I’ll never hookup with them again. Dead serious.”

Still, I was surprised to find myself actually considering Rob’s offer. At first, his forwardness has been an affront to our friendship, but I was beginning to see how that could be the ideal arrangement. I mean, we respect each other…right? Emily almost exclusively hooks up with friends for that reason. “If we’re friends it’s not like they’re using me – even if they are,” she says. “I only hook up with one frat and they’re all friends…I’ve worked my way through all three pledge classes.”

“Do they know about it?!” I asked.

“Oh yeah! I talk about it to them,” she laughs.

She also warns that she’s lost a lot of friends this way. In fact, she hooked up with an old friend just a couple of nights ago, she tells me, and that ended the worst of them all. “This guy who’s been my friend from freshman year pulled a move on me and we ended up hooking up. It was actually really nice because he’s my friend so we know each other and we’re comfortable. So I had a lot of fun. Then I found he basically has a girlfriend so I was pissed,” she says with special emphasis on the pissed. Needless to say that friendship is over.

Losing friends isn’t the only downside to hooking up. There’s a camp of researchers that argues that participation in the hookup culture actually decreases a woman’s agency and slaps her with a sexual stigma. “It can be demeaning as enthusiastic female participants can be labeled as sluts,” says Eagly. “Men are less likely to get labeled.” Bogle, finds that far from abolishing the sexual double standard, it is alive and well in hookup culture. In her interviews with 76 college students and alums, she often heard men described as “studs” and women deemed “sluts.”

This stigmatized double standard is as strong as ever in Emily’s world. Most of her friends hook up a lot more – and a lot farther – than she does, but as a pint-sized sorority girl with a big personality, her antics never slip below the gossip radar. “I hate that people get reputations,” she says. “I’ve hooked up with three guys this year – four as of last night – but that makes me a whore?”

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Like the culture itself, Emily’s hookups are full of contradictions. Although she says without hesitation that she would much rather date than be a participant in this culture of casual encounters, it “weirds her out” on occasions that a guy does text after a hookup, and she almost never lets her conquests stay the night.

The thing is, hooking up is a relatively young phenomenon – it only made it’s appearance into mainstream culture in the past six or seven years according to Eagly’s estimates – so there’s simply not a lot of research to show the psychological and sociological effects that it will have on traditional gender roles and women’s agency later in life.

We can argue about what this means, who controls it, what each encounter entails, but we can’t argue that it’s not happening. A study published in the Journal of Personal and Social Relationships reported that 70 percent of college students had at least one hookup by the time they graduated. And that was in 2002.

Hooking up can sometimes be pretty hard to escape. Every time I go out I see it happening. Men, women, friends, strangers – everybody is doing it. If I don’t accept Rob’s offer, then what? I spend all my Tuesday nights alone? That doesn’t feel like a choice. That doesn’t feel like agency. Real agency comes from separating what you want from what you think you should want – and then going out to get it. Don’t get me wrong. I still admire those badass girls with their ability to operate like well-dressed headhunters every weekend – I just don’t think I’m one of them.

*Names have been changed

• college dating
• dating & hooking up
• sex