Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus Kathleen Bogle (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

made, the person, generally the man, knew who would be the target: his date. The hookup scene carries a lot more uncertainty. Students must utilize many nonverbal cues in order to indicate interest to a potential hookup partner; however, there is a great deal of trepidation about getting one’s signals crossed. As Robert, a sophomore at Faith University, put it:

The likelihood of [hooking up] happening when you are totally sober is very unlikely, I would say. It is only when people start loosening up by drinking, I call it liquid courage. Most guys are shy about going up to pretty girls, [so that is why] I call it liquid courage. They got enough courage up to go up and talk to the girl. And if she was the same status regarding alcohol consumption, then the two people that are attracted to each other will just go ahead and [hook up].

Drinking alcohol makes navigating this difficult system easier for the participants. If one person indicates interest in another and the feeling is not mutual, the party of the first part can easily claim, “I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing,” rather than admitting, “I was rejected.” This also holds true for a regrettable hookup encounter.36 Thus, the awkwardness and uncertainty of the hookup script may encourage participants to use alcohol in a way that the dating script did not. Indeed, the alumni I spoke with dramatically reduced drinking when they went on formal dates because it was defined as “inappropriate” for the postcollege dating script.

UNDER COVER

Alcohol use may be one strategy employed by students trying to cope with the hooking-up system, which has made male-female interaction more covert. In the dating era, many aspects of a date were out in the open. It was socially acceptable for a man to ask a woman out on a date anywhere and at any time (i.e., a grocery store in the afternoon), and the H O O K I N G U P A N D DAT I N G

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invitation for a date was direct and verbal. The man had to ask the woman if she would like to go out with him and risk that she might say

“no.” If she accepted the invitation, the man had to put some thought into where he would take the woman, how they would get to their des-tination, and so forth. The date itself would take place somewhere in public, such as at a restaurant or theater. Regardless of the precise location, the woman was the man’s date (and vice versa) for the evening, something that was readily apparent to onlookers. Thus, the public nature of the date, coupled with the “work” the man had to put in to make the date happen, insured that the dating partners could not easily dis-claim any affiliation with each other.

The hookup era allows for much more private and spur-of-the-moment interaction. For example, the advent of Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook, where students can create personal profiles and con-verse with others by posting messages on their Web page, has revolu-tionized the way young people interact. Although these profiles are often accessible to anyone (and therefore far from private), the internet has made connecting with the opposite sex more anonymous and secretive. Contemporary college students can be “socializing” with others while sitting alone in their dorm rooms or apartments. Other techno-logical advances, such as cell phones, have also made waiting at home for a suitor’s phone call a thing of the past. There is no longer a need for advance plans when today’s students can call or “text” each other to make last-minute arrangements to get together to “hang out.” Additionally, unlike a date, a hookup encounter typically begins at the end of the night with nonverbal cues between two people who have been drinking. If one party is not proud of their hookup partner (due to appearance or some other reason), he or she can act like it never happened. A number of men I interviewed said they were careful about admitting whom they hooked up with for fear of being teased or getting their “balls busted” by their friends.37 Moreover, both men and women who are immersed in the hookup scene occasionally use alcohol as an excuse for having engaged in a hookup with someone they later considered undesirable.38 Thus, the public nature of dating made it a less anonymous way of getting together. Someone of the opposite sex was your date for the evening, he or she was the person “on your arm,” and there was no easy way to pretend otherwise.

Outward signs of romance also accompanied the dating script. Traditional symbols of wooing a partner, like flowers and candy, are no 170

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longer part of the early stages of a romantic relationship in college. In the hookup era, these types of gestures are reserved for special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day, among men and women who are already a couple. Thus, those who participate in the hookup script do not use the customary trappings of courtship that, in the dating era, were public signs of affection among romantic/sexual partners.

MONEY, STATUS, AND WORTH

Gestures such as flowers and candy may also have become passé as money became less significant as a status symbol in the hookup script.

In the dating era, the script called for the dating pair to go out together, which often involved men paying for entertainment of some kind.

However, it was not just a matter of men needing money to date; rather, with dating, men and women began to determine what the other was

“worth.”39 A woman could determine a man’s worth by what kind of car he drove, by his family name, and by what kinds of dates he could afford or was willing to “spring for.”40 A man determined how much a woman was “worth” by considering the “assets” she had that would make it worth it to