Hook Up Culture Research Paper

Our generation is the first generation where it is considered acceptable to sleep around with a different guy every week. Sure, they might get called a “slut” or “whore” but the depressing truth is most of them are okay with it because the ones calling them that are just as guilty as the person being labeled. For this reason, it seems as if girls do not care if they are getting called provocative names. Personally, females need to hold themselves to a higher self-worth, which talks “about who you are, not about what you do” (Firestone). Incidentally, numerous people believe that hook-up culture is just involved with college students, unfortunately hook-up culture is starting at a younger age. In addition, more and more high schoolers are getting involved in the hookup culture. At this point, lunch conversations have changed from talking about how hard school classes are or how awful the cafeteria food is, to talking about how many people, each person at the table has slept with, as if it is a competition and the person with the highest number is the winner and they should be proud. It is typical to think of high school boys high fiving each other after explaining to their buddies about their recent hook up, but our generation has drifted to females doing the same. According to new research,” boys who engage in this kind of sexualized behavior say they have no intention to be hostile or demeaning — precisely the opposite. While they admit they are pushing the limits, they also think they are simply courting” (Pesta). “A hookup culture is one that accepts and encourages casual sex encounters, including one-night stands and other related activity, which focus on physical pleasure without necessarily including emotional bonding or long-term commitment.” Sleeping with a different guy each weekend is not an accomplishment. Along with one night stands people start losing what really makes them happy. Not only are they losing what is important in a relationship, they are missing out on all the fun and suspense in a relationship encounters. The hookup culture throughout the U.S. in the past ten years has been destroying the ideals of a relationship from long term to one-night stands. High school parties is a primary event where relationship ideals are ruined due to hook-ups. In an article written by Sasha R.P. Kogan a junior at The Bronx High School of Science talks about her own experiences with hook up culture in her high school with high school parties being a main attraction for males to hook up. Sarah starts by describing her first high school party. “I was completely sober, utterly clueless, and absolutely scared out of my mind. Enclosed as I was in the dim lighting, pounding music, and hundreds of dancing bodies, I narrowly avoided the stumbling and drunken girls, wearing items of clothing that covered the essentials and nothing more.” Not too …show more content…
Not only has the media had an effect on hook up culture, it is also portraying it inaccurately. First off, songs now more than ever have many lyrics involving hook-ups and uncommitted sex linked to a physical and enjoyable feeling of emotion. Next, books and plots of movies are changing the way we perceive hookup culture today. For example, “The 2009 film "Hooking Up," details the chaotic romantic and sexual lives of adolescent characters.” Another film, "No Strings Attached," released in 2011, features two friends negotiating a sexual, yet nonromantic, component of their relationship (Garcia). With relationships like this being on the rise, most of today’s young adults report they have experienced some form of casual sex. Lastly, “The most recent data suggest that between 60 percent and 80 percent of North American college students have had some sort of hook-up experience.” “This is consistent with the view of emerging adulthood (typical college age) as a period of developmental transition”, exploring and internalizing sexuality and romantic intimacy, now including hookups (Stinson). Although most people associate the hook up culture with college students alone, research has also been done on teenagers 12-21 years old. The results were almost disturbing, “70 percent of adolescents reported having uncommitted sex within the last year” (Grello). This portrayal of the media ruins the romance of a