Hooking Up

Page 126. That’s the first time an article appears in the October issue of Seventeen magazine. By article I mean anything longer than a paragraph, and by paragraph I mean any one or two sentences formatted in the shape of a paragraph. In the forty pages that follow, there is only one other entry that could qualify as a bona fide article. I wish this was the most upsetting thing in Seventeen magazine, but it wasn’t. The most upsetting thing was on page 101 in Seventeen’s “ultimate COLLEGE guide!” under the subheading “all about GUYS.” Written by Lauren Metz, who can’t possibly have children, it’s called “rules of dating” only “dating” is scratched out and replaced by “hooking up.”

Here’s a peek:

It was rule number one that got me, “Skip being exclusive.” Ms. Metz advises teenagers that, “No-strings-attached hookups are way more common in college than serious relationships. With tons of new people to meet, no one is rushing into a big commitment.” Really? So dating is out of fashion and therefore our daughters should just go have random sex with people? Well, not totally random because rule two is “Be selective.” If I step back I can appreciate rules three through five (“Recognize a booty call,” “Know the signs” and “Protect your heart”) because they at least could be construed as helping girls to recognize the signs of a hook-up without actually advocating them.

Nowhere is the word condom mentioned.

It’s not that I’m out of touch. I’ve heard of hook-up culture. I know about friends with benefits. I’ve read the shocking statistics on sexually transmitted diseases among teenage girls. I just didn’t realize that it had become so mainstream that Seventeen was providing how-to guides. And yet, I have to admit the article had a perverse effect on me; it crystallized my role as a parent. Without thinking I turned to my husband and said, “We both have to talk to both kids about sex.”

I’d never thought about it that way before. I think I always imagined myself talking to my daughter about sex and my husband talking to my son. Now that seems quaint. If the narrative the dominant culture is providing is that sex is a transaction that requires no emotional exchange we have to provide a different narrative. Our daughter needs to hear men talk about love and relationships and our son needs to hear women talk about them too. Hook-up culture requires that we go beyond modeling a good relationship in our marriage. Our children need actual words floating in their subconscious that tell them a different story than the half-drunk text messages they can expect to receive in the middle of the night according to Seventeen’s rule # 3 (When a guy starts texting you after 1A.M. he’s interested in one thing: late-night hooking up!).

I picked up Seventeen magazine for research. I had an idea for a story aimed at teen-age girls and I thought Seventeen might be a possible outlet. My idea seemed to have no place in a world where teenagers routinely wear 3” stiletto heels, but I am grateful that I read Seventeen. It killed my sentimentality. In the face of hook-up culture my instinct is to want to protect my children but that is a true fantasy. My role is to prepare them and preparation requires enough sangfroid to see the situation clearly. Thank you Lauren Metz. I hate what you’re saying but I’m glad you said it.