"Hookup Ink," a review by Wendy Shalit
Hookup Ink, a review by Wendy Shalit of three books on the hookup culture on campus:
When I critiqued the hookup culture back in 1999, and was summarily dismissed as a prude by my elders, it would have been an enormous comfort to know that less than ten years later my “prudish” position would be considered cutting-edge. But today there is little satisfaction in being buried under the avalanche of recent books like Unhooked (Riverhead, 2007) and Unhooked Generation (Hyperion, 2006),which have put the misery of postmodern sexual (non)intimacy utterly beyond dispute, and on the shelf. Even The Hookup Handbook(Pocket Books, 2005), billed as a chipper “Single Girl’s Guide to Living It Up,” can hardly be said to reflect living, much less “living it up.”
About the Author
Wendy Shalit was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Williams College in 1997. Her essays have appeared in Commentary, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal. Read More
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What Makes This Book Different
- Based on over 100 in-depth interviews the author conducted with young women, ages 12 to 28 ...
- Shalit advocates returning to a single high standard for women and for men ...
- The Good Girl Revolution challenges us to rethink the entire way we approach sexuality...
- Society's new expectation that girls be "bad" is much more oppressive than the old expectation that girls be good, Shalit argues ...
- We hear from the youngest feminists who are more likely to want to fight pornography than to star in it ...
- Shalit documents how adults are advocating the "bitch" as an "empowering" ideal, and how young women are damaged by it ...
- This book contains great advice from teens who are real leaders, and are personally happy and successful ...
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Notable and Quotable
"Wendy Shalit’s first book, A Return to Modesty. . . created a storm when it was published nine years ago but whose influence can be detected in today’s campus chastity clubs, including here at Harvard. As a veteran of pro-sex feminism who still endorses pornography and prostitution, I say more power to all these chaste young women who are defending their individuality and defying groupthink and social convention. That is true feminism!"
— Camille Paglia, Harvard Feminism Conference Keynote, April 10 2008