Women Who Lead: Laura Sessions Stepp

"Hooking up can cover a lot of areas, but it also has its own implications," Laura Sessions Stepp said to me in a phone interview. Many of us often find ourselves lost in the gray area between the hook up and the relationship and it can be difficult waters to tread.

Taking the plunge, Sessions Stepp, a reporter for The Washington Post, dove deep into the college hookup. For an academic year, she chronicled the hookups and experiences of nine young women in high school and college. In her latest book Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lost at Both, Sessions Stepp wrote about the new generation of "unhooked" women.

Session Stepp took a lot of heat for the book, but was still able to get her message across. After reading this book, a no-strings attached hookup may not be as satisfying as before.

What were your reasons for writing this book?

Well, I had been writing about young people in relationships and all kinds of things for a long time. The last ten years have been about young adult and high school kids. I noticed a kind of shift in the way that the young people I observed were talking about relationships and sex. With each year it seemed to be getting freer and looser, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I covered oral sex in middle school in 1998 and I started hearing about it in other schools. There was not one "aha!" moment where I said I need to write a book, but the response from my readers.

Aside from your previous book about middle school children, what prepared you for a research study like this?

I read everything I could get my hands on. Databases have all kinds of journals. I also taught a class at George Washington University of 12 students, 10 freshman and two graduate students. For a semester I was really writing the book. I gave them readings which I also read and discussed and I would run ideas by them. I learned an awful lot from them over the semester.

When covering such a risky topic, criticism is inevitable. What were your thoughts on the criticism you received?

I have gotten some very good reviews. Even the negative reviews have sparked a debate and that prompted people to buy the book or write me. My whole intention was to strike up a conversation. I think that's happened.

I do think that some of the critics were writing out of their specific experience or their political theory of feminism and not getting beyond that. On the other hand, this is a very divisive topic. It is hard for me as a feminist to walk that line too. Having young women be able to do anything they want doesn't relieve older feminists like myself from saying, "Maybe you need to rethink that." I think as older adults we should feel some responsibility for the younger generation. We need to express how we feel. We are not really doing our job if we don't at least state our position.

Looking back, would you have done anything differently, like talk to men?

I thought about doing the guys along with the girls and I felt like it was so much. I don't like to take on too much in a book, just like in a newspaper story. The way I report is that I go deep into a subject, into a culture and try to see from that person's point of view. One could also argue that I should have done lesbians instead of straight girls. I felt like in the end, in order to truly understand females and the female mind, this was going to be more than enough for my plate.

You must have had some preconceived notions going into this. What was the most shocking thing you discovered?

I am asked this a lot, and what I noticed when young women described their nights out, whatever they did with the guy, there seemed to be a lack of passion and real joy and excitement. If they had come back and said, "This was the best sex I ever had and it's over and I'm going onto the next person," I would have thought that they are having fun and feeling good about themselves, but I wasn't hearing that. There was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that frankly made me very sad. I wasn't critical of it; it just made me sad.

Given the double standard of our society, do you think it is okay for men to hook up?

I don't think it is right for men either and I argue with my son about it all the time. I don't know enough about how it affects the male psyche, but I do know that it affects them. They are almost forced by the boy culture to be the macho man, to be the player. I don't think it's good. In the long run, relationships and love are better for both [sexes].

Lately it seems that women feel that they have to focus on either their career or their family. In your opinion, what makes them think they can't have both?

I have really pondered that question. It never occurred to me that I couldn't have both. It's not just the career, a number of these girls have to be perfect in their job, school, and career. There seems to be this perfectionist idea. Young women, particularly from upper and middle class homes, really feel they have to be the best at everything they do. Parents have to understand the signals they're telling their girls.

The other piece of it is that relationships aren't perfect. They are messy and time consuming. If you are used to being perfect, maybe you don't want something that you can't control. I think it's something that we need to address. We have put enormous pressure on girls.

Hooking up is a trend that does not seem to be going away anytime soon. Do you think there is a way it could be beneficial?

I can see it being common, but I can't see it being beneficial if it becomes the norm. We need an alternative. It shouldn't be the norm that you carry on a friendship by instant messaging and e-mailing. There is an importance of face-to-face contact. I think [hooking up] will be around forever but you don't want it to become the norm.

What do you hope young girls to take away from this book?

I know they'll see parts of themselves in this book. I think it will give them a chance to think about what they're doing and whether it is giving them the kind of long term satisfaction. My true gut feeling is that you all know what's best for you; you just need some nudging to push you in the right direction.

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