A few years ago, a young woman winced as she described yet another evening of binge drinking, and the guy she thought she remembered having sex with in the bar parking lot. Her long wavy hair framed bright eyes that seemed to catch every change in light. Her arms, long and graceful, sat folded upon her chest. She had graduated at the top of her class at an Ivy-League college, and was now a young professional in Manhattan. Still, she spent most evenings out at bars, and her social life consisted of brief sexual encounters with people she either just met or barely knew. I once suggested to her that she try going to dinner with a romantic interest.
“Are you crazy?” she admonished. “Have dinner with someone I don’t know? I would never do that “.
That was my introduction to what is know commonly known as hooking up. Since then I have discovered that it is the common form of socializing in high schools and on college campuses. Denise Ann Evans made a movie about it. Tom Wolfe has written about it. The behavior is an implicit aspect of most reality TV. Yet, while limited media attention views the phenomena with some degree of fascinated voyeurism, very few remark on the fact that these young people are simply enacting everything they have been taught. What else might be expected from young people raised on commercials, treated as consumers from the time they were toddlers and flooded with imagery of the earth being violated for the sake of materialistic consumption?
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Ordinary Earth ™ 