“hooking up,” does not have a universally agreed upon meaning, either.5
Several students I spoke to alluded to the confusion over what hooking up meant. This may stem from regional variation in usage or even more localized variation between high schools. As Kim, a sophomore from Faith University, put it:
KB: You mentioned hooking up a minute ago. How would you define that?
Kim: [Laughs] That’s kind of funny actually because at home, like in Virginia, hooking up is like more than kissing, but not all the way. And so I would come here and I would hear people, like my friends, say: “I hooked up with this guy and this guy.” And I was just thinking: “These people are crazy that they would do that with that many people!” But then I just found out this year that here hooking up [sometimes means]
just kissing or making out with a guy at a party.
Even more confusion was generated when college students were discussing hooking up with someone from a different generation. For instance, some female students mentioned that problems arose when they 28
T H E H O O K U P
called home to fill their mothers in on what was going on with “guys” at college. Gloria, a freshman at State University, told her mother that she had been hooking up and this revelation created some panic on the other end of the telephone.
KB: Do people you know [ever] use the term hooking up to refer to sex?
Gloria: I’ve never heard that. But my mom saw on the news that hooking up meant oral sex and I always tell my mom, “I hooked up with this guy and he was so nice.” I tell her that all the time. And she called me after that news session [and said], “What does hooking up mean?” Because I was telling her I [hooked up with] . . . Billy and Joe and Rob. I was like:
“No, just kissing.” I guess I never heard it [used] for having sex.
KB: You said [previously hooking up referred to] fooling around?
Gloria: Right. Fooling around is not having sex, but [it can be] like oral sex.
Interestingly, Gloria’s definition of what it means to have sex does not include having oral sex. Many of the students I spoke with noted the distinction between sex and oral sex. This provides further evidence that there may be generational differences in perceptions of what counts as sex.6 Adding to the confusion are media references to hooking up that portray only the most risqué scenarios of hooking up, when in reality students use the term to encompass a much broader range of sexual behavior.
It is likely that there is another reason for the ambiguous nature of the term. When students say, “I hooked up,” they leave the details of the encounter to the listener’s imagination. Both men and women may have reasons to be intentionally vague. Men, who often want to feign more sexual experiences than they actually have, can say they hooked up and hope the listener infers more than actually happened sexually.7
Women, on the other hand, who may want to protect their reputations, can say they hooked up and hope the listener infers less than what actually happened sexually.8 When students speak to their close friends, they may know what the others mean when they say the term or they may feel close enough to ask a follow-up question on the subject. How-T H E H O O K U P
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ever, for those who are not friendly enough with the speaker to warrant knowing more intimate details, someone can simply say, “I hooked up,” and leave it at that. This does not imply that interested parties will not resort to other means to find out what really happened. However, such parties will have to rely on secondhand accounts and rumors to satisfy their curiosity.
Clearly, “hooking up” is a vague term when it comes to finding out what happened sexually between two people. However, there are several other defining features of the script for hooking up, beyond the sexual aspects, which were largely understood by college students in my study across the board. College students recognize hooking up as the pathway to a potential romantic relationship, yet a hookup does not guarantee any commitment beyond when the encounter takes place.
After hooking up, someone can opt to ask for the other’s phone number or can try to make plans to meet somewhere in the future, but most students indicated that this is not the most common outcome. Instead, students said that the most likely outcome of any particular hookup encounter is “nothing,” which means not hearing from the person again unless you coincidentally see him or her at another social event and decide to hook up again. Although most hookup encounters do not lead to an ongoing romantic relationship, the possibility is there. Many students, particularly women, often hoped that a hookup would evolve into some version of a relationship. Therefore, all hookup encounters cannot be characterized as “casual sex” or “one-night stands” when often one of the parties is hoping that it will lead to “something more,” and, at least some of the time, it does.
HOW IT HAPPENS
Hooking up is an outgrowth of how college students socialize today. Instead of socializing in dating pairs as they did earlier in the twentieth century, college students tend to “hang out” socially in groups at dorms, parties, or bars.9 Although the groups at the beginning of the evening may be single-sex, it does not
