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The Campus as a Sexual Arena
On the cover of Glamour magazine’s February 2006 issue is 21-year-old pop singer/actress and “America’s Next Sweetheart,” Mandy Moore.
Among the cover stories in this issue is a feature entitled “Are you normal about sex? Intimate details on what everyone’s doing.” Popular-culture sources, like this one, are one of the ways by which young people get information about sex and relationships. Like most men and women, college students want to know what is “normal,” because understanding the norms for their peer group helps them to navigate their own sexual lives.1 College students’ perceptions of what their peers are doing sexually are shaped, in part, by the messages they receive through pop culture, but perhaps even more so by peer culture. College students do not have to pick up a magazine or turn on the television to find out what their contemporaries are up to — they can just look around campus. This makes the college campus a sexual arena.
Some of the students I interviewed, like Adrienne, a senior at Faith University, keenly felt a sense of watching and being watched and talking and being talked about in the campus sexual arena.
Adrienne: Yeah, definitely [I have] a complex about looks around here [on campus]. There’s a saying that [Faith University]
gives out more eating disorders than diplomas. . . . when I came here for open house, I was like: “Oh [this is a] laid-back kind of campus.” The girls are like dressing in Gap or Old Navy or something like that. And then I came here [to start freshman year] and I was like: “Oh my God it’s like all the girls are dressed up, done up, all the time.” [I] never felt like you could wear sweatpants to class. The girls were “on” like 24/7 and it made me very self-conscious.
KB: Why do you think the girls are dressed like that and why are they “on” all the time?
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Adrienne: I think a lot of it is like fashion. There is like very wealthy
[students here]. I feel like that’s what they spend their money on is like clothes. Everybody here, not everybody, a lot of people here have really nice clothes from all the de-signers and stuff like that. So they know how to dress if they
. . . come from that kind of circle. So I think they dress for that. But I do think on the weekends they dress like revealing for the guys. So I think they do, like hope to attract guys when they’re doing that.
Another senior at Faith University, Robert, added this exchange: Robert:I think a lot of women dress comfortably for them but for guys [they see it as] very provocative. If you look now on this campus, [you will see] very short, shorts and tight shirts. You can see cleavage and I think guys kind of accept that and they also will just sit out there and look. They’ll be like: “She’s an 8. She’s a 5, or a 10+.” Guys still rate girls when they walk by. Guys like to look at girls and their body structure.
KB: Would girls be thought of as “sleazy” or “slutty” if they were dressing in a provocative way or is that just [seen as]
normal?
Robert:I think it is just normal, as long as it’s not see-through. [Emphasis by interviewee]
Adrienne and Robert describe somewhat of a fishbowl existence for students on campus, particularly women. Students were aware that they were on display for other students, especially members of the opposite sex; but watching one another extended far beyond observations on style of dress. Students were also monitoring one another’s sexual relationships. Outside of campus, sexual encounters are largely a private matter; but during college, men and women are highly aware of what their peers are doing sexually. Much of the hookup script, from the initial signaling of interest to pairing off with someone, is enacted publicly. At parties students watch one another, the next day they gossip about each other, and while socializing with close friends, they ask about their sexual and romantic relationships.
Gloria, a freshman at State University, had firsthand experience of 74
T H E C A M P U S A S A S E X UA ll A R E N A this: “[A few acquaintances and I] were talking the other day out [in front of the dorm] having a cigarette . . . they were like: ‘Who do you think is [a virgin]?’ ” Kevin, a senior at Faith University, elaborates:
[When you are at a party with friends], they will see you putting work in. Like if I’m at the bar with my friends and me and you meet and I’m talking to you all night, then I disappear with you, I don’t say: “Hey, I’m leaving,” we just disappear. The next morning I come home, they will know that. [And then they’ll say:] “Did you go home with that girl you were talking to? Oh shit!” They’ll know that they saw me putting the work in. Talking, hitting on, that’s what it is. So if you are not out with them and you walk in [the next day], they are not going to do that, but you may say: “I hooked up last night.” In college, every morning it was like ten of us sitting around watching TV on three different couches. So if someone did walk in, say it was Tyler, [we would]
say: “Tyler, we saw you working on that girl last night.” He’d be like:
“Yeah, I’m coming home right now.”
