Hooking Up : Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (3 page)

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From Dating to Hooking Up

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking
Now heaven knows anything goes . . .

The world has gone mad today and good’s bad today
And black’s white today and day’s night today
When most guys today that women prize today
Are just silly gigolos.

The lyrics of this Cole Porter song titled “Anything Goes” are telling.

They speak of a lax in society’s propriety and values; the irony is that the song dates back to the 1930s. Messages like this one convey a sentiment that rings true in any time period: change is scary. As society tries to come to terms with the changing mores of today’s youth, there is a tendency to characterize the change as frightening. In one magazine ed-itor’s opinion, adolescent morality may be “tumbling toward Shanghai on a sailor’s holiday.”1 The implication is that the ways of the past were superior.

Many media pundits have called for a return to a more traditional style of courtship. Again, the gist is that the old way is the better way. I agree that it is helpful to examine today’s hookup culture in light of the dating era. However, we should take a closer look at what young people were
actually doing
in the past before we long for a return to it.

Uncovering how young people became sexually intimate in the past is a difficult task given that information on the intimate aspects of life did not exist prior to the twentieth century.2 What we do know about earlier Western societies is that the process for most young middle- and upper-class people to find potential mates was heavily monitored by parents, their families, and their communities.3 This close supervision ensured two things. First, there was a limit to how much sexual interaction would be permitted, with most of society forbidding intercourse until marriage or at least until the family had approved an 11

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engagement.4 Both the community at large and the family had a vested interest in ensuring that a child was not born out of wedlock.5

Second, familial supervision was deemed necessary in order to ensure that the mate chosen was suitable (in terms of social class, etc.) and had potential as a marriage partner.6 The mate selection process was heavily supervised by parents and other adults in part because practical considerations were of the utmost importance in finding a mate. For example, men were not considered eligible for marriage until they demonstrated that they could financially support a wife and family.7

However, in post–Industrial Revolution Western societies, romantic feelings were given greater importance. Over time, romantic feelings began largely to outweigh material considerations in the search for a potential partner.8 Romantic feelings are greatly affected by sexual attraction; therefore, sexual attraction became an increasingly important aspect of intimate partnering throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.9

Over the past hundred years, there have been three distinct scripts guiding young men and women’s intimate lives, each emerging during a period of transition. I will examine each one, but let’s begin by turning back the clock to the beginning of the twentieth century to see how young people at that time got together and ultimately formed relationships.

THE CALLING ERA

According to social historian Beth Bailey, for the first decade of the twentieth century “respectable” young men would “call” on respectable young women at their home. The object of the call was to spend time with the woman of interest as well as her family, especially her mother.10 Many rigid guidelines were followed during the “calling” era. Young women and their mothers controlled the practice of calling.

That is, they and only they could invite a young man to come to their home for a calling visit. Such a visit typically consisted of spending time in the woman’s parlor with her and her family. During the visit, the young woman might play the piano to entertain her guest. The young man and woman might be given some degree of privacy for part of the visit, particularly if the mother knew her daughter really “liked” the young man.11

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A perfect illustration of the calling script can be found in the Christmas classic,
It’s a Wonderful Life.
In the film, the female lead, Mary Hatch (played by Donna Reed) has had a crush on George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) since childhood. One scene depicts an evening when George calls on Mary at home, where she lives with her mother. George wears a suit for the occasion, and Mary receives her visitor wearing a pretty dress. When George arrives, Mary invites him to sit with her in the parlor so they can listen to records. Since Mary’s mother does not approve of George as a suitor for her daughter, she repeatedly tries to interrupt the visit by spying on them from the top of the staircase in her bathrobe. Mary’s mother demands to know: “What are you two doing down there?” Mary, irritated by her mother’s persistent meddling, teases her by responding: “He’s making violent love to me, Mother!” Her joke shocks not only her mother, but her gentleman caller, too.

As entrenched as the calling system was among middle- and upperclass circles, this script did not work for the lower or working classes.

Most members of the lower class lacked the facilities to entertain young men in their homes. Thus, lower-class youth ultimately stopped trying to aspire to the middle- and upper-class system of calling. Instead, they began going out somewhere together, which became known as going on a “date.” The term “date” can be traced to the late nineteenth century, when it was first used as a slang term by some in the lower class.12

It referred to occasions on which a man obtained sexual favors from a lower-class woman.13 Later, the term spread beyond this narrow, illicit meaning and the more modern use of the word took hold.

THE DATING ERA—“RATING AND DATING”

The phenomenon of dating did not remain exclusively in the lower class for long. Dating emerged next among rebellious upper-class youth who began going out, away from the watchful eyes of parents. A date might consist of a woman dining out alone with a man or going to the theater.14 Regardless of the precise location of the date, it required that a man and a woman “went somewhere” outside the home in order to enjoy each other’s company.15 Dating was not a matter of upper-class rebellion only, but also grew out of changes in society. Women at this time in history were becoming increasingly a part of the public sphere, 14

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with growing numbers attending college, taking jobs, and in general becoming more a part of the public world that was still largely considered the province of men. With this increased access to the public sphere, dating began to supplant calling as a way for young people who were interested in each other to spend time together. In addition to women’s newfound freedom from parental and community supervision, the advent of the automobile was a major factor in creating and maintaining this new arrangement.16 Young men’s access to cars made the idea of taking a woman “out on the town” increasingly possible.

From its inception in the first decade of the twentieth century, dating spread throughout U.S. culture until about the mid-1920s, when it became a “universal custom in America.”17 In other words, by the 1920s dating was the dominant script for how young people would become sexually intimate and form relationships. Willard Waller’s classic sociological study on dating first revealed many of the norms of dating on the college campus. Waller examined the dating customs of college students at Penn State University in the 1920s and 1930s.18 To begin, Waller defined dating by distinguishing it from courtship. Courtship involves people of the opposite sex getting to know each other en route to marriage. Dating, on the other hand, is not true courtship because the intent is not to marry.19 Thus, Waller characterized dating as a sort of “dal-liance relationship.” These relationships were particularly prevalent in college because students (especially men) wanted to delay marriage until they graduated and were settled into their postcollege careers.

Given that those who dated did not intend to marry, Waller argued that dating was dominated by “thrill seeking.” Men were often seeking some form of sexual gratification. Women, on the other hand, were often looking to have money spent on them, including expensive gifts.

It is important to note the environment in which all of this took place. Waller’s study was conducted at Penn State, a large school, where most students lived on campus; half of the male students lived in fraternities, and most came from a middle- or upper-middle-class background. Although women started attending college in greater numbers during this period, there was still a six-to-one male-to-female ratio on campus at the time. Dating consisted of going to college dances, the movies, or to fraternity houses for Victrola dances and “necking.” A whole host of norms accompanied the phenomenon of dating. For instance, dating was almost exclusively carried on by fraternity men.

Freshman men were not allowed (by tradition) to date coeds, and F RO M DAT I N G TO H O O K I N G U P

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women from outside the university were “imported” for some of the bigger occasions on campus.

Waller argued that dating on this campus took place under what he referred to as “the rating and dating complex.”20 Both men and women did not want to date someone who did not “rank.” Competition for dates was fierce, and the “Class A” men on the rating scale wanted to be sure only to be seen with “Class A” women, and vice versa. Students went to great lengths to rate high on the dating scale. For men, rating high depended on belonging to a top fraternity, and having good clothes, dancing skill, a good pick-up “line,” access to a car, and money to spend on dates. For women, rating high depended on getting a reputation for being a sought-after date.21 To ensure that they appeared to be a hot commodity, women avoided being seen too often with the same boy (so they did not scare off other potential dates).22 To remain in high standing, women consistently had to date Class A men only. Women also avoided drinking in groups or frequenting the beer parlors.

Women’s prestige on campus would decline once they were no longer a fresh face on campus, due to indiscretions, or if they were too readily available for dates.23

Peers were heavily involved in monitoring who was dating whom.

In fact, some women did not date at all because the dates they could

“get” were ridiculed by their peers. Waller noted that the involvement of peers combined with the system for dating on campus created antagonisms between the sexes. He attributed part of the reason for these antagonisms to the unbalanced sex ratio, which left many men shut out from the dating pool altogether. Additionally, Waller noted that this system was particularly difficult for those who rated low on the dating desirability scale. In other words, those who did not “rate” were often left behind.

Waller acknowledged that, in some cases, dating led to true courtship and ultimately to marriage. However, the system of dating made this outcome unlikely. Instead, Waller argued that dating often became exploitative.24 Men exploited women for sexual favors, and women exploited men by “gold digging.” Waller believed that exploitation occurs only when one party is masking his or her true intentions. Thus, if both parties realized the relationship was not “going anywhere,” then the relationship was not exploitative. However, in most cases, one party was more interested in the continuation of the relationship than the other. This created a scenario where one person could 16

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get what he or she wanted from the other by promising to keep the relationship going. Waller concluded that with heterosexual dating relationships, we may surmise that the party with the least interest in continuing the relationship has the most control.

Dating in the 1920s and 1930s was largely a competitive enterprise.

In fact, dating was secondary to “rating” or popularity. One dated in order to rate among one’s peers.25 To achieve the goal of “rating,” one would date as many members of the opposite sex as possible as long as those individuals were believed to enhance one’s popularity rather than detract from it. At this point in history, it was seen as scarcely better to date one person than to date none at all.26 In other words, most young people looked down on exclusive dating relationships before one was ready to get engaged and marry.

One’s popularity as a date was not determined mostly by intrinsic qualities of the individual. Instead, popularity, which was largely defined by the peer culture, determined who “made the cut” in terms of being a worthwhile date. At some schools, rating was not merely determined informally by word of mouth. Rather, in some cases, lists would be floated around college campuses to help determine one’s dating value. For instance, some women at the University of Michigan rated the “BMOCs” (i.e., Big Men on Campus) according to their campus dating stock. “Those qualifying were rated either A—smooth; B—OK; C—pass in a crowd; D

—semi-goon; or E—spook.”27 This list was used as a guide for women on campus to determine whether they should accept a date or not. Whether or not such lists were taken seriously by college women, the fact that these lists were created provides evidence of how much peers were involved in rating and monitoring each other’s dating partners.

THE DATING ERA—“GOING STEADY”

Despite the prominence of the norms discussed above throughout the 1920s and 1930s, they did not last. Dating continued; however, the onset and aftermath of World War II in the 1940s led to a new version of the dating script.28 During this time, men literally became a scarce resource.

Millions of men were now in the armed forces and went overseas during the war and, unfortunately, thousands of men never made it back home alive. Awareness of this scarcity of eligible men changed the tone of the dating scene. Popularity in terms of getting the greatest number of F RO M DAT I N G TO H O O K I N G U P