One of my favorite pastimes is watching rom-com movies about a girl meeting the love of her life at random, going on quirky dates, and falling happily in love. While most kids were reading children’s books before bed, my mother read romance novels to me, excluding the smut, of course. When I think about love and marriage, I imagine finding my soulmate and growing old together. Maybe we meet bumping into each other at a coffee house or one of us makes a big move and we happen to meet. It’s what I believe in and what I hope for.
When I think of love, I think of an epic, soul-shattering, world-shaking, happy ever after. Am I being overly optimistic? Maybe. Am I dreaming of something that’s probably not going to happen? Most likely. Was I born in the wrong era? Abso-freaking-lutely.
This isn’t a time where you meet a boy and he asks to take you to dinner. If you’re lucky, you’ll grab a bite to eat or maybe a coffee. In 2020, almost every encounter with a person of love interest turns out to be nothing more than sex. Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Grindr, – all the apps you can think of that include meeting someone of interest – typically all end with sex. Even if you talk about hanging out or doing things, it almost always leads to someone’s house or car backseat.
“Swipe Right to Match” has become the new trend. It’s become a game of how many matches you can get. On Tik Tok, women created a ‘pose like the guys they’ve hooked up with’ challenge. It’s become not only a game but a competition.
I’m unsure if this new generation of mine just gave up on finding love and going on dates to get to know one another, but hook-up culture is real and a very scary place if you’re a hopeless romantic like me. Even for those that aren’t hopeless romantics, the new “dating” is a weird and confusing place. You can never really know what someone’s intentions for you are. The line between nice guys who actually want a relationship and guys who say nice things for sex has become blurred to the point that even with my contacts in, it doesn’t become clear.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m being too cautious. I haven’t dated anyone in almost 8 years, and that’s if you count my high school relationships. I see all my friends in relationships – some are happy, some are miserable but don’t like to be alone, some don’t use labels while others cling to them – and all I do is watch. I know so many people who are involved in hook-up culture and only know one-night-stands but I know only a handful of people who have relationships that seem lasting.
A part of hook-up culture becoming so dominant is that women are now more open about sexuality and sexual encounters than ever before. Before, it was expected of women to wait until marriage to have sex, and it wasn’t widely talked about when it happened outside of relationships like it was for men. Women have become more confident and bold.
Women openly talk about their sexuality and personal pleasure. They wear exactly what they want, when they want, without fear of being judged. They post sexual pictures of themselves in bikinis or dresses when they prefer to. Women have taken control of their appearances and their sexuality, along with their control of freedom. Women portray their personalities through their appearances unlike before when they were limited in what they could wear. With it came their desire to treat sex like men do, as a pleasure that a relationship isn’t needed for, hence hookup culture.
When will hook-up culture end? Do people really want an unattached hookup more than they want a stable relationship? Only time will tell. Until then, I think I’m just going to keep waiting and watching.
