Book forthcoming 2012.
Turn on the TV or browse the shelves at a bookstore, and you could be forgiven for thinking that we are living in an era of unprecedented hedonism. Raunch culture, “hooking up”, football scandals, Girls Gone Wild… the dominant images of our times are glossy, high performing and hyper-sexed – and for no group is this more true than for the current generation of young adults.
But the truth of this generation’s sexual experiences tells a very different story – one characterized as much by the absence of sex as by raunch. In which sex is as much about connection as it is about getting off. In which young people who do have casual sex “hook up” once every few months instead of every Friday night.
We live in an age of great sexpectations, in which sex is a marker of both status and identity – and in which it is almost impossible to live up to the hype. And rather than being “free” to pursue our desires or embrace our experiences for what they are, our beliefs and behaviors around sexuality are still deeply regulated by narrow parameters of what is desirable, or even “normal”. We are in the midst of The Sex Myth.
The Sex Myth tells us that sex is an act more important, pleasurable and profound than any other. The Sex Myth tells us that what we do with our bodies cuts to the very essence of who we are. The Sex Myth tells us that no matter what our sexual preferences and histories might look like, we are too promiscuous, too prudish, not hot enough, not good enough in bed, not normal.
Drawing upon in-depth interviews with Millennials (aged between 16 and 30) from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, The Sex Myth traces the history of Western culture’s overinvestment in sex, how this obsession is playing out in contemporary culture, and how it is impacting individual young adults. It shows how much of what we take for granted – that men want sex all the time, that what you do sexually determines who you are, that everyone else is getting laid more often than you are – is socially constructed, and offers readers a new framework for making sense of their experiences.
About the author
Rachel Hills (www.rachelhills.net) is a widely published freelance journalist who has written over 150 feature articles, essays, opinion pieces and reviews for magazines, newspapers and websites across the US, the UK and Australia. Like this book, her journalism deals with big ideas in gender, sociology, technology and popular culture in accessible and relatable ways; it has been published in Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour, Jezebel, The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age and many others.
Rachel’s blog, Musings of an Inappropriate Woman, was named one of ProBlogger’s ’40 blogs to watch’ in 2011, and was nominated in Cosmopolitan’s 2010 Fun Fearless Female Awards.
For more information on either Rachel or The Sex Myth, please contact rachel.hills@gmail.com.
