if i have kids i will tell them to get into the skills trades
College graduates who became immersed in the campus culture of sexual encounters known as “hookups” are turning to professionals to learn how to date.
They are paying up to $300 Cdn an hour to “dating coaches” to be trained in the lost art of courtship — sending flowers, accepting a compliment and light flirting.
The coaches are riding a tide of discontent with the instant-gratification culture of “kiss and tell but never commit” that has dominated college life since the rise of Facebook in the late 2000s.
They say the biggest problem is that many young men have forgotten how to ask a woman out on a date, while women are so busy texting details of their latest conquest — known as sniping — that many know the rules of courtship only from “old” films dating back to the 1990s.
Even the 2011 film Friends with Benefits, in which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis struggle to reconcile friendship with ostensibly casual sex, seems out of date in a hookup culture where serious conversation is frowned upon as a waste of time.
A third of first-year students who routinely “hook up” — defined as a commitment-free encounter that can range from kissing to sexual intercourse — say that they do not enjoy the experience, according to Donna Freitas, assistant professor of religion at Boston University.
That includes men as well as women, says Freitas, who interviewed nearly 3,000 students at seven U.S. colleges for her book The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused about Intimacy, to be published in April.
“When I was at college during the 1990s we went on dates, drank a lot of wine and got to know each other,” she said last week. “There’s nothing wrong with great, chandelier-swinging sex.
“But the tyranny of the hookup culture has robbed a generation of intimacy and physical pleasure for both genders.
“Many told me they had meaningless hookups just because they are expected to by friends, so they no longer enjoy sex. Men and women have been habituated against expecting it to be pleasurable.”
Freitas believes that this may explain why a quarter of 18 to 22-year-old male students admit to problems with sexual performance. “They always have to be drunk, or at least appear so, so they can walk away without committing to anything,” she added.
This is the darker side of the sexually liberated campus depicted by the New York writer Hanna Rosin in her recent bestseller The End of Men. Rosen suggested that women were driving the hookup culture to gain an education without the bother of relationships.
Freitas says that boasting about the hookup online is as important for many women as the often-brief act itself.
“They told me it’s not over until they have tweeted about it, with details,” said Freitas. “This is a social act — there is no privacy. Certainly it’s not what we would call a date.”
Today’s “date” is more likely to be a last-minute text or tweet inviting a prospective sexual partner to tag along with a group of friends at pubs and clubs.
Those who do manage to arrange dates often schedule several brief meetings over a coffee in the same evening because they are haunted by a fear of missing out, said Lisa Shield, a dating coach who urges her Los Angeles clients to slow down.
“The new date is ‘hanging out,’ ” Denise Hewett, 24, a Manhattan television producer, told one newspaper. She said a male friend had told her that he did not like to take girls out, preferring to invite them to join him in whatever he was doing, such as going to a concert.
Hewitt is developing a television show about the dateless generation, but HBO’s comedy drama Girls may cover some of the same ground for the twentysomethings who have graduated from college with plenty of experience but little understanding of the opposite sex.
In the first episode of the new series earlier this month, a young woman and man who got together by texting nude photographs to each other discussed whether being each other’s “main hang” in bed qualified as a date.
“It is the end of courtship,” warned The New York Times.
THE SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/C...ut+courtship/7879403/story.html#ixzz2JEAJ1tFW
College graduates who became immersed in the campus culture of sexual encounters known as “hookups” are turning to professionals to learn how to date.
They are paying up to $300 Cdn an hour to “dating coaches” to be trained in the lost art of courtship — sending flowers, accepting a compliment and light flirting.
The coaches are riding a tide of discontent with the instant-gratification culture of “kiss and tell but never commit” that has dominated college life since the rise of Facebook in the late 2000s.
They say the biggest problem is that many young men have forgotten how to ask a woman out on a date, while women are so busy texting details of their latest conquest — known as sniping — that many know the rules of courtship only from “old” films dating back to the 1990s.
Even the 2011 film Friends with Benefits, in which Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis struggle to reconcile friendship with ostensibly casual sex, seems out of date in a hookup culture where serious conversation is frowned upon as a waste of time.
A third of first-year students who routinely “hook up” — defined as a commitment-free encounter that can range from kissing to sexual intercourse — say that they do not enjoy the experience, according to Donna Freitas, assistant professor of religion at Boston University.
That includes men as well as women, says Freitas, who interviewed nearly 3,000 students at seven U.S. colleges for her book The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused about Intimacy, to be published in April.
“When I was at college during the 1990s we went on dates, drank a lot of wine and got to know each other,” she said last week. “There’s nothing wrong with great, chandelier-swinging sex.
“But the tyranny of the hookup culture has robbed a generation of intimacy and physical pleasure for both genders.
“Many told me they had meaningless hookups just because they are expected to by friends, so they no longer enjoy sex. Men and women have been habituated against expecting it to be pleasurable.”
Freitas believes that this may explain why a quarter of 18 to 22-year-old male students admit to problems with sexual performance. “They always have to be drunk, or at least appear so, so they can walk away without committing to anything,” she added.
This is the darker side of the sexually liberated campus depicted by the New York writer Hanna Rosin in her recent bestseller The End of Men. Rosen suggested that women were driving the hookup culture to gain an education without the bother of relationships.
Freitas says that boasting about the hookup online is as important for many women as the often-brief act itself.
“They told me it’s not over until they have tweeted about it, with details,” said Freitas. “This is a social act — there is no privacy. Certainly it’s not what we would call a date.”
Today’s “date” is more likely to be a last-minute text or tweet inviting a prospective sexual partner to tag along with a group of friends at pubs and clubs.
Those who do manage to arrange dates often schedule several brief meetings over a coffee in the same evening because they are haunted by a fear of missing out, said Lisa Shield, a dating coach who urges her Los Angeles clients to slow down.
“The new date is ‘hanging out,’ ” Denise Hewett, 24, a Manhattan television producer, told one newspaper. She said a male friend had told her that he did not like to take girls out, preferring to invite them to join him in whatever he was doing, such as going to a concert.
Hewitt is developing a television show about the dateless generation, but HBO’s comedy drama Girls may cover some of the same ground for the twentysomethings who have graduated from college with plenty of experience but little understanding of the opposite sex.
In the first episode of the new series earlier this month, a young woman and man who got together by texting nude photographs to each other discussed whether being each other’s “main hang” in bed qualified as a date.
“It is the end of courtship,” warned The New York Times.
THE SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/C...ut+courtship/7879403/story.html#ixzz2JEAJ1tFW
