One Friday afternoon, writing, rhetoric and american cultures professor Stephanie Amada was making a to-do list. Suddenly she found herself listing, “write a book for college students about hookup culture.”
Scholar and author Donna Freitask defines hookup culture as “a lifestyle of unemotional, unattached sex.” Amada, inspired by her WRA 140 students, decided to explore this culture in her book “Hooking Up: A Sexy Encounter with Choice.”
Amada’s book gives students the chance to make decisions about hooking up without the pressure that comes with the culture on a college campus. Amada said it mostly was written for college women, though it’s not meant to lecture them.
“It’s less of a ‘this is what hookup culture is’ book and more of a ‘how to think about hookup culture’ book,” Amada said. “It’s almost like a guide. You can stop and think about these things and you can make the decision that’s right for you.”
She said one of her goals when teaching is to get students thinking about hookup culture, because it is easy for students to get caught up in their surroundings and see them as a reality for the rest of the world.
“(Students) felt pressured to do things they didn’t want to, so in a lot of ways it (the book) was a response to hearing that,” Amada said.
Before helping Amada with the publishing process, professional writing senior Lauren Link said she had no idea people thought about the culture in such a way.
“I thought it was just kind of mainstream and not talked about,” Link said.
Link said the book makes hooking up less of an awkward conversation by vocalizing it.
Journalism junior Jack Nissen, who attended Amada’s WRA class, said it was interesting to hear the opinions of the many women in the class pertaining to hookup culture.
“Her teaching style wasn’t trying to tell us what was right or wrong, she was trying to provide clarity for anyone who had either been intertwined with that kind of culture or maybe was interested in trying to delve into it,” Nissen said.
English senior Brooklyn Pluger helped Amada by interviewing MSU students about hookup culture for the book.
Pluger said the questions addressed the relevance of the culture and students’ willingness to partake. She said many freshman said no to both questions, while older students tended to give the opposite answers.
“I wished I had read it as a freshman instead of as a junior,” Pluger said. “By the time I read it it all made sense, it wasn’t really a learning experience. It was more of reiterating what I already knew and making me realize what I wanted in a relationship.”
Amada said part of her inspiration was being able to see herself in her students. She said she remembers what it was like to be a college student on the social scene, and that she wishes she would have had someone to talk to.
“What I hope women can take away from it is ... that they have a choice ... and it really is okay for that to be an individual choice and to feel confident enough in that individual choice to stick to it,” Amada said.
