Boys Everywhere Owe a Debt of Gratitude to Women Who Don’t Mind Just Hooking Up

The good news is that someone finally has legitimized hooking up by publishing a handbook on the topic.

The bad news is that this means young women are setting benchmarks for what constitutes being a slut:

For the young and the single in New York dating has always been a numbers game, whether it is tabulating the guy-to-girl ratio at a bar or guessing at the bank balance of the quarry across the dance floor. Still, it is not every night that a group of unattached young women in low-slung jeans sit around pondering questions that might stump a mathematician at Caltech, questions like can one plus nine ever equal just nine?

“I know a lot of people who will go home with the same guy they have before just because it’s not going to raise their number,” explained Jennifer Babbit, 26, a publicist.

“A lot of my friends will say: ‘I started having sex with this guy, but it only lasted a minute. I don’t know if it counted,’ ” offered Beth Whiffen, a former associate editor at Cosmopolitan.

. . .

Yes, there are conquests, but there should not be too many of them. So among this group of women with three-inch heels tipping out of their $200 jeans what is the right number, that is, the last number before you hit the wrong one? Few women would want to go over 20, or even 15, Ms. Babbit said, because they would “think of themselves as big sluts.”

“Ten at the most,” Caroline Homlish, 24, summarized in a tone that brooked no dissent.

And while the good news is that girls aren’t so hung up on that commitment thing, the bad news is that they’re still hung up on the commitment thing — and now it’s explicitly likened to shopping:

And while “The Hookup Handbook” explicitly forbids its readers to mistake a hookup for a potential boyfriend, not everyone thought that was realistic. “People who are hooking up are trying to get into a serious relationship,” insisted Caitlin Gaffey, 24, a beauty assistant at the magazine Shop Etc. “On the girls’ side, that’s almost always true.”

“You can’t just hook up with anyone,” added Ms. Gaffey, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “You have to learn a lot about him before you hook up. Guys are not picky. We’re the ones who are picky. It’s kind of like shopping.”

The good news is that thanks to such handbooks, vodka and sex are explicitly linked. There is no bad news to report on this front:

Ms. [Kate] Kilgore [who is in public relations at Victoria’s Secret Beauty] estimated that out of a random group of 10 women her age, only two or three will have a steady boyfriend, and the pressure that existed even a decade ago to be seen having a boyfriend had lessened. That, she said, is liberating. “I’ll go through phases where I’m hooking up or making out with a guy a week,” she said matter-of-factly, “but then go a month” without.

She guessed that on average she probably hooks up 10 or 12 times a year, something that can mean “lots of vodka, feeling the connection,” but not always sex.

“It’s all about fun,” Ms. [“The Hookup Handbook: A Single Girl’s Guide to Living It Up” author Andrea] Lavinthal added of her approach to dating. “It’s not the death of romance. It’s like relationship light. No one’s going to say no to making out with a cute guy on a Saturday night.”

The good news is that these women are cautious of the “disease thing.” The bad news is that they refer to it as the “disease thing.” Everybody, all together now — “sexually transmitted disease.” Still, thank goodness no one’s being irresponsible here:

But while the language of the hook-up culture sounds debauched (“Drink Till He’s Cute” is one chapter heading), most of the women who will plunk down $14.95 for the book are children of the 80’s. These girls grew up just wanting to have fun but knew not to have too much.

“We’ve had so much sex ed,” Ms. Lavinthal said. “With strangers, we are really cautious of the disease thing.”