Kiss and tell

“Hook up culture” is a term  that has emerged throughout our college years.

The concept of hooking up is considered to involve some degree of sexual interaction and then leaving it at that. No strings attached essentially, whether you know the person well or not.

The Equinox believes that hook up culture is something that the media does indeed portray to us, however it is ultimately our decision whether or not we want to internalize and more importantly normalize it.

By normalizing it we become victims to these concepts that the media portrays as acceptable.

We should be able to decide individuall what is right and what is wrong and base these choices off of our own morals.

We believe that there has been a shift in the public perce[tion of the dating and marriage scene throughout recent decades. Take, for example, the 1950s.

Photo Illustration by Kyle Bailey

The stereotype during this time was that everyone was to be happily married and totally committed to their significant other. Clearly there had to have been some sneaky motives going on behind closed doors. Just because it was not made public like it is today, does not mean that it was not happening.

This generation tends to find the need to “kiss and tell” and hook ups aren’t meaningful, but more of a reason for bragging rights. We’ve become so focused on sharing everything, sometimes it seems people will focus more on whom they are going to tell, rather than on whom the person is they are encountering these sexual experiences with. This is what the media does—and our actions follow.

In other words, the hook up culture has been taking place long before the media came into play.

While the media’s involvement is inevitable, we are not restricted by what the media is telling us. Rather, we have the choice of deciding what we want to absorb. We consciously pick and choose what we believe to be ethically right.

If you saw the media telling you that it was a good idea to start consuming poisonous foods, would you do it? Most likely not. This is because we all have our own personal preconceived beliefs. We are not mere robots who fall victim to this powerful media entity. The media only controls as much of our life as we allow it to.

It is undeniable that so much of what we see on television and in movies promotes this idea that hooking up with people, especially in the college scene where it happens so frequently, makes it basically acceptable.

Does this mean that we have to agree with what the media feeds us? No. We have every right to pick and choose what we stand for.

Ultimately, we as The Equinox believe that we as human beings make our own choices. The media does not make them for us. Any educated human being has the ability to take in what the media is displaying to him  or her and decide what either wants to do next with that information.

Today young adults are so focused on getting the “next best thing,” whether it is a new phone, car or even a new boyfriend or girlfriend. It’s so common for us to jump from one to another, we have lost the ability to really appreciate what, or in this case who, is in front of us. We believe the media takes part in this constant flow of wanting change and we need to be able to press pause. We do not think that it is wrong to take part in hook up culture but we  do believe that we should step away from the media’s influence and make our own moral decisions. We can either run with it or decide for ourselves, whichever lifestyle we want to partake in. The choice is in the hands of the beholder.

So next time you’re behind a television or a computer screen, remind yourself that you may or may not agree with the idea they are trying to sell you. You have the power to formulate your own opinion on the whole concept of the hook up culture and you do not need to be influenced by what some TV show or movie is trying to tell you.