Title: Promiscuities : the secret struggle for womanhood /
Authors: Wolf, Naomi
Publisher: Random House,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Teenage girls United States Sexual behavior.; Women Sexual behavior United States; Teenage girls Sexual behavior United States.; Women Sexual behavior United States.; United States Social conditions
Abstract: Promiscuities follows a group of adolescent girls as they gradually become aware of themselves as sexual beings and discover what our culture tells them being female means. Drawing on her own experiences as well those of her contemporaries, Naomi Wolf reveals the secrets of our coming of age: the sexual games, forbidden crushes, losses of virginity, and rites of initiation. She also uncompromisingly examines the darker territories of abortion, the influences of the sex industry, and sexual violence that underlie contemporary girl's struggle for womanhood. By bringing into light our relationship to the "shadow slut" that conditions our sexual development, Promiscuities explores how the sexual experiences of the adolescent years determine women's sense of their own value as adults, and envisions how we could better guide girls through the "normatively shocking" landscape they now inhabit.
Contents: Introduction: First Person Sexual -- 1. The Time and the Place: 1968-1971 -- 2. The Facts of Life -- 3. Activity into Passivity: Blanking Out -- 4. Free Flight to House Arrest: Slowing Down -- 5. Nakedness: Pride and Shame -- 6. Girlfriends -- 7. Sluts -- 8. First Base: Hierarchy -- 9. Second Base: Love and Control -- 10. Crash Course: Their Bodies -- 11. Third Base: Identity -- 12. Fourth Base: How to Make a Woman -- 13. Skipped Homework: Our Bodies -- 14. More Skipped Homework: Our Pleasure -- 15. Babies -- 16. Cheap or Precious? -- 17. Adults -- 18. A Virus -- 19. An Hypocrisy -- 20. The Technically White Dress -- 21. The Time and the Place: 1996.