Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Orenstein observes that the vocabulary for romance and sex among adolescents has changed, as it often does between generations. In the first phase of a relationship, a girl might be “talking” to someone. “Hooking up” means anything from kissing to intercourse. “Catching feelings,” which girls try to protect themselves from, happens when she develops an emotional attachment to another person. The proverbial “bases” have changed too: First base is still making out, but second base is manual stimulation, and third base is oral sex.

Oral sex used to largely be considered more intimate than intercourse, but it’s become more common and less meaningful for younger generations. This has led to what Orenstein refers to as “blow job panic” among adults. Blow jobs are one step past making out, and teenagers tend to not consider them as actual sex. The number one reason girls perform oral sex is to “improve their relationships” (53). Yet, in Orenstein’s exchanges with her interviewees, she learns that the girls gave blow jobs as a way to emotionally distance themselves from their partners, seemingly protecting themselves from the investment they feared would arise from intercourse. For girls, oral sex was for their partner’s happiness; for boys, it was for physical pleasure.