The Sex Myth: The Gap Between Our Fantasies and Reality

"Fifty years after the sexual revolution, we are told that we live in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom. But beneath the veneer of glossy hedonism, millennial journalist Rachel Hills argues that we are in the grip of a new brand of sexual control. Cosmopolitan meets Foucault in this full-scale investigation of the role that sex plays in today's culture. Coming of age in the early 2000s, Rachel Hills felt like a romantic and sexual misfit. Raised on a diet of women's magazines, teen soap operas, and media panics over "hooking up" and "raunch culture," she believed that everyone her age was dining at an all-you-can-eat sexual buffet. Everyone, that is, but her. When a chance encounter with a new friend challenges her preconceptions, Hills sets out to discover the truth about her generation's sexual cultures, speaking with more than 200 people to produce a landmark account of contemporary sexual life. What she finds is the sex myth--the grand significance we invest in sexuality that once meant we were dirty if we did have sex, and now means we are defective if we don't do it enough. An ambitious mix of sociology, popular culture, and powerful personal stories, The Sex Myth uncovers the invisible norms and unspoken assumptions that shape what we think about sex--and accordingly, how we feel about our own sex lives"--