Lisa Houseman and "Hooking Up Smart"

For women (and men) who want to date, the best website to read is Hooking Up Smart, written by Susan Walsh. She describes herself as follows:

Susan Walsh, author of the blog "Hooking Up Smart"

Since earning my MBA in 1983 from The Wharton School, I have worked with companies and non-profit organizations to identify key challenges and opportunities, and formulate winning strategies. Hooking Up Smart brings together my passion and concern for young people with a professional, practical and systematic problem-solving approach.

I came of age during the 70s and 80s, witnessing (and enjoying) the effects of the sexual revolution. My generation straddled the line between traditional dating and hooking up, and I’ve experienced the pros and cons of each. Both in real life and here at HUS, I’ve been a mentor and counselor to young people trying to navigate the hookup culture and find love in a bear market.

I started Hooking Up Smart just over nine years ago. At the time I was a self-employed, part-time management consultant. My daughter was starting college. Suddenly the hookup culture was everywhere. Rolling Stone wrote about the sex culture at Duke. Tom Wolfe wrote I Am Charlotte Simmons. Sex-positive feminists extolled the pleasures of casual hookups scored off of Craigslist.

As a parent I was terrified, but I was also deeply saddened by the reports I heard first-hand. They described young men of 18 or 19 demanding FWB [Friends With Benefits] and proclaiming their disinterest in a “relationship.”

I began to research the topic deeply, and then to write for the young women who were taken aback and horrified that boyfriends were rare.

HUS became a place where young women could read about these issues and have a conversation about how to approach dating in college.

Here is a sample of her blog's subjects:

How to Meet Guys After College

Twenty Reasons You Don't Have a Boyfriend

How to Find a Great Guy

Relationship Advice to My Young Self

Girl Game Today, Same As It Ever Was

How to Find Out If He Has Relationship Potential

Filtering for Players and Cads

The World of Hanging Out and Hooking Up

In my earlier post about the song Hungry Eyes, where I wrote about "the male gaze", I quoted extensively from Walsh's blog article titled Women as the Object of Desire.

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One of my favorite articles in Hooking Up Smart is In this battle of the sexes, women need to blink first. The article includes the following passages.

It is a man’s job to sexually escalate with a woman he is attracted to. As women control access to sex, he risks rejection in his quest to get it. Indeed, if women are appropriately discerning in their choice of sexual partner, most men will be rejected most of the time. ...

Many women feel entitled to audition would-be lovers very selectively. If they experience a lack of attention – no guy shows up to audition – they blame men. If a guy does show up but decides not to stick around, he’s a douche. That’s not reasonable. ...

The problem with this sense of entitlement is that it creates total passivity on the girl’s part. You don’t have very good control of your dating life if you are always waiting for a call or hoping the perfect guy is going to see you from across the room ...

Usually this dilemma is addressed by encouraging women to make the first move or ask a guy out. In other words, we encourage the female to usurp the male role in hopes of nudging the process along. ... There are limitations to this approach, which runs counter to the natural order of things.

A much better approach is for the woman to do her job, which is to escalate emotionally. Women want emotional intimacy during sex, but they have sex before creating a foundation of emotional connection. Doing that work is your job, not his. If you hope for commitment, it makes no sense to leave it to chance, dreaming that a guy will fall for you based on your looks alone, or because you’re good in bed. A man will offer commitment when he is sufficiently emotionally invested to make the tradeoff to forfeit sexual variety. Women are the ones who have the power to create that investment.

Walsh teaches that the man's role is to escalate the relationship sexually, while the woman's role is to escalate the relationship emotionally. Walsh lists the following methods that women can use to escalate emotionally. In her article, you can read her elaborations of each method.

1. Focus 100% of your sexual attraction on him.

2. Be consistently curious and interested to learn more about him.

3. Ask for his advice, support or help.

4. Be generous and appreciative.

5. Share a lust for life.

6. Let him know how much you like him, and how sexually attracted you are to him.

This article was followed by 970 comments written by the blog's readers.

Walsh followed up with an illustrative article on basically the same subject, titled Ten Ways to Make A Man Fall in Love.

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In the movie Dirty Dancing, Lisa Houseman has good instincts for behaving in accordance with the principles that Walsh teaches. Although Lisa probably never will experience such a dramatic romance as her younger sister Baby experienced with Johnny Castle, Lisa soon will find a suitable boyfriend and will marry happily.

In previous posts, titled How Far Did Lisa and Robbie Go Sexually? and Lisa's Belated Decision to Have Sex With Robbie, I described Lisa's slow and careful progression of her relationship with Robbie Gould. When Lisa belatedly decided to have sex with him, she found when she arrived that he already was having sex with another woman. Lisa's delays saved her from falling too far into love with Robbie. She learned that she would not be able to count on him to be a a good and steady boyfriend.

In contrast, Baby escalated her relationship with Johnny sexually. She escalated it also emotionally. Except that Johnny taught Baby how to dance, he was rather passive in their relationship.

One reason why Johnny did not escalate sexually was, I think, that he recognized that a relationship with Baby would be inappropriate, troubled and doomed. In that regard, Johnny was wiser than Baby.

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The movie does not tell much about how Lisa escalated emotionally with Robbie, but there are a couple of hints that enable us to fill in the story's gaps.

When Lisa was trying on wigs, Robbie approached her and remarked that he was earning enough tips that he might be able to afford to buy an Alfa Romeo car. Lisa responded immediately that the Alfa Romeo was her favorite car, thus supporting his desire to buy one.

Robbie and Lisa talk about his buying an Alfa Romeo car

Later, we see that Lisa drawing Robbie into a discussion with her father about the Domino Theory.

Lisa talking with Robbie and her father about the Domino Theory

In general, Lisa perceives that Robbie considers himself to be sophisticated in his tastes and philosophy, and she shows him that she respects and supports his opinions. I am sure that Lisa read Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead when he recommended it, and she discussed the book with him.

Of course, Lisa's behavior can be dismissed contemptuously as mindless flattery and intellectual self-subordination.

However, Walsh in her Hooking Up Smart provides a more respectful perspective on Lisa's behavior. Lisa is expressing curiosity and interest about Robbie's thinking and is asking for his opinions about political issues.

Also, Lisa is showing Robbie how much she likes him by drawing him into friendship with her father. She is showing Robbie and her father that she wants to be known as Robbie's girlfriend.

In the end, Lisa failed to establish a continuing relationship with Robbie, but she conducted herself wisely with him. She learned some lessons about boyfriends that she will be able to apply in her next relationship with her next boyfriend.  Lisa is getting smarter about "hooking up smart".

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In contrast, Baby made a mess of her relationship with Johnny and surely will take some wrong lessons into her future relationships with future boyfriends.

Baby escalated both her sexual and emotional relationships with Johnny. Except for their dancing, she dominated their relationship. Eventually she would dominate him also intellectually and financially.

After Baby spoiled her relationship with her father, she kept Johnny away from her father. By doing so, Baby communicated an impression that she was ashamed of Johnny in relation to her father. Although Baby did not intend to do so, she thus aggravated Johnny's inferiority complex.

At the end of the movie's story, Baby's relationship with Johnny improves somewhat, especially in relation to her father. From that brief improvement, however, Baby surely learns some bad lessons for her future relationships. The worst lesson is that a relationship with an unsuitable boyfriend is likely to end well for herself and for her family.

Another bad lesson was that her own escalation of her sexual relationship with Johnny was "hooking up smart".  On the contrary, she seduced Johnny into a serious relationship against his better judgment. She aggravated the hostility of her father, a man whom Johnny wanted to respect openly and mutually.

Because Baby learned some wrong lessons, her road ahead will be bumpy in her immediate future. She probably will go through a few failed relationships before she settles down with a suitable man.

In contrast, Lisa is likely to marry her next boyfriend and to enjoy a long. happy marriage with him.

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See also my series of articles titled "Baby Houseman's Inner Conflict About Femininity", which begins there.