Synopses & Reviews
At once an affectionate tribute and a work of social history,
Going All the Way captures the experiences of young women coming of age in modern day America. What emerges in this work is an all but unprecedented study of the intimate lives of teenage girls that goes far in explaining teen motivation and behaviour, "challenging the simplistic stereotypes and savage preconceptions that have kept us dangerously ignorant"--Alix Kates Schulman
Review
"A brave approach to one of the most emotionally and politically charged issues of our times."—Peggy Orenstein,
The New York Times Book Review"Thompson, in her fascinating book lets these girls tell their own stories of romance, sex and pregnancy in their own terms . . . She reproduces them generously, along with her own judicious and politically pungent commentary . . . The sum of these stories demonstrates a huge and widening range in ways of viewing the female self."—Ellen Ross, The Nation
"[Thompson] challenges the simplistic stereotypes and savage preconceptions that have kept us dangerously ignorant."—Alix Kates Schulman
"A fascinating probe into girls' intimate lives. So much so that the reader often feels like a voyeur, overhearing a conversation that is not meant for the public."—Catherine Texier, Newsday
"Teenage girl lust is all about stories passionately told: part of the thrill lies in the breathless confession, the tiny detail, the confirmation that repetition accords. Thompson listens patiently, then . . . nails everything . . . These girls are her text, and Thompson is a very close reader."—Katherine Dieckmann, The Village Voice
"What makes this book so absorbing and so important is that it captures the experiences of young women at a critical moment in American history."—Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls and Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [287]-326) and index.
Synopsis
At once an affectionate tribute and a work of social history, Going All the Way follows four hundred teenage girls' thoughts and experiences during one of the most remarkable eras in the history of sex, gender, and adolescence - the brief and amazing period when teenage girls knew of almost no reason not to have sex. The feminist scholar Sharon Thompson first began to listen to teenage girls' tales about their sexual and romantic experiences in the late 1970s, soon after they had gained the right to contraception. For almost ten years, she interviewed girls across the country, in shopping malls and pizza parlors, under highway trestles and in public parks. Her brilliant and moving account of what she heard captures teenage girls' first startled responses to the radically new rules of sex and romance and their efforts to shape new ways of being sexual out of such long-standing adolescent preoccupations as popularity, alienation, and best-friendship. In her interpretation, Thompson begins to make sense of many aspects of teenage sexual behavior that survey research has failed to explain: the persistent, exasperating discrepancies, for example, between what teenagers know and what they do - discrepancies that are more critical than ever, given the danger of AIDS.
About the Author
Sharon Thompson lives in New York City.