Going All the Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy [Paperback]

Sharon Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 1996

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The sexual mores of teenage girls is the subject of this disturbing investigation by feminist writer Thompson (Powers of Desire). With patience and creativity, she became the recipient of 400 teenage girls' stories. We hear in this "girl talk" the need of these voluble girls for romance, sometimes called love, translated into sex as a rite of passage. Their sexual histories between the ages of 13 and 17 coincided with the sexual revolution and, as Thompson's reportage supports, "This tectonic shift in the rules of teenage romance generated an enormous amount of talk about... the complexities of being a sexually active adolescent." Thompson dispels some myths about population explosion as a result of their activity and challenges political stances on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. This reporting allows the girls to tell their side of the story, of their adolescence, "when they know of almost no reason not to have sex." It sheds light on discrepancies between what teenage girls know and what they do.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Hill and Wang (September 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0809015994
• ISBN-13: 978-0809015993
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,027,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Over 400 interviewed girls can't be wrong!, March 10, 2002

By 

Sharon Lamb (Vermont) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Going All the Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy (Paperback)

There are a lot of new books out now (March 2002) on teenage girls and sex. This one, I hope will remain the classic. Thompson is an exceptional researcher and not just another journalist with an interesting idea. Her analysis is provocative but also very useful. I write about her work in my book, The Secret Lives of Girls, which is about 6-12 year old girls, not teens, and agree with her that a teenager girl's as well as a pre-teen girl's view of love and romance make her especially vulnerable today.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A girl is not a girl ..., June 18, 2009

By 

not a natural "Bob Bickel" (huntington, west virginia United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Going All the Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy (Paperback)

I think the most interesting observation made by Sharon Thompson in Going All the Way is the class-based diversity among teenaged girls. At one extreme we find the poor girls whose prospects for the future are quite limited with regard to education, occupation, and income. These are the girls who are looking for love, for meaning in the form of a man who will care for them, father their children, and be a life-long soul mate. Given that their options are few, they are vulnerable, open to sexual usury, and often become single mothers when their lover moves on. Young women such as this are indirectly victimized by a social system that prompts prospective husbands and fathers to prove themselves faithless and unreliable because they can't find work which provides adequate compensation to support a family.

At the other extreme, we find the affluent, upper middle class girls. Their futures are replete with educational opportunity, and their occupational and income prospects are excellent. They don't need love and caring with the desperation of the poor girl. They know how to use sex and love to satisfy their needs and enhance their prospects. They are in charge of the intimacy in their lives. Are they users? Perhaps. But at least they won't be used, left on their own with a child to support.

Interestingly, the reader has to go half way through the book before someone experiences an orgasm. It comes in response to a lesbian encounter. Nothing wrong with this, but the author off-handedly,attributes this first instance of sexual release to the absence of fear of pregnancy. Surely there are other ways to accomplish this. In any case, it's an interesting book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, May 5, 2011

By 

Lisa Braun (NE, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Going All the Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy (Paperback)

I've read a lot of book on human sexuality and how teens are affected by today's culture. I enjoyed this book. It touched on a lot of the same topics that other similar books do, but it also brings with it its own stories and information. I got a lot of great quotes from the book including "It can take years to discover or develop a sexual identity, and it's hard enough to survive the pressure toward conformity in such relatively straight forward matters as dress or speech in high school." (page 178) and "Popular narrators [the girls interviewed for the book] didn't report much sexual pleasure but that may have been just one sign, from the group of girls that understood the social riles better than any other, that though it may have become acceptable to acknowledge having sex, it still wasn't cool to talk about liking it." (page 76)