Hard To Get Twenty-Something Women And The Paradox Of Sexual Freedom Summary

Choices and types of lifestyle a young woman chooses help them to create their identity. However when the choices and the lifestyle chosen are affected by the various forces, it can create a fake identity of that young women. In “Selections from “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” the author Leslie Bell insists that pressure from a young women’s traditional community and family create a complex situation for young women where they are forced to divide their choices and choose a lifestyle. The author writes about the uncertainty and lost identities of young women 's. Identity is a complex issue which can be divided into two parts; one being given identity and real identity. Given identity is best described

The values and rules of traditional community add great pressure on an individual 's shoulder while choosing their identity. While women 's have relatively more freedom then before but however values of traditional communities creates an invisible fence between their choices. It put the young women in a disconcerting situation about their sexual freedom. Bell demonstrates the how the contradiction messages are delivered to the young woman 's, she writes that “Their peers, television shows such as Sex and the City, and movies seem to encourage sexual experimentation... But at the same time, books, such as Unhooked and A Return to Modesty advise them to return to courtship practices from the early 1900s”(27). This kind of demonstration from media, about how a woman 's character should be, psychologically creates rules for the young women. These rules are contradictory to each other which are impossible to follow. Young women struggle to follow these rules which lead them to the idea of splitting. Young women make tough decision of splitting, which mean they separate the choice of lifestyle they can have and pick one of them. Bell argues that “the contradictions and uncertainties that characterize today 's young women’s lives lead many of them to systematically employ certain unconscious defense to resolve their internal conflicts and anxiety, often to detriment.”(28). Splitting is the unconscious defense they choose to resolve the complications with the traditional rules of their respective communities. Alicia and Jayanthi were part of splitting too; they choose the path that was appealing to them on that time. They couldn’t get their real identity because they failed to express their true self. They choose a path and they wanted to experience that path as much as they can because in their mind they are not allowed to