Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood

Rating:
Summary: Wow! So Bad its Great! A must read for Men.
Review: Although I give it only 2 stars as literature, I really enjoyed reading this book, not because it was great or revelatory or profound, but because it was fascinating. I read it cover to cover and underlined many parts. Its virtues: it is quite frank and stimulatingly arousing in places. Yeah! It's main theme is to stick up for the sanctity of the female sex drive, which is getting no respect, she says. Its also very interesting for a man to read how one woman can adopt a global view that nearly every thought or bias or instinct coming from her own head, is at least partly attributable to being planted there by a male-corporate-media-advertising cabal whose single-minded focus is to confine and define women into roles that are useful to "them". Of course the women are too strong and vital to be taken in by this. The author also is interesting for taking some unexpected stands, she is pro-sex (way risky position!), yet she feels that teenagers should be encouraged to limit their sexual experimentation to "first base" and "second base" only. I enjoyed reading it, and it expanded my knowledge and experience of the author, and by proxy, some fragment of the female population who think and feel as she does.

Rating:
Summary: Why is this book so well-known?
Review: Growing up in this world, and in this country, is not always easy. I am a 17-year-old girl who first read this book when I was 15 years old, and became completely amazed by how much she "gets it". Though it is in many ways a memoir, Naomi Wolf portrays teen life as a young woman in such an on-target way and with such eloquent and honest words that you cannot help but truly relate to everything she says. This is an incredible and original work that I would recommend to any teen girl that needs to find someone who can relate.

Rating:
Summary: Why is this book so well-known?
Review: If this is one of the best that feminism has to offer, then I remain unimpressed. The strong feminist slant, I expected and even welcomed. The number of overbroad generalizations and lack of reseach supporting Wolf's assertions, I did not expect. The most irritating thing about this book is the amount of space devoted to Wolf's personal remembrances. It's almost to the point that the book could be renamed "Naomi Wolf: Memoirs." However, Wolf is neither important enough nor interesting enough to have her own biography.

Overall, if you are looking for a feminist read, this shouldn't be it unless you have lived Naomi Wolf's life. I didn't grow up in San Francisco, so I had very little sense of "Wow, I've been there/felt that way too!" And I didn't grow up in the sixties, which only compounded the irrelevancy of this book to my life. There are so many good feminist books out there; it's really a shame that this one is considered such an important one. It's definitely outdated and, unless you're from San Francisco, probably irrelevant to your life.

Rating:
Summary: The Talk of the Town
Review: It is an excellent conversation piece to share with your husband/boyfriend, friends, daughter and mother. It touches on so many issues that are too "weird" to say outloud. It really makes you think about your sexuality and your desires and your relationships with both women and men in a way that validates them for the first time ever. It is thought- provoking and informative. You will read it, love it, and pass it on.

Rating:
Summary: Saved by PROMISCUITIES
Review: Naomi Wolf, called "naive" and "sloppy" by middle aged reviewers, speaks to a younger audience in a voice that is frank and concise.

I first read Promiscuities at the age of 15 while in the south of France on my first "summer program" experience...bought the book as something to read on the plane but wound up completely engrossed over and over again. I was away from home for an extended period of time for the first time in my life...confronted with sexuality from all angles. Wolfe's words, her stories and anecdotes, made SENSE of the "rites of passage" I was unconsciously experiencing.

Heartfelt thanks to the author, a woman who is not afraid to "tell it like it is" and who offers sincere advice to young women in the world today.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and worthwhile
Review: Promiscuities may not resonate with everyone, but as a member of Wolf's generation, it definitely did with me. She does a wonderful job of explaining the whole 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation in which girls live regarding sexuality, with anecdotes from her and others' personal experiences.

I fail to see why the book has gotten so much criticism for being anecdotal and personal; at no point did I feel she was trying to pass it off as hard science. I think Wolf explains beautifully the whole paradox of what it means to be female in post sexual revolution society. I would not only recommend this book to young women, but to parents, particularly fathers of girls about to enter this stage, because I think it will be a real eye opener.

Rating:
Summary: Promiscuities: A Memoir
Review: Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf. Not recommended.
Female coming of age. Female desire and sexuality. Feminism. Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood attempts to address these issues in the context of Naomi Wolf's own coming of age in the 1970s. The problem with this approach is that it is too personal (a weakness Wolf admits early on) to offer either much insight or value. The best it can do is provoke clearer thinking in the reader than Wolf is capable of.
The stories are provided by Wolf and her circle of friends, who are for the most part middle-class, urban, and Caucasian. Much of Wolf's discussion focuses on her childhood/adolescence in San Francisco and her exposure to that city's counterculture ideas and sex industry-something that may resonate with women of similar backgrounds, but not with this lower middle-class, East Coast, small-town girl whose exposure to the sex industry came at the end of adolescence, not during childhood. (Unlike Wolf, I and my peers didn't walk past strip clubs every day, see genital fetishes sold in local stores, or know about "sex workers" before hitting double digits.)
Wolf describes in detail such things as her procurement of birth control in preparation for the planned loss of her virginity to a "sweet guy." She would have you believe she was thinking about when a girl becomes a woman, what makes a girl a woman, the ritual of becoming a woman, and the adult attitude toward teenage sex at this tender age while making this well-thought-out decision. According to her description of the event, which feels meaningless to her because of the way society disregards it, there is no teenage impulsiveness or passion involved-again, something that does not resonate.
Wolf's primary point is that we were taught to believe, falsely, that females control sexual relations because males have uncontrollable desires, while we do not. Her exception to this teaching is, of course, valid. She hypothesizes that not only do females have tremendous desire, but that we are capable of a higher level of more prolonged desire and that we are nothing short of sexual deities. She illustrates this with a "history of the clitoris" (in which it is forgotten and rediscovered over the millennia) and of the extensiveness and sensitivity of the female sexual skin. She cites ancient wisdom that is no longer in practice or understood about male/female sexuality and relations; they understood sexual relations in a way we do not. Along the way, she occasionally makes valid points, for example, that all too often, parents of the 1960s and '70s abdicated their adult roles to pursue their own pleasures and that there is no real transition from girlhood to womanhood.
In the end, however, her points rely too much on the personal anecdotes and on selected sources, that is, sources skewed toward her viewpoint. This is not an objective analysis of legitimate issues and theories, but an agenda that has little substance behind it. Wolf does manage to successfully illustrate the muddiness of sexual attitudes with the muddiness of her own thought. She is a barely adequate writer because she is neither a clear nor a deep thinker. Promiscuities is no more than pop feminism that adds little to what has already been written upon the subject other than Wolf's own narrow perspective and need to be more sexually charged than men-a need that her passionless relationships and anecdotes belie.
If you really want insight into female desire and sexuality and what it means to become a woman, there are surely much more universal, fundamental, and emotionally and intellectually integral truths available than the weak mental ramblings offered here.
Diane L. Schirf, 6 September 2001.

Rating:
Summary: Weakest Wolf yet.
Review: This book was a memoir, and, if I may say so, a very superficially written one. Which is a shame, because a real memoir of Wolf's life would probably be quite interesting.

Wolf's purported discussion of the sexual maturation in young women deals with little more than her own experience and that of her circle of friends. Which is also a shame, because a seriously written book on this topic would also be interesting.

But Wolf treds a painfully dull and over-hyped path with this book, which manages to hide her considerable intellect almost completely under trite melancholy reminisces. Utterly failing to provide any insight into adolescence's turbulence, Wolf laments her psuedo-tragic past and suggests ill-thought-out "solutions" for preventing such pain.

This autobiography is not really an autobiography at all, as it only covers a few years of her life, and doesn't delve into her psyche or experience at all, except with regard to her (huge) virgin/whore complex. It might be a very compelling book about her adult life as she struggles with her feminist beliefs and the backlash to "The Beauty Myth," but it's not. So if you are interested in Wolf as a thinker, you're out of luck.

But if you're interested in the complex social navigations of young women in our society and how those interactions have affected our culture's view of women, you're out of luck too. Any discussion about this issue is about as deep as a puddle.

The real shame of this is how much I like Naomi Wolf, and how much "The Beauty Myth" meant to me. And if one looks hard enough in this text, you may take something out of it. However, something went horribly wrong with this sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual book from a very smart author.

Rating:
Summary: Misunderstood and Undervalued
Review: This book, by such a 'noted' feminist researcher, has recieved an undue amount of criticism for several reasons. The first being that there is always an over emphasis on the context Wolf chooses, which is her own. There is an overwhelming failure to notice how this creates a story, and a background for the reader. Elsewise, we would just be meandering through some misplaced memories. It also serves to show that these stories are not meant as an all inclusive look at what it means to have sex as a teenage girl.

The second undue criticism comes from the nature of the book - as a collection of stories. There are complaints that, unlike The Beauty Myth, there is not a lot of factual research - which Wolf readily admits in the introduction. The reason for this is often revealed in interviews with Wolf. She often notes that she wrote it because she realized her daughter would be going through the same things in a number of years. The lack of theory and jargon in this book make it accessible for young women who many not even really understand what the word "feminist" means.

I write this because I read this book as a young girl, and later as a university student. As a pre highschool student, this book gave me guidance and reference not available to me from my family, friends or school. The fact that someone was telling these stories served to make my own experiences normal and gave me realistic expectations in the world of "high school romance". I don't hesitate to say it probably saved me a lot of heart ache, as I was exposed to the stories of "women who have gone before"

As a university student, I feel that the true stories of women are generally not heard in the forum of mainstream culture. Although I have come to disagree with some portrayals and sections of this book, I also realize it's value and recognize it's impact on my life. It is a must read for young women, and should be available in health and family life classes everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: a very slight commentary:
Review: Why do people care so much what other people think about them? This book is more of a whine and a moaning lament on what the author imagines other people think about this and that and so-and-so. I believe a true liberation of spirit would come from simply stating: Who cares what you think?