It's hard to get more honest and intimate than Amber Madison. On her new book, "Hooking Up: A Girl's All-Out Guide to Sex and Sexuality," the young and knowledgeable Madison said, "On the one hand it doesn't totally click how many people are going to be reading it. It's kind of like writing in a journal."
Madison graduated from Tufts University and wrote a column in the student paper focusing on relationships, sexuality and safe sex. One might assume that she was able to use a lot of the material from her columns in the book itself. However, "a lot of things I wrote in my columns felt like they didn't fit in the book," Madison said.
"My columns were geared towards the Tufts audience and college students, but I wanted my book to reach high school students, people in college and people out of college," she said.
Thus, the idea for "Hooking Up," a no-nonsense guide to sexuality for girls by a girl, was born. Madison said she chose to add her voice to the thousands out there vying for the attention of young and curious girls because she was one of those girls when she began writing and knew exactly what she needed to hear during those years of her life. For Madison's senior thesis, she researched the other guides available to girls and immediately noticed the crucial mistake they made: they were boring.
"I have a short attention span, and ... I'm interested in sex, but I couldn't make it through these books," she said.
The facts were there, but Madison noticed that no one tackled the issues from an emotional perspective. There were lectures that made everything seem uninteresting and cold.
"Sex is funny!" Madison insists, which is what prompted her to write a guide that would be fun to read and eliminate the scary undertones that permeate so many of the other books available. Did Madison use these other competing guides as inspiration? Only when deciding what not to do, she said.
Madison said she felt it was important to begin writing the book while she was still in college, "on the brink of really figuring stuff out." She was her own primary source of research, but she also relied on friends for alternate opinions and outlooks on the same issues. They were helpful for the emotional information, such as deciding which messages are empowering and "which are just cheesy."
The most distinguishing element to "Hooking Up" is the personal experience and stories that Madison shares with her readers. Madison said she wanted to make sure her readers knew that everything in her book is a genuine reflection of how she feels and what she believes others need to hear.
"I believe very strongly in the importance of those stories to getting my message across," Madison said, pointing out that they serve to establish a feeling of trust between herself and the reader.
Madison said she could not choose which was the most important issue discussed in her book. She emphasized that girls should make sexual decisions based on what feels good to them, rather than being pressured into them. She also pointed out the need for honest information about not just contraceptives, condom use, pregnancy and STDs but also sexual assault.
Madison said that many people still believe a rape is some guy jumping out of the bushes and dragging a girl into an alleyway, but date rape is happening more often now, especially to women on college campuses, and girls need to be aware of it.
Madison said she finally settled on the sexual stereotypes chapter as her favorite, because it is frequently left out of other available guides.
"It is really what hit home for me and started my interest in sexuality. It is important to understand, as a girl, where sex fits into your life," she said.
The chapter focuses on the fact that one can be "sexy" without being a "slut" and one can be "sexy" and "smart" at the same time.
"Girls can be incredibly unsupportive of friends and other girls they don't know. It's very important that girls be more supportive of each other," Madison said.
After the release of her book, Madison plans to retire her pen for a while and tour the country speaking at colleges about sexual issues, because she wants to do something more than "sitting in [her] apartment writing"
