The Sex Myth (Rachel Hills, Viking)

Rachel Hills defines The Sex Myth as a cultural narrative that demands our sexuality be experienced in a narrow way. We are hypersexual and frequently desiring, it dictates. Hills is a veteran feature writer on sexuality and gender, and explores sexual sociology for 20-somethings in layman’s terms. She discovers that not many people live up to pop culture’s projected ideal. Sex is ‘influenced by social and cultural forces’ such as films and friends’ conversations, writes Hills. She deconstructs the thinking propelled by these forces: the internalised expectation of proud casual encounters; sex as a path to status or self-worth; and the influence of gender roles (the ‘sexually insatiable male’ model educates men to pursue pleasure to prove their manhood while the virginal woman creates a passive female sexuality). As well as mining pop culture for enforced norms, Hills interviewed almost a thousand young people across the Western world. All discussion and research is LGBT-friendly, and is rich with anecdotal evidence of anxiety about failing the standard. There’s so much more to our sex lives than simple desire, and this book is an accessible resource for anyone who wants to explore this idea.

Lou Heinrich is the books editor at Lip