From hooking up to staying in? Women negotiating appropriate sexuality in nightlife with age

Abstract

While much research has explored contemporary constructions of young women’s sexuality, few studies have been sensitive to how age influences women’s sexuality in the context of mainstream nightlife. Drawing on sexual scripting theory, I investigate how 19 Norwegian women (ages 27–34 years) draw on and negotiate cultural scripts when making sense of their nightlife experiences with age. I found that nightlife was an increasingly difficult space to occupy, and that participating could cause tension with the women’s understandings of themselves, their behaviours and their desires in nightlife. While age-related scripts allowed the participants to criticise gender inequality in sexual interaction in nightlife, they simultaneously obscured how gender inequality in nightlife persisted in new forms with age.

Keywords

Sexual agency nightlife sexual scripts age women

Introduction

Nightlife spaces are important arenas for flirting and for initiating sexual relations in contemporary Western societies (Grazian, 2007; Jensen et al., 2019). They are considered more liminal spaces, temporally allowing for a different way of relating to one another and to ‘let go’ of control and the constraints of everyday behaviour (Measham, 2004; Measham and Brain, 2016). Together with the use of intoxicants, music and dancing, the charged atmosphere of nightlife (Tutenges, 2012) can enable and encourage sexual interaction for young men and women participating (Pedersen et al., 2017; Tutenges et al., 2020). Thus, sexual interaction can be an integral and valued part of young people’s nightlife experiences and motivations for participating (Grazian, 2007; Pedersen et al., 2017).

While nightlife spaces historically have been associated with men and masculinity, women’s participation has to a large degree become normalised and expected in contemporary Western societies (Buvik and Baklien, 2016). Women have been recognised as consumers in their own right by the nightlife industry (Szmigin et al., 2008) and nightlife and drinking have become a source of identity, fun and friendship for young women (Nicholls, 2019; Rúdólfsdóttir and Morgan, 2009). Nightlife has also become a space in which young women are encouraged to both ‘look and act as agentically sexy’ (Griffin et al., 2013: 187). However, while researchers find that young women are expected to see themselves as autonomous and empowered sexual subjects who are free to participate in nightlife, they are simultaneously held accountable to conventional ideals of respectability and sexual restraint (Bernhardsson and Bogren, 2012; Griffin et al. 2013; Nicholls, 2019: 7).

Although research over the last two decades has explored how young women negotiate the ‘tightrope’ of appropriate sexuality in nightlife, few studies have been sensitive to how age interacts with this. Appropriate sexual behaviours and desires are intertwined with age in gendered ways, and it has been argued that women face a ‘gendered double standard of aging’ (England and McClintock, 2009), by which they are ‘culturally desexualized’ with age and assumed to lose value in sexual interaction with age compared to men (Alarie, 2019; Montemurro and Chewning, 2018: 129). Social constructions of age thus influence how women are viewed by themselves and others as sexual subjects, which in turn influences their sexual agency. Nightlife spaces, which often value expressions of a heterosexually attractive and youthful femininity (e.g. O’Grady and Madill, 2019; Tan, 2014), may be a particularly challenging context for women’s sexuality as they age.

In this article, I investigate 19 Norwegian women’s experiences of sexual interaction in nightlife in their late twenties and early thirties. Participating in nightlife in this age may require negotiation, as it has been argued that women face the expectation of ‘settling down’ in their thirties (see Pickens and Braun, 2018: 442) and therefore meet new expectations on their sexuality. Drawing on sexual scripting theory, I investigate how age influences constructions of appropriate sexuality for women, and how the participants in this study negotiate their sexual behaviours and desires in light of this. This study contributes to broader debates on contemporary constructions of female sexuality by investigating how age interacts with women’s sexual agency in the context of mainstream nightlife.

Women’s sexuality in nightlife settings

Over the last decades women have become active participants in both consumption practices and spaces which have been associated with men and masculinity in the past (Hunt et al., 2017: 403). While drinking and intoxication have historically been intertwined with traditional masculinity, such as risk-taking, physical resilience and aggression (De Visser and McDonnell, 2012), alcohol consumption to intoxication has been seen as challenging respectability, a cornerstone of Western femininity (Griffin et al., 2013; Skeggs, 1997). Importantly, women’s alcohol consumption and intoxication have been perceived as posing a threat towards women’s control over sexuality, a central aspect of respectability (Bogren, 2008). However, as (public) alcohol use has been associated with men and masculinity, drinking and participating in nightlife settings have now also come to symbolise women’s freedom and empowerment (McRobbie, 2007). As a result, research on women’s participation in nightlife settings has often focused on the contradictory demands they face regarding gender-appropriate behaviour in these contexts (Bailey et al., 2015; Bernhardsson and Bogren, 2012; Griffin et al., 2013; Nicholls, 2019).

Nightlife settings are also particular contexts for sexual interaction. Casual sex can be a valued part of contemporary nightlife for both young men and women, and alcohol consumption further facilitates and legitimises sexual behaviours in these contexts (Pedersen et al., 2017). Although this makes nightlife settings more permissive spaces for casual sex, research also suggests that a sexual double standard remains in how men’s and women’s sexual behaviours are viewed (Jensen and Hunt, 2020; see also Fjær et al., 2015). Researchers argue that heterosexual interaction in mainstream nightlife settings are marked by traditional ideals such as men’s sexual assertiveness and initiative, and women’s sexual gatekeeping (Ferris, 1997; Grazian, 2007). Women are seen as valuable as sexual objects for the night-time economy, such as by attracting male patrons to venues (Buvik and Baklien, 2016; Tan, 2013). Thus, women face competing pressure to both be respectable by showing sexual restraint, as well as living up to contemporary ideals of women as empowered and sexually assertive (Fjær et al., 2015). They are expected to look and act (heterosexually) attractive, while being able to manage the risks of unwanted sexual attention in nightlife (Bernhardsson and Bogren, 2012; Griffin et al., 2013). Managing ‘appropriate’ sexuality in these settings can therefore be a contradictory task and requires careful balancing by women (see Griffin et al., 2013; Nicholls, 2019). However, we know less of how women navigate the boundaries of ‘appropriate’ sexuality as they become older.

Contemporary constructions of women’s sexuality

Understandings of women’s sexuality change with age. Traditional cultural scripts suggest that women lose value in sexual interaction as they age (Alarie, 2019) and that women are ‘culturally desexualized’ in midlife and later (Montemurro and Chewning, 2018: 129). Budgeon (2016: 410) argues that while women are encouraged to be autonomous, sexualised subjects when young, this appears to be a ‘“short-lived privilege” dependent upon age’. In a culture that legitimises the couple as the normative way of organising sexual practices and identities, singleness appears to still be a stigmatised status (Budgeon, 2008), particularly for women over a certain age (Pickens and Braun, 2018). As a result, women who remain single ‘may find their femininity and desirability called into question (Pickens and Braun, 2018: 431)’ by remaining single. Age, therefore, influences women’s sexual agency in several ways. While both men and women have been found to equate maturity with committed relationships over casual sex (see Dalessandro, 2019), this is gendered as singlehood is simultaneously represented as a failure in femininity and a lack of desirability for women (Lahad, 2019; Lahad and Hazan, 2014; Pickens and Braun, 2018). As such, the social construction of age influences women’s potential for sexual agency.

Women’s potential for sexual agency is related to how women are constructed as sexual subjects. It has been argued that the last quarter of the century has seen significant changes in the construction of women’s sexuality (Attwood, 2005) and that young women are now encouraged to be assertive, confident and knowledgeable sexual subjects (Gill, 2008). This is closely related to the emergence of a heavily ‘sexualized culture’, in which representations of women as active sexual consumers and casual heterosexual sex are prevalent across mass media (Attwood, 2005; Farvid and Braun, 2014). Nonetheless, research in this field demonstrates the continuing presence of a sexual double standard (Farvid et al., 2017: 545) and that ideals of women’s sexual autonomy exist alongside conventional ideals of respectability (Cowie and Lees, 1981; Skeggs, 1997). Women’s sexuality is still evaluated and policed differently than men, meaning that women now must manage the ‘fine line between sexually desiring and oversexed “slut” (Farvid et al., 2017: 544)’.

New constructions of women as sexually assertive and autonomous challenge traditional understandings of gendered sexual interaction, such as the notion that women naturally prefer relational sex and seek emotional intimacy with sex, while men desire sex and casual sexual relations (Masters et al., 2013: 410). Simon and Gagnon (1986, 2003) introduced the concept of ‘sexual scripts’ to make sense of individuals’ sexual behaviours. ‘Sexual scripting’ refers to the idea that individuals consult internalised scripts that help them give meaning to, understand and act in sexual situations (Masters et al., 2013; Wiederman, 2016). Scripts specify appropriate objects, aims, relations and feelings associated with sexual interaction (Simon and Gagnon, 1986: 105). Scripts operate at three interacting levels. Cultural scripts refer to the norms that guide sexual behaviour at a societal level. These are interpreted, negotiated and enacted in interaction with others (interpersonal scripts) and in relation to individuals’ motivations and thoughts on sexuality (intrapsychic scripts) (Dworkin and O’Sullivan, 2005; Järvinen and Henriksen, 2020). As a result, there may be disjuncture and tension between different levels of scripts, which may in turn create change in broader cultural scripts for sexuality (Dworkin and O’Sullivan, 2005; Masters et al., 2013: 410). While research on young women’s participation in nightlife shows that they both challenge and reproduce traditional sexual scripts (being sexually assertive in nightlife while remaining ‘respectable’), we know less of how the potential for challenging traditional sexual scripts changes with age. Some studies of women’s sexual agency in midlife and later find that women today may also challenge traditional notions of women as less sexual with age (e.g. Alarie, 2019, 2020; Montemurro and Siefken, 2014). Yet, how social expectations related to age influence women’s sexual agency also in younger age groups has rarely been addressed (but see Pickens and Braun, 2018).

Data and methods

The article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in 2016–2017 with 19 Norwegian women (27–34 years old, mean age 30 years) living in Bergen and Oslo, the two largest cities in Norway. The research participants were recruited through the author’s extended network, and from these initial contacts, more participants were recruited via snowball sampling. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interviews were conducted by the author, a woman in the same age group as the participants. This relationship helped facilitate discussions on sensitive topics as the author could draw on shared background knowledge such as sexual experiences and preferences (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995: 45). The study was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data and conducted in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Science and Humanities. Informed consent was secured, and the participants’ names and other identifying characteristics were changed to ensure their anonymity.

The sample consisted of women with higher education qualifications (eight bachelor’s degrees and 11 postgraduate degrees) who had worked full-time for at least a couple of years and did not have children at the time of the interview. Eight participants were single and 11 in a relationship. The women all frequented nightlife venues and had experiences with flirting and/or sexual interaction in nightlife settings. The participants were not asked to state their sexual orientation, and in the interviews the participants focused on experiences of heterosexual interaction in the context of nightlife. However, two of the participants also mentioned former partners of the same gender. This was not explored further in this study, as the main focus was women’s potential to negotiate heterosexual interaction in nightlife.

I focused on the participants’ experiences of sexual interaction in indoor nightlife venues such as pubs and bars, which is often referred to as ‘mainstream nightlife’. Oslo and Bergen’s nightlife consist of a mix of different age groups and backgrounds. The interviews explored experiences that involved alcohol consumption, and the use of other drugs were not mentioned in relation to sexual interaction in nightlife in this study.

The article is part of a broader research project exploring the contradictory ideals regarding women’s alcohol consumption, nightlife participation and associated practices. The interviews lasted between 1.5 and 3 h and followed a semi-structured interview guide. Understanding interviews as interactional situations where knowledge is co-produced (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995), the interviewer used an informal interview style which allowed the participants to introduce topics they considered relevant. Following a semi-structured interview guide ensured that similar topics were covered. As part of the interview guide, the participants were asked to describe their experiences of flirting and sexual interaction in nightlife settings, as well as how they viewed nightlife as a context for sexual interaction. The participants were encouraged to share both negative and positive sexual experiences in nightlife.

For this article, I focused on participants’ descriptions of heterosexual experiences in mainstream nightlife settings. I found that descriptions of sexual autonomy and empowerment were closely related to stories of becoming more mature. Thus, I coded the transcripts with two broad codes covering sexual experiences and preferences in nightlife in past and present. From these initial codes, I created sub-codes that reflected aspects of their sexual behaviour and experiences had changed. This led to a focus on changes in appropriate spaces, relations, behaviours and feelings associated with sexuality. To understand variations in the participants’ experiences of nightlife as a sexual arena, I then explored these codes through the lens of sexual scripting theory (Simon and Gagnon, 1986, 2003). This revealed how traditional scripts for heterosexual interaction were both reproduced by the participants as well as challenged. Through discussions with another researcher who had read the material, three key ways the participants related their behaviours to sexual scripts with age were found. These are presented in the analysis section.

Results

In the following, I explore how the participants negotiated the meaning of their sexual practices and desires in nightlife by relating them to cultural scripts for age-appropriate sexuality. I start by showing how nightlife was increasingly considered the wrong space for women’s sexuality with age. I then analyse how the participants negotiated their continued desire to participate in nightlife, demonstrating that cultural scripts are always enacted in concrete situations and in relation to individual motivations. Lastly, I look at alternative scripts for women’s sexuality in nightlife settings, and the participants’ potential to construct positive and ‘empowered’ sexual identities in nightlife with age.

Avoiding casual sex in nightlife

Although the women interviewed still participated in nightlife, most emphasised that sexual interaction in the context of nightlife had increasingly become incompatible with their aims and wishes as they became older. Emma explained how her view of nightlife had changed: ‘I think people seem so unserious. Seems like people are only after one thing. And that’s okay, that’s allowed, but I don’t think it’s fun. At least not now that I’ve become so old’. Looking for casual sex in nightlife represented an earlier stage of life, and not being interested in casual sex in nightlife was central to the process of becoming more mature (e.g. Dalessandro, 2019). For Sigrun, her wishes for her relationships had changed due to her age: ‘I just feel as if I’ve come to the point in which, if I meet someone now, I want it to be something real and not just a one-night stand or something. And for that, nightlife is not the right place’. Casual sexual encounters were presented as undesirable because of their transitory nature, making nightlife the ‘wrong’ space for mature sexuality.

Sexual interaction in nightlife was also described as gender inequal by prioritising men’s desires and the sexual objectification of women. Becoming older was associated with participants becoming more confident in their sexuality than before, such as respecting their desire and therefore not having sex for male validation. Kristina reflected on this:

And you’ve maybe gotten over that – before, you wanted validation: ‘Am I someone who someone wants to take home?’ And when you become more secure, then it’s not something you need, it’s not necessary. It’s not what I’m looking for.

For Kristina, sexual agency in nightlife as a young woman reflected her wish to be desirable to men and finding out if she was valuable as a sexual object. Becoming more confident with age enabled her to become more autonomous in her sexuality. Several participants pointed out that having sex for validation often came with little sexual pleasure for women. This often involved a re-evaluation of sexual experiences in the past. Astrid describes:

He slept at my place a couple of times, and I was like ‘No, we’re only going to sleep’, I was a bit younger at that time. But he was very insistent, and so we ended up having sex in the end (…) And I remember that I thought afterwards, that ‘this was not really because I really, really wanted it, that’s not what I was thinking when he came home with me, really’. So that’s an example of how naive I was when I was younger. Because I thought it was completely normal that girls just went home to sleep next to boys. (Laughs) But it wasn’t.

Astrid’s account demonstrated how conventions associated with sexual interaction in nightlife settings affected her decision to have sex, rather than her actual sexual desire. Astrid is also implicitly challenging contemporary ideals that conflate being ‘sexy’ and having casual sex with being ‘empowered’ for women (Jackson et al., 2013: 145), as well as the centrality of male sexual pleasure in traditional sexual scripts (Holland et al., 1998). However, Astrid’s story also framed her lack of agency as partly a result of young age rather than gender. This demonstrates the persistence of traditional gendered understandings of sexuality which normalises men’s pursuit of sex, even coercive behaviour, and women’s sexual passivity (Harrington, 2018).

In contrast to sexual experiences in the past, the participants emphasised the importance of feelings and intimacy for sexual interaction and their desires in the present. Nikoline reflected on why she did not have one-night stands anymore:

I get very little out of a one-night stand. It’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just a bit ‘nothing’ in a way? And for me to become attracted to someone I need to talk to them, it’s rarely just physical. (…)

Sexual desire was seen as residing in the relationship with a partner, rather than physical attraction. According to Maja, becoming more mature led her to realise that sex is ‘really about intimacy and closeness’. A common theme in the women’s stories was that the physical aspect of sex was downplayed, either by deeming it less important for them or only a part of desire within the context of a romantic relationship. Kristina says:

It’s something else entirely when you’re in love with someone (…). If you just go home with someone… For me, sexually, that doesn’t give me much. (…) It is just, like, bodies. It’s not a lot of feelings.

Emphasising emotions placed sexuality – as mature women – within the realm of committed relationships and reproduced the intertwinement of women’s sexuality with emotionality. Thus, appropriate feelings associated with sexuality demonstrated the conventional understanding of love as the appropriate location of respectable women’s sexuality (Cowie and Lees, 1981). In this way, constructions of mature female sexuality were also intertwined with conventional ideals of respectability.

When describing nightlife, the participants drew on what can be seen as a cultural script which describes adult, female sexuality as intertwined with committed relationships and love. By relating their nightlife experiences to this script, the participants could criticise gender inequality in nightlife, such as sexual objectification of women, and present themselves as more mature and sexually autonomous in the present. In turn, their accounts of changing preferences for sexual relations, such as avoiding casual sex in nightlife, were associated with empowerment and respecting their ‘authentic desires’. However, by enacting this script, the participants also reproduced conventional ideals of female sexual respectability.

Continuing to participate in nightlife

While adult, female sexuality was increasingly described by the participants as oriented towards committed relationship and love, nightlife remained an important space for many of the participants. As a result, having a desire to participate in nightlife, as well as continuing to be sexually agentic with age, caused tensions for the participants. Ellen reflects on how her views on nightlife have changed in light of expectations of age-appropriate behaviour:

Nightlife has been my pick-up scene, but… You get older (laughs). And society is kind of telling you that you’re supposed to have a man and children soon. (…) But it is also my own need to be a bit calmer, find fewer reasons to go out, and more reasons to stay in. (…) Not having to feel that urge for the next time you will go out, because you might find someone nice.

Ellen described nightlife in a positive way – as a space in which she had been sexually agentic. While she described both an expectation and a desire to orient herself towards family life and committed relationships, there also appeared to be a tension in her feelings towards not participating in nightlife. Nightlife was simultaneously described as tempting in her statement, causing an ‘urge’ to go out and potentially meet someone. This tension was also present in other participants’ stories, such as for Maren:

There’s been periods of time where I go out only to meet someone (...) And when that happens, I might take a good break from going out. At least now that I’m getting older, I’m more concerned with having fun with the people I go out with. And not have this urge to meet someone, or to find someone, when going out.

Wanting to meet someone in nightlife was described as incompatible with her age, leading Maren to take breaks from nightlife. Sexual agency in nightlife was understood as having a ‘wrong urge’ or aim, which she had to police.

Thus, cultural scripts for ‘age-appropriate’ sexuality could cause tensions with the participants’ individual scripts. This was particularly visible in the participants’ conflicted feelings associated with being sexually agentic in nightlife, centred on the fear of appearing ‘desperate’. Ida described looking for guys to hook up with:

Me and a friend were, sort of, out to ‘pick up guys’ (…) And we were just walking around (in the pub) – we were probably oozing desperation–we were scanning, looking around and yeah–we probably talked to all the good-looking guys.

Ida’s story was told with humour as well as embarrassment, demonstrating her self-critical assessment of her and her friend’s behaviour. Rather than being considered sexually agentic and empowered, sexual agency as a mature woman in nightlife was felt as somewhat shameful. Ida described their behaviour in conventionally masculine terms, such as by ‘gazing’ at men as potential sexual objects (Nicholls, 2019) and engaging in a collective endeavour to ‘pick up’ guys (Grazian, 2007), both of which can be a way of demonstrating sexual agency. However, Ida assumed that they had been perceived as ‘oozing desperation’ rather than ‘sexually empowered’. Nikoline similarly described showing sexual initiative in nightlife as deeply uncomfortable:

It was a couple of years ago and we went out – we were a few girlfriends who were single at the time, and everyone was a bit tired of it, so we went out to meet people. And it’s just so dark, you get so (sighs)… standing there and looking around ‘Who’s handsome here?’. (…) If I go alone somewhere or with a friend, when I enter a place, they don’t automatically know who I am or why I’m there. I could be there with a colleague, on my way to a work event, on a date or with my boyfriend. Like, it’s hard to ‘typecast’ what kind of person I am. Compared to a group of only the same gender.

For Nikoline, her visibility as a woman without a partner in nightlife led to feelings of shame associated with displaying sexual agency in this setting. Her suggestions of alternative positions, such as being in nightlife for work or with her boyfriend, demonstrated what she saw as more appropriate ways of being in nightlife settings with age. Consequently, Nikoline stated that she preferred to make herself less visible and her position in nightlife more ambiguous.

Many of the women interviewed continued to participate in nightlife, thus implicitly behaving in ways which were considered inappropriate due to cultural scripts for mature sexuality. While this demonstrates that sexual behaviours vary in concrete situations and according to individual motivations, it also shows that cultural scripts provide a frame of reference for interpreting the meaning of these behaviours. Continuing to participate, as well as wanting to, was experienced as shameful due to its association with being ‘desperate’ for a partner. In this way, the notion that singlehood with age reflects women’s lack of desirability was also reproduced. While the previous section demonstrated that nightlife spaces could be seen as limiting on women’s sexual agency due to sexual objectification, the women’s experiences of continuing to participate in nightlife demonstrated how age limited their sexual agency in this context in new ways.

Staying in nightlife?

The dominant cultural script the participants drew on when making sense of their experiences in nightlife described adult female sexuality as intertwined with love and committed relationships. However, when describing their sexual practices in nightlife in the past, the participants tended to underscore their autonomy as sexual subjects by distancing themselves from the desire to become romantically involved. Ingrid stated:

When I was single, I wasn’t like ‘I need to pick up someone’ or find someone. No, that’s never been a goal or anything like that… I was happy on my own. (…) There are some people who must have someone when they are single.

Ingrid distanced herself from the idea that women who are single are unhappy or looking for a relationship, thereby challenging traditional understandings of women as oriented towards relationships. Maria similarly drew on ideals of sexual autonomy in her story of casual sex in nightlife:

We were at it and almost had started (laughs) – we were like half-way undressed – and then he said: ‘Hey, I’m not interested in a relationship, I just want you to know that before we have sex’ (…) I was very single and very happy about that. And had the attitude that I just met people and had fun. (…) It got very awkward. Because I felt like – why on earth would you believe that about me? Do you think all 27-year-old women are after that?

Maria described her feeling of discomfort when her sexual partner defined her as looking for a romantic relationship due to her age. It invalidated her sexual desire and limited her potential to define the situation and its meaning, thus constraining her potential for sexual agency. The story demonstrated that while the participants could understand and present themselves as sexually autonomous in nightlife, their age influenced whether their desires were seen as authentic. In Maria’s story, the authenticity of her desire for casual sex was implicitly questioned, by understanding her behaviour in light of a cultural script which portrays women as less sexual with age. For Maria, this appeared to result in a disjuncture between the dominant cultural script and her own intrapsychic script.

While these examples demonstrated the existence of alternative constructions of female sexuality, both Maria and Ingrid were in a relationship at the time of the interview. This may have made it easier for them to challenge the dominant cultural script. However, while the participants described their sexual behaviours in nightlife as more shameful in the present, they could describe female friends who continued to hook up in nightlife in more positive terms. Hilde described her friend as ‘eternally single’:

She’s ‘all out’ when going out. (…) she says she’s never getting married, and definitely not having kids. She was talking about having a hysterectomy, having children is not for her. She’ll have cats, and that’s it.

Although Hilde was also critical of her friend’s lifestyle, she was nonetheless presented as actively choosing to remain single and continue to participate in nightlife as a sexual arena. Choosing to be single and go out (implicitly, continuing to engage in casual sex) was presented alongside extremes of rejecting aspects of conventional femininity, such as marriage and children. Hilde’s description of her friend as ‘eternally single’ demonstrated the association of continuing to participate in nightlife with singlehood as a position and identity, rather than a phase in life, which is often stigmatised for women (Pickens and Braun, 2018). This alternative construction of female sexuality could thus be seen as challenging both the appropriate relations and aims associated with the dominant sexual script.

Janne similarly described her friend: ‘She’s like Samantha in Sex & the City, to put it that way (laughs). She thinks it’s fun, it’s living life… she doesn’t want anything else with her life, either’. The character ‘Samantha’ depicts a successful, middle-aged woman known for frequent casual sex with multiple partners and is a contrast to the cultural desexualisation of women with age. Janne’s friend is presented as empowered in her sexuality, and her lifestyle as chosen by herself rather than a lack of desirability. Thus, it challenges the dominant script of love and committed relationships as the only appropriate space for female sexuality with age.

While there existed an alternative script for female sexuality in nightlife, centred on female sexual autonomy, this script appeared to be more difficult to draw on with age. In particular, the authenticity of the participants’ desire to engage in casual sex could be questioned. An alternative script for adult female sexuality was used in descriptions of friends, rather than the participants themselves. While this script can be seen as offering an alternative to the construction of adult female sexuality in nightlife as ‘desperate’, it simultaneously reproduced the notion of casual sex with age as incompatible with conventional femininity.

Concluding discussion

By drawing on age-related cultural scripts, the participants could share stories of sexual disempowerment in their past experiences of sexual interaction in nightlife. Their accounts in this way reflect research on gendered sexual interaction in nightlife, which indicates that mainstream nightlife is still marked by a sexual double standard despite changes in the construction of women as sexual subjects (Griffin et al., 2013; Jensen and Hunt, 2020; Waitt et al., 2011). In this sense, participating in nightlife as a sexual space can create feelings of disempowerment for women, as they are more easily placed in the position of sexual objects (e.g. Grazian, 2007).

However, while the participants presented themselves as (more) autonomous in their sexuality in the present, their experiences of participating in nightlife demonstrated how gender inequality in sexual interaction persisted with age. The desire to participate in nightlife was often considered ‘unwanted’ and being sexually agentic experienced as ‘embarrassing’ or even shameful. This shows that broader cultural scripts for sexuality can also be at odds with individuals’ motives and behaviours. By drawing on what can be seen as a dominant cultural script for mature, female sexuality, behaviours which were considered ‘empowered’ at the cultural level – such as avoiding being sexual in nightlife with age – could feel disempowering at the individual level.

While most of the participants drew on a cultural script which reproduced notions of women as less sexual with age, some also challenged this. The presence of an alternative script reflects how cultural representations of women’s sexuality in adulthood and later are becoming more diverse (see Alarie, 2019, 2020; Montemurro and Siefken, 2014). Since these scripts often refer to women in midlife and later, they may have been less relevant for the participants in their late twenties and early thirties. However, only describing their friends’ sexual behaviours through this script may also have been a way of ensuring respectability – as this script challenged the conventional understanding of love as the appropriate location of respectable women’s sexuality (e.g. Cowie and Lees, 1981).

On a broader note, this analysis demonstrates that while sexual script theory provides insight into the cultural norms and ideals which guide individuals’ sexual behaviours, the differentiation between levels of scripts is equally important for understanding the variations, as well as contradictions, in sexual experiences and behaviours (Järvinen and Henriksen, 2020). Importantly, cultural scripts do not persist or emerge on their own; they require maintenance or innovation at the individual and interpersonal level (Masters et al., 2013). Analytical focus can therefore influence how stabile or malleable sexual scripts appear, and as a result, how much agency individuals are endowed with in terms of their sexual behaviour. While gendered scripts for sexual behaviour at the cultural level are found to be tenacious, studies have found considerable variation and innovation at the inter- and intrapersonal level (Masters et al., 2013: 4). Thus, emphasising the cultural level of sexual scripts may lead to a deterministic reading of sexual behaviour, which lose focus of the individual agency in interpreting, adapting and negotiating existing cultural scripts for sexual behaviour, and potentially change these.

Although the women interviewed continued to participate in nightlife, this study showed how age-related scripts influenced women’s potential for sexual agency in this context in new ways. Importantly, while nightlife was presented as a disempowering space for women’s sexual agency in the past due to traditional patterns for heterosexual interaction, how present scripts constrained women’s sexual agency was obscured. While alternative scripts for female sexuality existed, the women’s continued participation in nightlife appeared to be associated with a ‘failed femininity’ due to the expectation of coupledom with age (e.g. Pickens and Braun, 2018). Thus, participating in nightlife indicated their lack of desirability as women and partners. These findings demonstrate the importance of understanding how age interacts with women’s sexual agency in different age groups, and how contemporary ideals of female sexual empowerment play out in women’s lives and practices in specific contexts such as nightlife.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kristine Vaadal

Kristine Vaadal is currently a PhD candidate at Volda University College in Norway. Her doctoral project, which this article is a part of, explores how Norwegian women negotiate and construct classed, aged and gendered identities through their alcohol consumption, nightlife participation and associated practices. Her research-interests are the construction of ‘new femininities’, postfeminism, sexuality and alcohol consumption.

References

Alarie

(2019) “They’re the ones chasing the cougar”: relationship formation in the context of age-hypogamous intimate relationships. Gender & Society 33(3): 463–485.

Alarie

(2020) Sleeping with younger men: women’s accounts of sexual interplay in age-hypogamous intimate relationships. The Journal of Sex Research 57(3): 322–334.

Attwood

(2005) Fashion and passion: marketing sex to women. Sexualities, 8(4): 392–406.

Bailey

Griffin

Shankar

(2015) “Not a good look”: impossible dilemmas for young women negotiating the culture of intoxication in the United Kingdom. Substance Use & Misuse 50(6): 747–758.

Bernhardsson

Bogren

(2012) Drink sluts, brats and immigrants as others: an analysis of Swedish media discourse on gender, alcohol and rape. Feminist Media Studies 12(1): 1–16.

Bogren

(2008) Women’s intoxication as ‘dual licentiousness’: an exploration of gendered images of drinking and intoxication in Sweden. Addiction Research & Theory 16(1): 95–106.

Budgeon

(2008) Couple culture and the production of singleness. Sexualities 11(3): 301–325.

Budgeon

(2016) The ‘problem’ with single women: choice, accountability and social change. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 33(3): 401–418.

Buvik

Baklien

(2016) “Girls will be served until you have to carry them out”: gendered serving practices in Oslo. Addiction Research & Theory 24(1): 17–24.

10.

Cowie

Lees

(1981) Slags or drags. Feminist Review 9(1): 17–31.

11.

De Visser

McDonnell

(2012) ‘That’s OK. He’s a guy’: a mixed-methods study of gender double-standards for alcohol use. Psychology & health 27(5): 618–639.

12.

Dalessandro

(2019) Manifesting maturity: gendered sexual intimacy and becoming an adult. Sexualities 22(1–2): 165–181.

13.

Dworkin

O'Sullivan

(2005) Actual versus desired initiation patterns among a sample of college men: tapping disjunctures within traditional male sexual scripts. The Journal of sex research 42(2): 150–158.

14.

England

McClintock

(2009) The gendered double standard of aging in US marriage markets. Population and Development Review 35(4): 797–816.

15.

Farvid

Braun

(2014) The “sassy woman” and the “performing man”: heterosexual casual sex advice and the (re) constitution of gendered subjectivities. Feminist Media Studies 14(1): 118–134.

16.

Farvid

Braun

Rowney

(2017) ‘No girl wants to be called a slut!’: women, heterosexual casual sex and the sexual double standard. Journal of Gender Studies 26(5): 544–560.

17.

Ferris

(1997) Courtship, drinking and control: a qualitative analysis of women’s and men’s experiences. Contemporary Drug Problems 24(4): 667–702.

18.

Fjær

Pedersen

Sandberg

(2015) “I’m not one of those girls” boundary-work and the sexual double standard in a liberal hookup context. Gender & Society 29(6): 960–981.

19.

Gill

(2008) Empowerment/sexism: figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminism & Psychology 18(1): 35–60.

20.

Grazian

(2007) The girl hunt: urban nightlife and the performance of masculinity as collective activity. Symbolic interaction 30(2): 221–243.

21.

Griffin

Szmigin

Bengry-Howell

. et al. (2013) Inhabiting the contradictions: Hypersexual femininity and the culture of intoxication among young women in the UK. Feminism & Psychology 23(2): 184–206.

22.

Harrington

(2018) Popular feminist websites, intimate publics, and feminist knowledge about sexual violence. Feminist media studies 20(2): 1–17.

23.

Holland

Ramazanogl

Thomson

(1998) The Male in the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power. London: Tufnell Press.

24.

Holstein

Gubrium

(1995) Qualitative research methods. The active interview. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, Vol. 37.

25.

Hunt

Antin

Bjønness

, et al. (2017) The increased visibility of gender in the alcohol and drug fields. In: Kolind

Thom

Hunt

(eds) The SAGE Handbook of Drug & Alcohol Studies. Volume 1: Social Science Approaches. Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pp. 396–418.

26.

Järvinen

Henriksen

(2020) Controlling intimacy: sexual scripts among men and women in prostitution. Current sociology 68(3): 353–371.

27.

Jackson

Vares

Gill

(2013) ‘The whole playboy mansion image’: girls’ fashioning and fashioned selves within a postfeminist culture. Feminism & Psychology 23(2): 143–162.

28.

Jensen

Herold

Frank

, et al. (2019) Playing with gender borders: flirting and alcohol consumption among young adults in Denmark. Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 36(4): 357–372.

29.

Lahad

(2019) Stop waiting! Hegemonic and alternative scripts of single women’s subjectivity. Time & Society 28(2): 499–520.

30.

Lahad

Hazan

(2014) The terror of the single old maid: on the insolubility of a cultural category. Women’s Studies International Forum 47: 127–136.

31.

Masters

Casey

Wells

, et al. (2013) Sexual scripts among young heterosexually active men and women: continuity and change. The Journal of Sex Research 50(5): 409–420.

32.

McRobbie

(2007) TOP GIRLS? Cultural Studies 21(4–5): 718–737.

33.

Measham

(2004) Play space: historical and socio-cultural reflections on drugs, licensed leisure locations, commercialisation and control. International Journal of Drug Policy 15(5–6): 337–345.

34.

Measham

Brain

(2016) ‘Binge’ drinking, British alcohol policy and the new culture of intoxication. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 1(3): 262–283.

35.

Montemurro

Chewning

(2018) Unscripted: exploring representations of older unpartnered women’s sexuality. Journal of Women & Aging 30(2): 127–144.

36.

Montemurro

Siefken

(2014) Cougars on the prowl? New perceptions of older women’s sexuality. Journal of Aging Studies 28: 35–43.

37.

Nicholls

(2019) Negotiating Femininities in the Neoliberal Night-Time Economy: Too Much of a Girl? Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

38.

O'Grady

Madill

(2019) Being and performing ‘older’ woman in Electronic Dance Movement Culture. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 11(1): 7–29.

39.

Simon

Gagnon

(1986) Sexual scripts: permanence and change. Archives of Sexual Behavior 15(2): 97–120.

40.

Simon

Gagnon

(2003) Sexual scripts: origins, influences and changes. Qualitative sociology 26(4): 491–497.

41.

Skeggs

(1997) Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage Publications.

42.

Szmigin

Griffin

Mistral

, et al. (2008). Re framing ‘binge drinking’as calculated hedonism: empirical evidence from the UK. International Journal of Drug Policy 19(5): 359–366.

43.

Pickens

Braun

(2018) “Stroppy bitches who just need to learn how to settle”? Young single women and norms of femininity and heterosexuality. Sex Roles 79(7): 431–448.

44.

Pedersen

Tutenges

Sandberg

(2017) The pleasures of drunken one-night stands: assemblage theory and narrative environments. International journal of drug policy 49: 160–167.

45.

Rúdólfsdóttir

Morgan

(2009) ‘Alcohol is my friend’: young middle class women discuss their relationship with alcohol. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 19(6): 492–505.

46.

Tan

(2013) Flirtatious geographies: clubs as spaces for the performance of affective heterosexualities. Gender, Place & Culture 20(6): 718–736.

47.

Tan

(2014) Postfeminist possibilities: unpacking the paradoxical performances of heterosexualized femininity in club spaces. Social & Cultural Geography 15(1): 23–48.

48.

Tutenges

(2012) Nightlife tourism: A mixed methods study of young tourists at an international nightlife resort. Tourist Studies 12(2): 131–150.

49.

Tutenges

Sandberg

Pedersen

(2020) Sexually violent effervescence: understanding sexual assault among youth. Sexualities 23(3): 406–421.

50.

Waitt

Jessop

Gorman-Murray

(2011) ‘The guys in there just expect to be laid’: embodied and gendered socio-spatial practices of a ‘night out’ in Wollongong, Australia. Gender, Place and Culture 18(02): 255–275.

51.

Wiederman

(2016) The gendered nature of sexual scripts. The Family Journal 13(4): 496–502.