Karen Owen: Hookup Queen

What the hookup culture really needed was a face. Now it has one. Her name is Karen Owen. She recently graduated from Duke University.

In the past she would have been called a groupie, a woman who specializes in seducing athletes. Given her status as college student, and given her great track record of bedding jocks, Owen should now be called the Hookup Queen.

To commemorate her achievements Owen put together a mock-thesis, fully documented, with names and pictures, describing in detail the men she seduced, with the how, when, where, and how good. Link here.

Much of it is charming and amusing. Owen makes it sound as though she went to Duke to learn about hooking up and that she succeeded beyond her dreams.

She writes that she feels no shame, but rather pride in her conquests. Truth be told, she makes Jaclyn Friedman look like a rank amateur.

By now, however, I believe that she is receiving a lesson in shame. One regrets that her professors and advisers did not offer any guidance in the matter.

Despite what Owen says were her intentions, her splendid work, her great achievement, did not remain within her close circle of friends. The thesis went viral, and she is now learning a few brand new lessons in shame.

When she says that she intended to keep her work a secret among friends, she is protesting far too much. The thesis is too well-crafted, contains far too much work, to expect such limited exposure. It cries out for public exposure.

If Owen is looking for a book contract, she might have done herself some good. According to Jezebel, editors and agents are already looking for her. Link here.

If she is looking for celebrity and for a heartfelt crying session on Oprah, she has probably advanced her cause. If she wants to learn how tort law works, from within the legal system, she is well on the way.

But if she wants to be married and have a family, this exercise in indiscretion has not advanced her cause. And, how many men are now going to consider her even for a random hookup?

As for the larger lesson, a lesson that we are all seeing played out every day in tragic circumstances, one has to wonder why no one seems to have taught today's youth the virtue of discretion.

People do strange things in college. They do stranger things when they are young adults first out of college. They might live to regret what they have done, to the point where they might not want their future lovers and children to read about it.

If so, they need but practice discretion. After all, no one really cares about Karen Owen's sexual exploits. Thanks to her indiscretion, and especially thanks to the fact that someone, somewhere taught her to be proud of what she did, we all know a lot more about them than we ever wanted to know.

Beginning with Karen Owen, we are all a lot poorer for it.