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Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
Hachette Books 2008
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Description

This captivating and deeply emotional memoir pulls back the curtain on the complex relationship women have between their bodies, love, and the way the two work together. 

Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn't take long before their lassitude and Kerry's desire to stand out—to be memorable in some way—combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn't take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction—not just to sex, but to male attention—Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.
From the early rush of exploration to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to love and be loved, Kerry's story is never less than riveting. In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a girl tries to control a boy by handing over her body, when the touch of that boy seems to offer proof of something, but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness.
Kerry Cohen's journey from that hopeless place to her current confident and fulfilled existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls young and old. The unforgettable memoir of one young woman who desperately wanted to matter, Loose Girl will speak to countless others with its compassion, understanding, and love.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
06/03/2008
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781401396398
ASIN:
B001A16X7M
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Kerry Cohen. (2008). Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. Hachette Books.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Kerry Cohen. 2008. Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. Hachette Books.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Kerry Cohen, Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. Hachette Books, 2008.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Kerry Cohen. Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity. Hachette Books, 2008.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:41:25
Date Updated:
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      • bioText: Kerry Cohen is a doctor of clinical psychology and works as a licensed therapist in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of the memoirs Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity, Seeing Ezra: A Mother's Journey Through Autism, Unconditional Love, and the Meaning of Normal, and Girl Trouble. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and Washington Post, and she has been a guest on Dr. Phil and Good Morning America. Her story was also featured on WE Network as part of the documentary The Secret Lives of Women.
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title
Loose Girl
fullDescription

This captivating and deeply emotional memoir pulls back the curtain on the complex relationship women have between their bodies, love, and the way the two work together. 

Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn't take long before their lassitude and Kerry's desire to stand out—to be memorable in some way—combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn't take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction—not just to sex, but to male attention—Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.
From the early rush of exploration to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to love and be loved, Kerry's story is never less than riveting. In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a girl tries to control a boy by handing over her body, when the touch of that boy seems to offer proof of something, but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness.
Kerry Cohen's journey from that hopeless place to her current confident and fulfilled existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls young and old. The unforgettable memoir of one young woman who desperately wanted to matter, Loose Girl will speak to countless others with its compassion, understanding, and love.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        February 11, 2008
        Despite the rather prurient title, Cohen's memoir is a deeply poignant, desperately sad account of a confused, directionless adolescent girl's free fall into self-abnegation. Growing up affluent in New Jersey in the 1980s and smarting from the recent breakup of her parents, 11-year-old Cohen begins to recognize the power her nubile body has over men. Being wanted becomes her greatest hope; once she and her older sister, Tyler, begin living with her father when her mother decides to attend med school in the Philippines, she latches onto other girls with whom she treks into New York City to bar hop at places like Dorian's Red Hand and pick up older, eager boys. Stunningly, the father is not alarmed by her early-morning absences, but seems to encourage her popularity, buying her clothes and treating her as a grownup. Gradually, hooking up with boys becomes a need, a way to bolster her faltering sense of self-worth. A litany of dreary sex acts follows with young men she doesn't particularly like and who don't like her, regardless of STD scares and a college rape. The painter mother of one of her boyfriends does initiate her into more intellectual pursuits, awakening a redemptive desire to become a writer. Cohen's memoir of a lost childhood is commendably honest and frequently excruciating to read.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        April 1, 2008
        This is a brutally honest memoir by a woman who discovered at age 11 what it feels like to be noticednot as a cute preteen but as an alluring sex object. From then on, Cohen sought out sexual partnersmore than 40 of them over a dozen years. Growing up in northern New Jersey, Cohen and her best friends began hooking up with guys at friends' apartments in New York when their parents were out. When her mother entered medical school in the Philippines, all parental supervision seems to have goneuntil her father returned to assume some of his duties. But, anxious to be cool with his daughters' friends, he smoked pot with them and encouraged their sexual pursuits. Cohen headed to Massachusetts for college, only a half day's drive from partners and pot in New York. Then, for the next 15 years and 225 pages, Cohen hops from place to place, always finding men to sleep with, desperate to feel loved, addicted to her power over men, losing herself in need. Cohen is not proud of her pastshe says she is disgustedbut this memoir gives readers a forthright look at the addiction of promiscuity. Highly recommended.Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L., Telford, PA

        Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        April 15, 2008
        If youve grown up in a family inept at sharing emotions, sustaining loving relationships can be an impossiblefeat. NewYorkerCohen learned little about love or self-esteem from her wealthy, divorced, and permissiveparentswhom she gently portrays as self-absorbed, indulgent, and ineffectualbut she did discover that holding a boys attention satisfied her terrible need for validation, however briefly. And so throughout high school and college, Cohen obsessively played the risky game ofseduction and casual, even contemptuous, unsafe, and nonconsensualsex. As with all addictions, the crash was far greater than the rush. Cohen fictionalized the promiscuity syndrome in a young adult novel, Easy (2006), and now compulsively recounts her own wrenching experiences and eventual success in kicking this destructivehabit.Her chronicle of dangerous sex and failed relationships is painfully honest, the psychology of her insights covertly sophisticated. Her candor may help under-21 readers steer clear of the whole mess, while those who survived similar ordeals will appreciate her tale of survival, and yet others will acquire understanding of young women under a similar dark spell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        August 25, 2008
        Half NPR announcer, half phone-sex operator, Cynthia Holloway treats Cohen’s memoir of youthful sexuality and familial disarray with a mixture of breathless eroticism and This American Life
        deadpan. In either style, Holloway reads intimately, drawing in listeners with her breathy, close-miked voice. There is something icky and quasi-pornographic about having the details of real-life teenage sexuality shared so familiarly, but Holloway’s voice—knowing, lightly ironic, capable of sounding adolescent while remaining firmly adult—salvages the situation. Like those NPR voices, Holloway maintains a crucial distance from the story she shares, immersing herself in the tangled folds of adolescent confusion while indicating, ever so subtly, her separation from it. A Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 11).

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This captivating and deeply emotional memoir pulls back the curtain on the complex relationship women have between their bodies, love, and the way the two work together. 

Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn't take long before their lassitude and Kerry's desire to stand out—to be memorable in some way—combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn't take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction—not just to sex, but to male attention—Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men...
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