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    Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
    Unavailable
    Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
    Unavailable
    Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
    Audiobook8 hours

    Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

    Written by Kerry Cohen

    Narrated by Cynthia Holloway

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Kerry Cohen is only eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her female form 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 senses she shouldn't take. Kerry wanted attention and she wanted love. Vulnerable and adrift, she turned to sex instead.



    Loose Girl is Kerry's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. It's a story of addiction-not just to sex but to male attention, how she came to believe boys and men could fill her emptiness, and how she tried to control them by handing over her body. From the early rush of exploration, when her virginity was technically still intact, to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to 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 the touch of a boy seems to offer proof of something-of being worthwhile, of being loved-but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness. Kerry's journey from that hopeless place to her current confident, happy existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls both young and old.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Audio
    Release dateJun 17, 2008
    ISBN9781400176700
    Unavailable
    Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
    Author

    Kerry Cohen

    Kerry Cohen is the author of six books, with three forthcoming. They include Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity (Hyperion), Seeing Ezra (Seal), Dirty Little Secrets (Sourcebooks), Easy (Simon & Schuster), The Good Girl (Delacorte), and It's Not You, It's Me (Delacorte). Forthcoming are an anthology about women and shopping titled The Dressing Room (Seal), a book about writing about others when writing memoir titled Sticks & Stones (Writer’s Digest Books), and a memoir about difficult female friendships (Hawthorne). Kerry has been featured on Dr. Phil, Good Morning America, and many other television and radio shows. Her essays have been published in the New York Times’ “Modern Love” section, the Washington Post, Portland Monthly, and others. Kerry has blogs on Psychology Today and the Huffington Post. She practices as a psychotherapist in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at Kerry-cohen.com.

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    Reviews for Loose Girl

    3.5/5

    84 ratings72 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Riveting and sad.
    • 2/5
      I tried to be captivated, I really did. The idea has promise... a tale of a girl who slept with a bunch of men for (insert reason here). I was disappointed that the end result was juvenile and ridiculous; a glorified spiral notebook with a list of guys she'd slept with.

      She is whiny, unlikable, full of herself and a shitty friend/sister. She uses everyone to her advantage and throughout the entire book but tries real hard to convince me that she is the victim.

      The reasons for her actions were never fully fleshed out, leaving me with the impression that she was merely bragging about her conquests (I looked awesome, I went to this club, my hair looked like this, I screwed this guy and never knew his name), rather than taking time to analyze the reasons she acted the way she did.

      And the ending!! Did someone surprise her and tell her she had three hours to wrap it up? Good Lord!
    • 4/5
      Loose Girl was a well written, interesting book. It was a fast paced read. I think Kerry Cohen did an excellent job of letting the reader know not only what she did in those promiscuous teenage years, but her reasoning behind her actions, no matter whether that reasoning was good or bad. Everyone wants to be worthy of love and attention, but we all have to make wise choices about how we go about getting that love and attention. Sometimes it takes a while to make those wise choices. Ms. Cohen did a lot of living and learning to find the right choices for herself.
    • 1/5
      Protagonist is whiny and self-victimizing. Nothing personal against promiscuity, just found myself having a really hard time finishing this book. Save yourself the time and skip this one at the library.
    • 5/5
      This is a hard one to review. I was not promiscuous as a teenager, but I did want desperately to be wanted or worth it to someone, so I really related to Ms. Cohen. An excellent, if sometimes difficult, read. I just wanted to hug her (her as a teenager) and tell her that she was worth it or wanted, while also realizing that I should do this for myself...Good read.
    • 4/5
      It was difficult to read. Not because of the language, but the situations described on the pages. The main character went on a very self-destructive path from the first page up to the very end. I would've liked to also read about how she turned her life around. It wasn't talked about much in the book and it was like she quit that part of her life cold turkey. Still a good book. It's like a cautionary tale for all girls out there. You'll never know what could happen to you.
    • 4/5
      Loose girl was a very good and often disturbingly frank look at coming of age. These times are well past "happy days". Kids are not going to sock hops and kissing in parked cars and this book is a testimony to today's youth and a slap in the face to wake up past generations. Loved it!
    • 5/5
      This was one book I definitley couldn't put down. Loose Girl was a book that caught my attention from the very beginning. As Kerry Cohen goes through her old memories of her struggling to be loved herself, she searches for it through promiscuious acts. In the end she learns, emptiness cannot be filled with sexual acts. She must learn to love herself first, before she can allow others to purely love her as well. A book we can all relate to... A good book that I recommend to anyone, espescially girls 12+.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed this book because it was a very believable and heart-wrenching account of what the molotov cocktail of loneliness and low self-esteem can lead to. Though Cohen's account is an extreme, I think that anyone, mostly women, can identify with her story, if only some of the feelings or that need for acceptance, for love, and how our brain can sometimes so easily succeed in convincing us that attention and sex is the same as love. An important book for women, young and old, to read and take to heart.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! The story was very interesting and I finished it in one day. That's rare for me, so I'd totally recommend this book to others.
    • 4/5
      Interesting. I saw a bunch of behavior - the neediness, the clinging, the destructive behavior - that I recognized from past relationships (without the promiscuity). And I also saw the way I made myself unavailable in relationships the way Kerry did. Not a "knock-your-socks-off" kind of book, but an interesting look back at formative years. I wonder what my adolesence and young adulthood would look like if I wrote a book and if I could be as bluntly honest without trying to make myself appear better than I was.
    • 2/5
      As with any addiction/recovery/victimhood memoir, I feel churlish for not liking this book since Cohen is so upfront about revealing deep personal trauma, but I still didn't like this book. The writing is competent but bland: I never had a sense of place or personality. The concept of a young woman using her sexual power to dig herself deeper into a hole of powerlessness is interesting, but here it is stated rather than evoked. Loose Girl feels more like eavesdropping on a therapy session than a living breathing story. I understand that these experiences were painful for Cohen, but I don't feel it. You had to be there.Besides which, Cohen's sexual history doesn't seem that crazy. Her lifetime total of forty-odd lovers is a lot, but not shockingly so. A good portion of the book is devoted not to random hook-ups but long-term pairings that sputter out like most early-twenties relationships do. At one point she comes on to a married man, which is ill-advised, sure, but not the end of the world. At the end of the book she is married herself, which seems to satisfy her, though it's disappointing to see that her happy ending consists of attracting the right kind of male attention.I'm willing to feel empathy for Cohen's bad decisions and regrets, but pathologizing it as an addiction feels overstated and (usually I hate this word, but...) disempowering. In passing, Cohen quite sensibly objects to the Madonna/whore straightjacket for women's sexuality, but her memoir unwittingly plays into an updated version of that dichotomy in which a woman who isn't actively pursuing a soulmate must be psychologically damaged.
    • 4/5
      This is an extraordinarily sad chronicle of young woman's quest for love and acceptance via sex. Kerry Cohen is highly intelligent teenage girl when she begins a long line of sexual liaisons with boys--and then later men--in an effort to assuage low self-esteem, clearly rooted in her parent's neglect. Divorced, they were both overachieving professionals who put their own goals and needs before their children. Cohen somehow triumphs and she should be applauded for writing a very frank, explicit and harrowing memoir.
    • 4/5
      A book that makes you take a different look at all those girls you called "sluts". It recognizes that these loose girls are often just insecure girls looking for someone to love them. Painfully honest and heartbreaking at times, I want to embrace Cohen for her strength in her story.
    • 3/5
      I was not really sure what I would think of this book. I figured it would almost be like a fantasy or sci fi book because her reality was so different than my own reality. I did realize that we all have the same teenage angst, but we dealt with it in a very different way. Maybe it was her dysfunctional family or maybe the night in the car when she was young. I feel like it gave me an understanding of what girls I knew and know felt like and why they made choices they did.I thought as the book got closer to the end, it stagnated. I kept waiting for her to see the light, which eventually she did. I thought the end was abrupt. She shared so much of the stories of her days with the countless boys, but stopped at sharing what made her husband so special. She alluded but it felt rushed.I think that it was a good book club selection and I think that it will lead to some great conversations.
    • 5/5
      Loose Girl can in a way be read as a cautionary tale--this "memoir of promiscuity" is the experience of a girl whose parents divorced just as she noticed she could attract boys (and older ones at that). Making matters worse, Cohen's parents are caught up in their own lives and offer little guidance. Refreshingly, Cohen doesn't seem to blame anyone--instead she lays out the facts as she sees them without making such judgments. Likely her background as a psychotherapist has helped her understand her choices.I simply could not put this book down. Each bit of the story compelled me on to find out what would happen, how it would end. Of course, with it being a memoir one does partially know how it ends from reading the author bio, but how Cohen goes from someone who cannot maintain a relationship to someone who is married with two children isn't known until the very end. She admits her continued struggle and concludes the story with the perfect sentiment: "Maybe, I think, I don't have to be great at this; maybe I just have to be good enough."
    • 5/5
      I am absolutely blown away by the way this memoir is told! Raw and for all the world to see ... to me, it doesn't get any better than this!At just the tender age of eleven, Kerry finds out just what the power of a woman's body can do. She has meaningless relationships and promiscous sex with man after man, one right after the next. She parties, goes to bars and does drugs. She's never really been herself. She's always "played" someone else in search of something that she wants more than anything else - to be loved. When Kerry does find that person, she finds herself lost and unsure.I loved "Loose Girl" it's an eye-opening experience and a true page turner! Wonderfully written!
    • 3/5
      "Loose Girl" did not live up to my expectations. Cohen's story did not strike me as especially exceptional or interesting; she was a young woman who came from a difficult family situation and had numerous sexual partners through her high school and college years, but I was never able to feel much empathy for her. She told her story through a laundry list of family vignettes and sexual encounters, but with such a dispassionate voice it was difficult to connect with her or the others in the story.
    • 3/5
      This book could have been, potentially, an insightful look at sexual addiction and recovery....which is what I had expected. However, it turned out to be a rather monotonous laundry list of sexual conquests of the young woman in the story. The book was a very easy read. The first half of the book was filled with "I slept with this guy", "I slept with that guy", etc, etc, etc. I was surprised that there wasn't more to it. Slowly, near the halfway point of the book, it began to get a bit more substantive, yet still failed to show any real grasp of what the real problem was and more importantly, how to solve it. The young woman recognized she had a problem, and was seeing a therapist, but still the addictive behavior continued over and over again.After reading this memoir, and despite finding out that she has indeed found a man she actually chose to marry, it strikes me that this woman still has a long way to go in understanding the depth of her sexual addiction, and truly getting beyond it. From the way the book came across to me, especially the ending, I don't think she's there yet. It did not appear to me that this woman has found the peace and sense of wholeness that she has craved all of her life.Overall, I did not find this book to be insightful or helpful to those with this partiular addiction, and would not recommend the book to others.
    • 3/5
      Loose Girl is a memoir about a young girl called Kerry who spends her youth looking for love and acceptance by sleeping with heaps of boys. Kerry Cohen takes the reader on a heartbreaking and sometimes painful journey into her addictive personality. While I thought her story was worth telling I just felt at the end it was pointless. Did she really learn anything about her behaviour and how will her children feel about their mum writing about her sex life. I was also dissapointed with the ending as I felt Kerry rushed to get this book finished.
    • 5/5
      Kerry Cohen's memoir of her journey from sexual promiscuity and emotional neediness to self-acceptance and marital success is a compelling read. Kerry's honesty about herself and her experiences pulls the reader in; she is very sympathetic as a character, and her mistakes are heart wrenching. Although her memoir deals with very mature subject matter (in addition to the sex, there is drug and alcohol abuse, and some small mention of eating disorders), anyone who has ever wondered about their inability to find love, or who has woken up in the morning regretting the evening before, can understand and find something of themselves in Cohen's book.
    • 4/5
      This book is about the author's search for love and validation during her teens and twenties. I think most women who read this will identify with the author in some way. (That's not to say that most women are as promiscuous as the author was of course.) The author of this book was so raw and honest that it was hard to read at times, but at the same time that's what made it good.
    • 4/5
      Loose Girls is a story that could be told by many of us. To me, it is about the destructive things we do to fulfill a need that was not met by our parents. For this author, it was promiscuity. For me, it was food. I felt myself relating to her feelings and actions. I think this book is beneficial to the recovery process from a shame-based child to a healthy adult. Having a grown son myself now and seeing the other side of the parent-child equation, I would have been interested to hear how her relationship with her parents progressed. There comes a time that you have to stop blaming and accept that they did the best they could. Maybe she is not there yet.I felt the first two parts of the book was well-developed and thorough. The third part seemed rushed. There were friends mentioned that were never introduced in the previous text. It could use a little more work.
    • 3/5
      There are choices in everyone's life that looking back, you know you would do differently. There are choices in everyone's life that looking back, you hope would take a different path. There are even moments in everyone's life that you know at that moment the choice is wrong. I know these moments exist, though I can't quite buy into the idea that a woman would make poor decision after poor decision with the consciousness that is depicted in Cohen's memoir. Rather, I have to wonder how much of Cohen's fictional writing experience is coming in to play in the memoir. The author and subject knows how her "character" develops and wants to let readers believe she is more in control than she ever really was.I also realize that "memoir" has a strikingly similar definition to autobiography, but to me, the word denotes a closer investigation of a certain aspect of the life. Therefore, I was expecting a deeper understanding and appreciation of the voyage and destination. Instead, I was simply told she knew she was making mistakes, she knew she wanted to change, she knew she had an addiction. And it felt as though she was suddenly cured with very little time spent on the why or how of the cure. I was not interested in paragraph after paragraph, page after page of nameless men and hookups. I was not really even interested in the few long-lasting relationships she did have that came to naught. Perhaps giving more insight into her mental development would have subtracted from available pages for guaranteeing to the reader that she was, indeed, promiscuous. I personally think it would have added gravity and authenticity to the memoir, making it more believable than simply filling the pages with uncertain names and descriptions of men's hair and eyes.
    • 5/5
      A MUST READ. Not to be missed. compelling, frightening, heart wrenching, fast paced, horrifying, the sorrowful mysteries. The hollowness of her life makes me vomit. Sadly she can't give, but only take. In the last few pages there is redemption.
    • 4/5
      Loose Girl is an engrossing read about Kerry Cohen and her struggle to find herself. While others become dependent on drugs or food, Kerry's obsession is sex. It begins as an adolescent struggling to understand her parents' divorce and continues into trying to understand herself. Both of her parents are self-involved and don't seem to notice the struggle their daughter is going through. We see Kerry go through many men in an attempt to find love, and ultimately herself.I found this book fascinating to read. I really felt Kerry's pain and struggled right along with her. It is very honest and I found that so refreshing. It is painful to read at times, but so worth it. I also felt the end was a bit rushed, but overall I really enjoyed this book.
    • 2/5
      Ms. Cohen's memoir takes an unflinching look at a young woman's desire to find belonging and love. It is an important story that needs to be told, especially in a culture where young women are given freedom and ability to express their sexuality but not always moral or ethical guidelines. However, this memoir reads like the type of biography one might write for a therapist. The characters are not fully developed and the writing, especially at the beginning, is choppy. Events are piled up, but I kept wanting more depth and more detail about Kerry, her sister, her mother, and her father. In my opinion, the best memoirs read like novels, and "therapy speak" sentences are not in evidence. I hope that Ms. Cohen will expand her story in the future because it is important and needs to be told in a more compelling way.
    • 4/5
      Kerry Cohen impressed me with her honesty, her courage and her grace in her memoir. She told it like it was, and didn't try to camouflage her actions with pop psychology or easy answers.I especially liked discovering how she became a writer, and how running every other day began to heal some of her personal anxiety. Her writing style is accessible and she doesn't use words like anxiety, or draw conclusions about things like jogging. She simply relates her feelings and actions and the consequences.Even when she writes about meeting her husband, and how differently their relationship began than what she had always experienced before, she tells it simply and keeps to a minimalist style, avoiding interpretations and conclusions.She does such a good job of not underlining how finding her self-worth set her free to love someone who loved her, that at least one reader missed the point entirely, and asked in their review what was different about the guy she married.I don't think of that as a failure in Kerry's writing - that she should have included more psychology, more conclusions - should have drawn the map with a bigger crayon. Anyone who is ready to accept personal responsibility for their own life, ready to give love as well as receive it, will be able to understand the message in Loose Girl. Those who still think of men the way Kerry did in the first half of her book haven't yet internalized the concept of self-love and loving others, but thinking about Kerry's life might at least lead them ask themselves questions that will ultimately lead to better answers.
    • 3/5
      I love coming of age tales. It was a gripping story that pulled you right in to Kerry's life. I don't particularly feel as if it were a story of an addiction. It was a story of extreme self-concept issues. I knew so many girls like her and in one small point in my life - without all her drug stories - I was her. She needed these men to validate her worth. It wasn't until she loved herself that she could get out of this "addiction."
    • 3/5
      The author details her lifelong quest for male attention, one boy after another, with occasional longer-term relationships. It ends with marriage, but we don't really learn why this guy is so different from the rest.