ABSTRACT
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the 1970s was supposed to underpin not only women's emancipation but a true freedom for all as repression was ended and fulfilment, growth and self-expression enabled to emerge. According to Foucault, the notions of sex and sexuality were constructed in the nineteenth century for the purpose of rule and regulation but were paradoxically also posited as containing in some way the essence of human being, capturing the irrepressible truth of the individual. Jessica Valenti's autobiographical account demonstrates the consequences on the female self of being made hypervisible, and at the same time keen to please, in the life of an ordinary girl, rather than a model. Sexual relationships, sexuality and desire itself, she points out, are almost impossible for a woman to manage because, in accordance with the norms of heterosexuality, sexuality is located not within the self but within someone else; the ignition must be turned with a key.
