Stepping outside of the normal boundaries of HIV scholarship, Modernizing Sexuality shows how Western idealizations of normative sexuality and the power of modernity come together in U.S. prevention policy in ways that actually exacerbate HIV risk, particularly for women. The book begins with an overview of the historical, epidemiological, and theoretical underpinnings of U.S. HIV-prevention policy in sub-Saharan Africa and Malawi, as well as a review of U.S. global prevention efforts, beginning with the Reagan administration. The second chapter introduces the risk narratives conveyed in official U.S. policy, the HIV-prevention industry, and everyday discourse in Malawi. Chapter Three introduces the concept of love matches, the idealized blueprint for prevention conveyed in U.S. policy discourse. This rarely acknowledged prescriptive narrative offers examples of healthy, natural, and otherwise sanctioned sex. Chapter Four turns to everyday discourse among Malawians to explore collective solutions to the problem of AIDS and multiple paths for prevention. This exploration results in an everyday prescriptive narrative that offers a very different blueprint for HIV prevention than that offered by U.S. prevention policy. The fifth chapter discusses the most commonly acknowledged strategies in HIV-prevention policy (e.g., knowledge, skills, and economic development), as well as the unacknowledged strategies deployed through the HIV/AIDS administrative apparatus. The book closes with an alternative narrative that reimagines risk and provides one alternative path for organizing policy efforts.