Pretty much every season of Love Island includes a variation of a game where the couples guess each other's body count. When we first watched it my mum turned to me and asked “Who keeps count?” I didn’t know how to begin to describe how since I was in my early teens girls kept detailed statistics of names and how far they’d gone, that it was a perfectly normal question to ask during a drinking game, on a first date, to random women on the street while filming and holding a microphone. But should this be the case?
Body counts can feel like a badge of honour or a scarlet letter whether high or low. But if we can all be honest there is a sense of normality for men to have higher body counts and women to have lower. For men it seems that sowing your wild oats is a right of passage while women are made to feel ashamed if they do the same. Online I have seen men dissect women's body counts saying that it would lead to trust issues and even one saying that sleeping with the “town whore” is acceptable but advising to never marry her.
There is a sense of normality for men to have higher body counts and women to have lower
Does this not feel backwards and puritanical? That in a generation it has become acceptable to ask and make judgements about someone based on who they have had sex with. An idea that becomes complicated by different peoples definitions of sex. It also speaks nothing to “experience” - someone who has had 50 one night stands has probably had less sex than someone who has been in a year long relationship with their first.
It’s a hard question to avoid even if you decide that you simply will keep that information between yourself, your doctor and maybe a couple close friends. When it can be asked simply over drinks with a high level of social acceptance, when people think that it is information required to know before a second date, when scrolling the internet will lead you to post after post claiming to know the “perfect” body count. I have a friend who said she will just no longer tell people - they can guess any number between 1 and 1,000 and they can make their own assumptions.
I have a friend who said she will just no longer tell people - they can guess any number between 1 and 1,000 and they can make their own assumptions.
Fear of an increasing body count is much more prevalent among women than it may seem. I know women who will “recycle” and only sleep with men they have already slept with so as to not have a higher number. Why is this a more normal and socially accepted practice than finding someone new to sleep with?
According to research at the University of Utah, the more sexual partners a woman has the higher the likelihood of her getting a divorce when she marries. As well as this women who waited until marriage to have sex had the lowest rate of divorce, primarily as a result of the links between waiting until marriage and traditional and strongly held religious beliefs that often prohibit divorce. These statistics may lead both men and women to worry about their own or their future partner's number, in fact the 2011 film What’s Your Number? Explores one woman's fear about her future eligibility for marriage as a result of having slept with 20 people. The film concludes with the idea that your number doesn't really matter and that love is the most important thing when it comes to finding a partner for the future. Despite this it is revealed at the end of the film that she didn’t actually have sex with one of the people she thought she did so she still conforms to the number she deemed socially acceptable.
With all of this being a constant feature in our lives it is easy to assume it is a question you should be concerned about in yourself or in others. I am just as guilty of asking and making assumptions as well although I think it makes our relationship with sex so statistical rather than truly what it’s about.
A number cannot quantify how loving, good, passionate, boring, funny and satisfying one's sex life is. Is that not more important than a number in a notes app or an answer to a drinking game question? I suppose only you can decide your relationship with your number, just make sure it’s a good one.