The other night I decided to have a movie night. After going through a rather lacking Redbox movie selection, I ended up renting the Anna Faris movie “What’s Your Number?”
It demonstrates characteristics of people in their 20’s better than most movies these days. I’d never seen a movie where the main female character not only acknowledges that she likes to have sex, but also feels societal pressure to maintain some appearance of virginal femininity.
In the movie, Faris’ character reads an article about women who sleep around. The article claims that women with 20 or more partners can never get married.
Because she’s enjoyed dating and sex, she’s already hit that number and therefore decides to hunt down her exes so she can date them and try to get married without adding to her number. In a twist ending her friends don’t approve of her love interest because “he’s the kind of guy you sleep with, not marry.”
Now that line got me thinking that this stereotype is two-sided. I can’t imagine not trying to talk one of my friends out of seriously dating a bartender or a waiter because they’re typically known to be really slutty.
But aren’t we past that sex-shaming stuff? At what point is someone’s enthusiasm for sex and dating none of your business and when is it something you should take into consideration? Being confronted with the question of how many people you’ve slept with may be personal to a lot of people, up to the point where they lie to others so as not to be looked down upon.
When does knowing about someone’s sexual behavior give you valuable information about someone? If someone tells you they’ve had sex with hundreds of people, there are a couple things you can deduce. The question isn’t whether this says something about the person; it’s whether that number makes them unworthy of dating. If someone has only slept with a few people, they’ve probably been in a bunch of two-year relationships that kept them from sleeping around.
I get worried about dating people who are super monogamists because I feel kind of gross about how badly they need someone in their life. Not being independent is a turn off. I understand that people want companionship and love but if it’s at a point where you can’t function without another person it has got to stop.
At its core, this problem is about someone’s emotional authenticity, not their sexual desires. By the same principle,
if someone told me they’d slept with tons of people I’d be concerned they were just into the chase and wanted to hit it and quit it. Neither of these things, if proven wrong after getting to know someone, would affect how I feel about their value as a partner. So maybe it’s not the number of people someone’s had sex with. Maybe it’s their attitude about the number that counts.
Rebecca Ruiz is a senior business major and a contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
With the same logic, short men and beta males shouldn’t be a dealbreaker
You can’t say what should and should not be a deal breaker in a relationship. Everyone is entitled to their own set of deal breakers and there is nothing your or anyone else can do about it. I am female, and Im not promiscuous, and I probably wouldnt date someone who is/was. Why? I simply find it very unattractive. Its an instant attraction killer. Thats just the way it is. Its my prerogative to turn someone down for whatever reason I damn well please. At the end of the day, the only person who could lose out is me. It kills me that people want to be able make all these permanent choices on how to conduct their lives, and then tell other people they have to accept it. I have multiple tattoos that I chose to get. If a man said he didnt like tattoos on a woman and would not date her because of it, I’d have no problem with it. It was my choice. No one else has to accept it.