A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

There are certain things we will always want: eternal youth, the upper hand with our ex, and—if you happen to be Lady Gaga this week—everyone to stop obsessing over bodily perfection. Even though we may never get these things, this week’s Sex By Numbers is about our quest to put things right, or at the very least, prove ourselves right.

15: Age that Lady Gaga revealed she was when she began struggling with an eating disorder. Gaga made the confession on her website after the media’s harsh comments about her weight compelled her to start a positive “body revolution.”

642: Contrary to the conventional wisdom that sexual prudence is what leads to relationships, a study examining the habits of 642 adults found no indication that “hookups” aren’t just as likely to turn into relationships as more conservative affairs. But we already knew that.

12 Million: Reported price tag of Monica Lewinsky’s memoir, which was recently picked up by an unnamed publisher. Looks like the world’s most notorious intern is still trying to settle the score.

3 Euros: That age-old moment of female irritation— where you have to remind a male companion that “Actually, my face is up here”—apparently has some evolutionary underpinning. After watching video reels of breasts, men in a European study opted to be given 3 euros immediately—rather than a larger sum of money later —due to a decreased ability to delay gratification.

38%: A study found that 38% of surveyed women admitted that the best sex of their lives was with their previous partner. Not that they’d ever let him know that.

$185,000: In the midst of the sordid female escort scandal involving Backpage.com and the Village Voice, Microsoft has been given a $185,000 grant to help improve intelligence and prevent the “advertising and selling of human trafficking victims.”

682%: A legion of scientists claim that the coveted fountain of youth is finally available in the form of a compound called SeroVital, which has been shown in trials to increase endogenous Human Growth Hormone levels by a mean of 682%.

Image: Zombie Lawyer

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

If anyone has the right to be irritated this week, it’s Kate Middleton. Can’t a Duchess get a little uninterrupted tanning time in? In her royal honor, we’ve dedicated this week’s Sex By Numbers to every woman that just wants to be left alone (there’s an app for that, by the way).

24 Hours: Length of time that a French court gave the gossip magazine Closer to hand over topless photos of The Duchess of Cambridge. Will and Kate won an injunction against the tabloid shortly after the pictures were published on Monday.

1 in 10: Only 10% of sexual harrassment incidences are reported. The Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children, based in Toronto, has created a helpful app which provides snarky responses to cat calls and ways to dispel unsolicited and inappropriate attention.

60s: When it comes to the sex lives of people over the age of 40, Hollywood has historically left the subject alone, until now. A new film starring Meryl Streep (63) and Tommy Lee Jones (66) is boldly and funnily “acknowledging that sexuality in older age exists.”

90: Thinking about the act of sex outside the context of, well, sex can make the actual mechanics seem kind of off-putting. A new study in the journal PLoS ONE that surveyed 90 women found that sexual arousal lessens gave the “disgust factor” that might otherwise be associated with the exchange of all those bodily fluids.

3rd highest: The state of Texas has the 3rd highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. Despite this, some parents would still rather opt out of the new sex-ed curriculum that is being adopted by many Texas schools, which aims to take a more realistic approach to the sexual lives of teenagers.

54%: When it comes to sexting, teenagers are doing anything but leaving each other alone. A Los Angeles based study found that 54% of teens know someone that engages in sexting and that the act is usually an indicator of further sexually risky behavior.

64: Women who regularly read magazines such as Cosmopolitan (which has a total of 64 international editions) or others that include scripts about female sexual desire are more likely to “prioritise their sexual desire for their own sake, but not for the male partner.”

80%: Number of Egyptian women who report having experienced some form of sexual harassment. The study, carried out by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, found most of the victims were wearing headscarves.

Image: Tom Soper Photography

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A weekly look and sex and culture, by the numbers.

Messages of sexual innuendo in all forms of media is as American as apple pie. Though despite the vagina biographies, Tumblrs, mobile apps and pregnant teens in French cinema featured in this week’s Sex By Numbers, it appears we still struggle to tell one another just what it is we want in bed.

2,000: Number of labiaplasties performed in the UK in the past year. A new book by bestselling author Naomi Wood, Vagina: A New Biography, explores the ins and outs of female arousal and desire, including why women feel the need to look surgically perfect in order to get off.

1 in 5: When it comes to the internet and sex, Germans could care less about the latter. A study found that 1 in 5 Germans aged 18-35 had a stronger internet drive than sex drive.

32: Percentage of advertisements which Australians complained were too sexual in 2012. The figure is lower than in previous years, suggesting that consumers are becoming desensitized to sexually fueled advertising or simply ignoring it altogether.

998: Number of reports submitted thus far on the Kinsey Institute mobile app called Reporter. It’s intended to collect anonymous sexual data from users all around to globe in order to widen the scope of sexual data beyond white middle class college kids.

18: Number of high school females who allegedly made a pact at a Massachusetts high school in 2008 to purposely get pregnant. The widely reported incident has already spawned numerous “ripped from the headlines” TV specials, but now, two filmmakers have turned the incident into French art-house fantasy with their upcoming film 17 Girls.

5,000: Number of followers reached this week by the #myfriendsaremarried Tumblr blog, which celebrates those ubiquitous moments that single ladies everywhere endure, such as when your married friend insists “you’ll find love when you stop looking for it.”

200: Despite our bombardment with sexual imagery, we’re still not all that great about talking about what we want; however, a new study which surveyed 200 adults linked increased sexual satisfaction with direct communication during sex.

1 Pound: In what is possibly the most graphic and NSFW condom commercial ever, the UK’s One Pound Johnny Club offers that the main reason to use their mail-order condom service is to avoid, er, a certain kind of mess.

Flickr: Hey Paul Studios

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers 

As a culture, we spend a lot of time watching TV. We also spend a lot of time thinking about sex, so it’s no surprise that the two go hand-in-hand. This week’s Sex By Numbers takes a look at this cozy cultural marriage.

150: Number of college students in a recent study that watched a variety of TV shows—including 7th Heaven, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Tudors—and then answered questions about their attitude toward women. The study found shows that with a strong female lead can “eliminate the negative effects of sexually violent media.”

38: When asked who or what influences them most in regards to sex, 38% of respondents said their parents were the main influencers; just 9% named the media or TV as the most influential.

24: Number of hours that a Japanese satellite adult TV channel aired a “breast squeeze” benefit to raise money for AIDs awareness.

1st: This week, Fatma Nabil became the first female Egyptian news presenter to wear a hijab on air. Despite the fact that 70% of Egyptian women wear the veil, it’s generally not seen on state television.

$15 Billion: Despite what TV coverage of the RNC might lead you to believe, Americans in conservative states are still getting frisky; a study found that the rate of purchase of sex toys (which generates $15 billion annually in the U.S.) was highest in states that are “generally considered socially conservative.”

25%: In a bold move by the Scottish government to increase the rate of early breast cancer detection by 25%, TV adverts showing the graphic and visible effects of cancer on breasts are now being targeted to Scottish women.

10: Number of installments in a new TV series which will seek to debunk common sex myths—like whether or not there is a scientific explanation for beer goggles. The self-proclaimed authority on all things sexual? Playboy TV, of course.

8: Number of years since HBO’s Sex and the City went off the air. Despite this, Newsroom creator Aaron Sorkin still felt the need to not-so-subtly lambast the series on his show’s season finale.

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

When it comes to our sexual selves, we might as well learn to expect the unexpected. Never has that been more true than this week’s Sex By Numbers, in which Hugh Hefner is an outspoken feminist, a male worries that his gender has become irrelevant, and sea slugs display sex lives that are far more complicated than yours.

3+: Number of girlfriends maintained by the world’s most notorious octogenarian—Hugh Hefner—who this month penned an editorial in his magazine supporting, of all things, women’s rights and LGBT equality

8 Years: Amount of time that one couple has purposely avoided orgasms during sex. They are followers of the sexual discipline known as karezza (from the Italian word for “caress”), which encourages practitioners “to follow the sensation in [their] bodies, not the stimulation.”

5th: Century in which Talmudic scholars first pondered the ethical and religious implications of insemination sans sex, according to a strange NYT op-ed which frets over the obsolescence of men.

20 Minutes: Amount of time it takes for sea slugs to copulate, an exceedingly peculiar process—which includes a “vigorous precopulatory struggle”—that is detailed in a new paper in PLoS ONE.

85,000: Number of “forcible rapes” that occurred in 2010. The FBI says it will stop using that problematic term next year; we’re wondering what took them so long.

$5: The cost of crowd-sourced porn on entrepreneur Cindy Gallup’s website, Make Love Not Porn. Her goal is to “make real world sex socially acceptable” and to “dispel some of the common ‘myths’ perpetuated by porn.”

2: The number of competing areas in our brain— “one part that wants to tell something and one part that doesn’t”—that can apparently make us sick when our sex lives are kept secret. One study found “tangible health benefits, both physical and mental” in people who revealed their sex addictions either verbally or in written form.

Image: cliff1066â„¢

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

The differences that distinguish males from females are often the same things that attract us to each other. However, that’s not to say that what’s good for one gender is always good for the other. From oxytocin-laced semen to walnuts and golf courses, this week’s Sex By Numbers examines some curious elements of the gender differential.

JQ1: Name of the compound that researchers are experimenting with to develop a non-hormonal male contraceptive. In the unlikely event that all goes perfectly, scientists say the drug still won’t be available for another 5 to 10 years.

2: Researchers at UCLA have found that eating 2 handfuls of walnuts per day increases the fertility of males, thanks to the effect that Omega 3 fatty acids have on sperm.

293: Number of women who participated in a State University of New York study which found that oral sex can be helpful in combatting female depression; the mental boost is apparently due to mood elevating compounds found in semen, including oxytocin and melatonin.

48: When researchers asked students from 22 universities how they viewed sexual exploits of men versus women, 48 percent said they judged them equally and applied no double standard to females.

300 ft: The radius within which a male moth can detect a nanogram—one billionth of a gram—of sexual pheromones secreted by a female.

1st: This week, Augusta National golf club admitted its first female members—former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore—since the club opened in 1932.

2: Number of species—cattle and llama—in which researchers identified an ovulating inducing factor (OIF) in male semen. While the OIF doesn’t work the same way in humans (thankfully), it appears to “trigger the ovaries to release an egg” upon insemination in many mammalian species.

1%: Percentage of the world that’s believed to be asexual, or lacking sexual attraction or desire of any kind. Author and academic Anthony Bogart posits that our over-sexualized culture could be partially to blame.

Image: Pennstatelive

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

It’s hard being a member of the human species these days—what with all that competition for procreation and all those standards of beauty and gender norms to live up to. This week’s Sex by Numbers takes a look at just how hard.

143: Apparently, men freak out when they’re outnumbered; a study that examined the male-to-female sex ratio in 143 cities found that men spent more money (presumably on things like jewelery and taking women on expensive dates) in cities where women were harder to find.

1.618: A Belgian researcher who surveyed the vaginas of 5,000 women found that those whose measurements were closest to the “golden ratio” of 1.618 (a number derived from the Fibonacci sequence) were the most fertile.

48: When it comes to reporting on the sexual habits of animals, a new study which surveyed 48 articles in popular media found that journalists have a strong tendency to scandalize the findings of evolutionary biologists. The Washington Post headline “Brokeback Mutton” serves as a particularly egregious example.

350,000: It’s long been thought that the small percentage of DNA that Europeans and Asians share with Neanderthals came as a result of interbreeding. However, new evidence suggests that geographic separation that arose 350,000 years ago between Neanderthals and the species that evolved into modern humans is the more likely cause.

15-26: In a French study, waitresses who wore red while waiting tables earned 15 to 26 percent more in tips than their colleagues wearing more subdued hues.

60: When 60 students were presented with two robots—identical except for that one had a head of hair, while the other did not—they were more likely to assign the hairless robot stereotypical male tasks and traits such as “assertive” and  able to “repair technical devices.”

90: “I was mousy on the outside but inside I’m this tiger and I have to get on with it,” so said Helen Gurley Brown, former editor of Cosmopolitan, who was 90 years old when she passed away this week.

14: When it comes to the 14th Amendment, Paul Ryan thinks equal protection rights should be extended to the unborn. However, he seems to not feel the same way about women—a reminder that if Ryan finds his way to the White House, women might find their own species in danger.

Flickr: Wondermoney2k

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

All that twisting and turning and vaulting of Olympic bodies this week got us thinking…about sex, of course. This week’s Sex By Numbers offers Olympic-themed trivia about everyone’s other favorite sport.

150,000: Number of un-branded condoms delivered to the Olympic Village for the use of the 17,500 athletes who may be inclined to get it on after (or before) their event.

6 Weeks: Amount of time Muhammad Ali would reportedly go without sex before his big fights. Despite this, scientists say that there is no evidence that pre-competition sex reduces performance, endurance or power.

#1: Olympic Judo athlete Kayla Harrison became the first American gold medalist in her event this week. Her victory is even more sweet due to the fact that her sport has not always been kind to her: in 2007, she put her former coach behind bars for sexual abuse.

4th: Place that American hurdler Lolo Jones finished in the 100m hurdles final. Jones gained celebrity status earlier in the summer when she declared on Twitter that, at 30 years old, she was still a virgin.

12th: If the 100 million females who read the 64 international editions of Cosmopolitan made up a country, it would be the twelfth largest nation in the world. It’s fairly likely that their strongest sport would involve inventive sexual positions.

6: In addition to the times of year when the Olympic Games are held, Summer and Winter are also when people are most interested in finding sex. When examining this 6 month seasonality cycle, researchers found a spike in Google searches for dating sites and prostitutes during these times of year.

3: Number of experts—an endocrinologist, gynaecologist and a genetic specialist—on an Olympic “expert panel” which was assembled to determine cases of gender ambiguity at London 2012. Thus far, the panel has not been used.

65%: Those who support same sex marriage seem to be edging ahead of the competition; 65% of Democrats report that they now support the equal right to marry.

Image: The Drum Fauxlympics

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

Our sex lives are governed by a host of factors— some are external and beyond our control, while others are products of our own choices. This week’s edition of Sex by Numbers takes a look some of the influencers of our sexual selves.

37%: Percentage of births in the U.S. that are a result of unplanned pregnancies. According to the CDC, the number—which has been rising since the mid-1990s—is owed to a number of diverse factors.

3 vs 6: When male participants in study were asked to judge if 3 months and 6 months seemed “very short” or “very long” distances from the present, they were more impatient after being shown sexual imagery, proving that sexual arousal heightens not just our immediate desire, but our overall perception of time as well.

3,518: Number of commenters on user-generated site Reddit that responded to a pleading thread entitled “Ladies, please help us male Redditors out: What is the best way to approach you in public if we’re interested in you?”

7: Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, seven categories of preventative medical services for women—including mammograms, screenings for cervical cancer, prenatal care, and birth control—will no longer require a co-pay and will be fully covered by insurance.

500mg: Amount of caffeine contained in some energy drinks (the equivalent to 6 cups of coffee), which researchers have found makes individuals more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior when consumed in combination with alcohol.

$3: Cost of a pregnancy test for sale in the bathroom of a Minnesota bar, which is intended to prevent fetal alcohol syndrome by reminding women they could, in fact, be pregnant while drinking the beer they just ordered.

1 Touch: San Francisco based organization One Touch is trying, er, single-handedly to rectify the masculinity crisis by reviving the art of the female orgasm. Their goal is to influence men to “learn orgasmic meditation and everything that goes with it” so they can be of better service to females.

57%: Percentage of 12 to 14 year old adolescents for whom movies and media serve as their main source of sexual information. A study published in Psychological Science found that exposure to sexually explicit content through film was a driver in early adolescent sexual activity.

Image: Lotus Carroll

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

Men and women were created equal, but they’re by no means the same. When it comes to sex, the differences between our genders are ever apparent. This week’s Sex By Numbers examines our sexual discrepancies—including fantasies, post coital slumber, and online romance scams.

80: Percentage of men who report they easily drift to sleep after having sex. Women, on the other hand, struggle with this, with just 46% reporting that they manage to easily slip into post-coital slumber

2-3: Number of times per month women in a survey reported fantasizing about “pleasant” sexual encounters; men, unsurprisingly, do this much, much more

28: Age at which 2000 British women reported feeling their sexiest, independent from a man’s perception or input

20: In a study that asked men and women to rate their levels of pain for a variety of different conditions—including arthritis and diabetes—women reported pain levels that were 20% higher than that of males

2,600: Number of online romance scams that have been reported to the FBI thus far in 2012. Women fall victim much more frequently than men, filing more than 1,800 of the complaints.

40: Percentage of condom-buyers that are now female. Just five years ago, 80% of condoms were bought by men.

$13,500: Cost of a 24 karat gold-plated vibrator, an indication of the growing market for and interest in women’s sex toys, an arena once dominated by men.

14%: Portion of the wage discrepancy between men and women that Italian researchers posit can be attributed to menstruation.

Image: mexindian

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