Booty Call Nation

“I knew Mark from my old job, and while I thought he was cute, he was just not relationship material. We met for a drink one night, and one thing led to another. And because I knew him, it felt sort of secure, and he became a fuck buddy—nothing more. Men can do it, so why can’t we?”
--Cathy, 33, music industry exec, Los Angeles

Cathy’s point is well taken. Not only does the current culture permit it, casual sex is encouraged these days. But when did the ball drop? While casual sex has been in existence since the beginning of time (remember Adam and Eve? The Roman orgies?), its genesis as an American cultural movement is often linked with the introduction of the birth control pill in the early 1960s, which helped catalyze the movement for sexual liberation. Women began embracing the power of their sexuality, and the feminist movement was as much about the right to proclaim pleasure as it was equality elsewhere. No more would women accept sexless marriages and Victorian repression. (The vibrator was actually invented as a way of dealing with “female hysteria,” which is what the Victorian medical establishment labeled female sexuality back then.)

The swinging sixties gave way to the hedonistic seventies, when Erica Jong introduced the “Me Generation” to the “zipless fuck,” and sex without guilt became an accepted form of female behavior. Women, it seemed, were finally on top, getting it on with anonymous strangers on trains and in elevators. And where were modern men during all of this? On the sidelines, gleefully embracing this newfound “empowerment,” of course.

Thanks to the seeds sown by the feminist movement, modern women were earning nearly as much as men by the 1990s, giving them unprecedented financial independence. Unburdened of the need to find a male provider, women were delaying marriage and enjoying dating as a form of sexual gratification. Enter Sex and the City, which exemplified a new form of empowerment: A woman’s ability to have sex like a man.

And, like Carrie and her cronies, a lot of women today find themselves sleeping with guys they were never really that into to begin with. Again, this world of booty calls and one-night stands is a fine state of affairs, if you’re getting something out the deal. Just be aware of what that something is. Sex is more than just an accessory in your wardrobe—a sheer Cosabella thong to be effortlessly slipped off before jumping into bed.