As young, modern, sexually liberated young women, we know that having sex on the first date just shouldn’t be that big of a deal. If we’re feeling it, then we should be free to get stuck in (horrible way to describe sex, can’t apologize enough) without fear of judgement or retribution. However, the sad truth is that there’s still seems to be some kind of stigma attached to first-date sex which leaves us feeling maybe a bit grotty, guilty or concerned.
But apparently this is an attitude that we all need to abandon and sharpish if we want to get better at sex, because according to Maïa Mazaurette, columnist for GQ magazine in France, says the French are better at sex because they have fewer inhibitions. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Maïa said that British people are too wary of when they move a potential relationship to the bedroom, which makes us more prudish when we finally get down to getting down.
'It just seems so strange to put so much pressure on something that seems so spontaneous to me: sex. When I have sex with someone, I’m not sharing real intimacy. I share intimacy when I talk about my childhood; if I’m sick and someone takes care of me.
‘If it’s just kissing or spreading my legs, my emotional involvement is almost zero,’
Apparently, we all fear being labelled ‘as a slut’, and because of that we spend too much time agonising about when the proper time to have sex is instead of relaxing and enjoying it. French women, on the other hand, ‘just spread their legs’. Oh mon dieu! She explains:
‘We don’t have these dating rituals; we just start with sex. And then, if the sex was good enough or we feel connected somehow, then we would try to build a relationship.
‘If you don’t have sex first, you build up too much pressure. You start thinking, I have seen this guy for four or five restaurants, and what if it fails? If you get sex out the way first, then you can only have good surprises.’
We think she kind of has a point. Sex is such an intrinsically important part of a relationship – to some, the most important – so what’s the point of pursuing a relationship unless you know that the sex is actually any good? Plus, imagine finding out the sex is terrible five dates in when you’ve already built up an emotional connection with a guy? You’d have to break it off, wouldn’t you? And he’d know exactly why – which is just incredibly awkward.
On the other hand, there (depressingly) seems to be some truth in our mother’s old adage ‘no one will buy the cow if they get the milk for free’. We asked around the office, and it’s a sad truth that most of our male friends say that girls who ‘don’t give it up straight away’ because it means they ‘have to work harder for it’.
Let’s, for a minute, skate over the fact that men to refer to sex as ‘it’ and deal with the fact that that attitude kind of treats women like things that need to be ‘conquered’ with a degree of effort, otherwise we’re just not worth spending time with. We know it’s tempting to buy into this, but when you think about it, it’s obviously a ludicrous idea and one we should probably not spend any more time worrying about. Let’s refer back to Maïa, who clearly knows a thing or two:
‘It’s my life. I think in France we share a lot of things, but in the end, well, you die alone. It’s not a betrayal because sex doesn’t have consequences. Why worry about a crime without a victim?’
Vive la révolution!
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophiecullinane
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.