Do Bodies Count?
Do bodies count?
written by ella donoghue
While in London this spring break, I found myself lucky to be in the company of one of my oldest friends, a truly one-of-a-kind woman. She’s the president of her sorority, a Business Analytics major with not one but two minors, a CorePower Yoga instructor and a SolidCore coach, she has over five thousand Instagram followers and an Edikted partnership, a lip tattoo that says “RAGE” (which I went with her to get on her eighteenth birthday), and the confidence of a man packing eight or nine inches.
When she’s not twerking on a yacht in Miami, studying, attending a rave, or training for a half marathon, she finds the time to answer every text and every FaceTime. She’d never miss a birthday dinner, and she always takes a moment to comment a heart-eyes emoji on all of her friends’ (and even acquaintances’) Instagram posts. It’s crazy to think that we both get the same 24 hours each day—she is constantly able to do so much with hers. I would joke that she must never sleep, but it wouldn’t really be a joke. She honestly doesn’t sleep; she is busy by day and even busier at night.
On top of everything else on her resume, and during whatever free time her schedule allows, Jessica has managed to have sex with over a hundred men.
Her Snapchat hasn’t been dry since 2018. Watching her flirt is like watching a Michelin chef in the kitchen. And in our taxi on a Saturday night in London, she told me that her goal for the week was to add five new bodies to her count. Not even ten minutes later, a man approached us to tell Jessica that his friend who was bashfully standing about a foot away thought she was beautiful and wanted to talk to her. She doesn’t even have to try. Granted, she was way out of his league, and the short, nervous British boy was not granted permission to hit that night. This isn’t a “her vagina is a public library, anyone can come inside,” type of deal, it’s more like Berghein. If you can pass the vibe check at the door, you’re in for an unforgettable night.
To be clear, Jessica stopped counting a while ago. She used to keep a very official record, as one does: a locked notes app list of some full names, some first names, and a handful of terms like “tall gym guy” or “small dick man.” A year or two ago, during her third long-term committed relationship, she deleted it. She was forced to #StopTheCount. The man she was with, a daddy’s money conservative asshole from New Jersey, had some really invasive, slightly abusive tendencies, and severe trust issues. He went through her phone religiously, and her sexual history made him a dangerous mixture of embarrassed, uncomfortable, and emasculated. She erased the list to ensure he’d never find out her true number, and we’ve never known exactly how many men she’s slept with since. That list is my Library of Alexandria.
Jessica will be the first to admit that she’s a hoe. Her best friends are allowed to call her a hoe, too, as a reclaimed term of endearment. It’s become a term that she wears like a badge of honor, so long as it only comes out of the appropriate mouths. However, to no one’s surprise, men like her shitty ex-boyfriend come along and try to make her feel bad about it. Men, the ones who use women for sex every weekend and pretend that “condoms don’t fit,” have the audacity to call Jessica ran through. But most times, the men who use that adjective to describe her are the very same ones who are running through her.
An average looking man will fuck an entire friend group, half a sorority house, maybe he gets involved in a few orgies, too, and the only name he might ever be called is “fuckboy,” a term that quite plainly says “he’s a boy who fucks.” It’s hardly offensive. But when Jessica partakes in the same activity, those very men demean her for it. Many fuckboys have fucked Jessica, only to wake up the next morning and deem her a slut, feeling embarrassed that they hooked up with a girl their frat bro also got with the previous weekend. But in the clarity of the morning light, the unavoidable truth is that both parties have awoken with one more body added to their count, whether the man laments becoming one of a hundred or relishes it.
Jessica refuses to feel sorry about her sex life, especially because she knows that practically every man she’s sleeping with is out doing the same thing. Until she’s ready to settle down with one man for good, she won’t quit. She’s a good lay and she knows it, and anyone who believes she could become that good of a lay without years of practice is delusional, anyway. If Jessica doesn’t care how many people a man has stuck his dick into before her, why should they care where she’s been? (Disclaimer, Jessica frequently gets tested and she is a clean woman, goddamnit. The worst she’s ever had was a yeast infection, which brings me to a call of action: boys, I beg you, wash your dicks.)
She also knows that for every man who would pointlessly dismiss her because of her sexual history, there is another man whose sexual history is even more grand, and just as she won’t mind that about him, he’ll probably admire that fact about her. When it comes to being vulnerable and honest about numbers, Jessica will happily share hers anytime she feels safe to do so, or often just to make the table giggle at dinner with the girls. If you confide in her about feeling slutty, feeling insecure about your own number, she’ll give you 100+ reasons why bodies don’t count, and why double standards don’t matter. She’ll tell you that your experience is only beneficial, and that you should be proud of your body count even if it’s “high,” because it’s numerical proof that you’re really hot. Each body gained is an opportunity to learn something, or try something new. And I’ve Always Said That.