Womens Health

The “Slut” Stigma

Many of us do the tally but are not as comfortable with the bottom line. (Take, for example, Anna Faris’s recent rom-com, What’s Your Number?, in which she plays a woman about to date her twentieth guy. Freaked out by what she feels is too high a number, she sifts through her past to see if she missed The One.) Fact: 35 percent of Women’s Health readers have lied to a partner about the number of notches on their bedpost. “In SA, the more sexual partners a man has had, the higher his social status; with women, it’s something to be ashamed of,” says WH sexpert Dr Elna Rudolph. “These societal views discriminate unfairly against women.” While guys are applauded for having slept with a lot of women, our culture is still not ready to consider women interesting and powerful for having a high number. And while having a low tally carries less of a stigma, women with very little experience – for reasons other than making the conscious choice not to hook up – might not be bragging about that either.