From COVID to Herpes & AIDS, trading one malady for another
Now that vaccines are rolling out, some are trumpeting plans to make up for a year of isolation. So, is a hedonistic summer in the offing? Not so fast, say experts.
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On a flight in April, one Twitter user overheard a fellow flyer utter a sentence he’s likely never heard before: “Vaxxed and waxed, baby, I'm ready for some action on this trip.”
After more than a year of social isolation during the pandemic, the sentiment may perfectly encapsulate the purported vibe of the coming months – a period in which people are swapping masks for a different kind of protection. Welcome to summer 2021: the summer of sex.
Along with news headlines trumpeting a so-called 'hot vax summer’, some dating-app users have also adopted a not-so-subtle note in their bios that they're “vaXXXed”. This racy prediction for the summer is so widely held that some experts are even worried in a possible STI spike.
But, amid all of this hype, is a summer of sex actually going to happen? After all, in much of the world, Covid-19 is still running rampant, and during the pandemic, sexual desire dropped in both singles and couples. The answer may not be a question of people exclusively running towards sexual fulfilment; rather, sex experts say that as more people get vaccinated and lockdowns lift, it's more likely people will re-enter society and seek any kind of deep bond – not just sexual ones.
The sexy-summer narrative
Many are touting the coming months as a kind of second incarnation of the 'Roaring Twenties': a reference to the hedonistic period of party-filled excess that followed the last global pandemic, the 1918 Spanish flu. And indeed, signs are pointing toward a summer of passion.
For instance, a "deluge of horny adverts" has begun to crop up, in which companies are using images of unbridled lust to pitch products, and frame the coming months as a season of sex. Dutch fashion brand Suitsupply promised “the new normal is coming”, with pictures of shimmering nude bodies tangled up with each other; similarly, Italy's Diesel ran a campaign of couples kissing passionately.
But adverts aren’t the only indication: consumer behaviour is signalling a Roaring Twenties-esque summer, too. In the US, condom sales surged 23% in April, compared to the same period in 2020. Condom maker Durex says it saw double-digit boosts in sales in April, too, and attributes the spikes to restrictions lifting (the company says the same happened last summer when there was a period of eased social distancing).
Some sex psychologists do say that it is indeed possible that rates of sex – especially casual sex – might go up this summer. One of the main reasons may be surprising: our collective trauma.
“When we're faced with our own mortality, we have a tendency to be riskier… we want to make the most of our lives," says Ashley Thompson, associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, US, who specialises in human sexuality and behaviour. This is part of a concept she’s researched called “terror management theory”, which holds that death anxiety controls human behaviour. “That may lead to more casual sexual behaviour, to sort of combat those negative feelings of one’s own mortality.”
An unlikely scenario?
Still, Thompson and other experts who study sex think that, despite some signals, the prediction of a large-scale, free-wheeling summer might be overblown.
“There is no doubt that there are people who are probably hesitant to jump back into bed,” she says. Even where sex isn't concerned, Covid-19 “re-entry anxiety” has people fearful about what is and isn't totally safe, and stressed about being thrust back into social situations after we've been isolated for so long. A survey from the American Psychological Association from March showed that half of all Americans felt anxious about engaging in any kind of in-person interaction.
Justin Garcia, executive director of Indiana University's Kinsey Institute, the world's largest sex-research organisation, is also sceptical. Instead, he believes the most likely outcome is that "we’re going to see a return to baseline of pre-pandemic life, and it’s not going to be this summer of debauchery”. In April, a new Kinsey survey showed that of 2,000 Americans, more than half said they were uninterested in one-night stands, and 64% were less interested in having more than one sex partner at a time, compared to before the pandemic.
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https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210525-are-we-heading-towards-a-summer-of-sex