How much sex should you have?

I watch 'Offspring'. I enjoy the Melbourne setting and Asher Keddie is a talented actress. There have been some really funny scenes. I laughed more than I had for a long while during her 'drunk and trying to buy a souvlaki' scene. Not that I'm condoning drunkeness but when I was younger I had a few souvlaki nights myself and her timing is spot on. Most of the time it works for me.

Nina's quirky, slightly neurotic mannerisms are fun, if occasionally over done. She demonstrates a degree of self doubt to which many of us can relate which brings me to the next point.

Recently Nina, Asher's character on Offspring, had reason to think there might be some competition for her boyfriend's affections. She confronted him and somehow the conversation led to the question 'How many people did you sleep with before me?'.

Her answer was six. That's six men.
Her boyfriend thought it was funny that she had only slept with six men. This gave her a complex about not having slept with enough men. So she asked her friends what they thought. Is six bed mates scoring less than the average or too few maybe? They all looked surprised and giggled as though they couldn't believe she had slept with so few men.

I found this story more than a little disturbing. This is an extremely popular Australian 'dramady' and Nina is a bit of a role model with young girls and young women. She has everything many young girls would want; a brilliant and admirable career as an obstetrician; a lovely boyfriend; a loving somewhat selfish family; a great figure and attractive visage and she is pregnant but the story line always plays her as lacking because she doesn't necessarily behave the way the others do.

Why is six a derogatory number of lovers? And who's counting anyway? I know it's only a TV show but does this demonstrate the pressure on people to have sex with just anyone to get the numbers up because it's frowned on to sleep with too few people? We encourage people to have safe sex but do we also encourage people to have lots of sex with many different people? When did this become so important?

I was very disappointed with this episode and with the recurring theme of what we used to call promiscuity. Are we pressuring young people to sleep with as many partners as possible before marriage? Is this the new norm or is it only a demographic?

I feel concern for the mental health of young people and in particular girls and women. The normalisation of promiscuity has had consequences. The numbers of young people suffering from anxiety and depression bear this out and suicide is an ever growing issue.

Women and young girls are subject to abuse. Abuse takes many forms and community and peer pressure can have the same effect on a young woman as traumatic abuse. Bullying is an example of this.

I believe Offspring missed an opportunity to support women and girls in this episode. If Nina's friends had said to her, 'Don't be concerned with something so unimportant! You have a lovely partner and you're having his baby. Who cares how many people you have or haven't had sex with? How is that relevant to anything in your life?'

We need to look after each other and help build resilience through self esteem.

Nina, is a straight laced, extremely accomplished, beautiful, sensitive and caring woman who because she is striving to survive in a promiscuous, mediocre environment, suffers from self doubt. She should be praised not belittled!

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http://www.upworthy.com/girl-on-girl-not-as-sexy-as-it-sounds

http://www.upworthy.com/what-being-one-of-those-girls-means-in-america-today-2