<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"I doubt any of you would be surprised to hear that women with more sexual partners are judged more harshly by the general population. But to hear that women with more sexual partners still harshly judge other women with more sexual partners? Yeah, we&amp;#x27;re surprised. So surprised, in fact, that one anonymous Smitten team member exclaimed, &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m shocked I had friends in college.&amp;quot; While we&amp;#x27;re busy celebrating SATC&amp;#x27;s 15th anniversary, we&amp;#x27;ve got to pay homage to the most iconic promiscuous woman of all time, Samantha Jones. She was a darn good friend too. According to a study, ladies really hate being friends with other ladies who like to have sex a lot. When 751 young men and women were asked to rate a description of a man or woman for different traits, like likability, morality, and emotional stability, guess what affected their opinions. Yep, the number of reported sex partners. The character was either said to have two partners in their lifetime, or 20. The women with 20 supposed partners did not fare so well in public opinion. And it wasn&amp;#x27;t because of guys judging women on a double standard: Participants were asked to rate a peer of their own gender. Women, regardless of their own sexual history, rated other women who had a higher number partners negatively on nine of the 10 attributes. Men, on the other hand, preferred only guys with lower numbers for two of the 10 attributes. I probably sound like a broken record, but it&amp;#x27;s important to note that this study was conducted among college students (as a lot of research is). Not that it&amp;#x27;s any more OK for younger women to be so harsh to one another, but it&amp;#x27;s possible that 20 partners would seem like a lot to a 19-year-old but not to a woman in her late 20s who&amp;#x27;d been single for years. The study might have had different results among more mature women. Leaving aside the age issue, though, what gives, ladies? Unless those 20 dudes she slept with were your 20 ex-boyfriends, I don&amp;#x27;t really see what the problem is. It&amp;#x27;s weird and judge-y and doesn&amp;#x27;t really have any bearing on her ability to be an awesome friend who will bring you cake pops when you&amp;#x27;re sad and subtly tell you when you have red wine stains on your teeth now, does it? (For more insight, I recommend reading this great Q &amp;amp; A with the lead author of the study, Zhana Vrangalova over at ScienceOmega.com, about why she did the research and what she thinks about double standards.) Why do you think women think so negatively of other women who have multiple partners&amp;amp;#8212;even if she&amp;#x27;s had multiple partners herself? Do you feel differently about a friend if you know how many people she&amp;#x27;s slept with? Promiscuous girls (and boys): *The 10 Most Promiscuous Cities in the U.S. (Well, For Sugar Daddies Anyway) *What Your Tattoo Might Be Making Men Think About You Photo: Everett Collection"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2013/06/most-women-would-not-be-bffs-w>