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"  Last week, the blogosphere was abuzz about titillating new findings on women, drinking, and sex. The results of a new survey, released by a British feminine-hygiene company, were juicy: British women have, on average, eight sexual partners. With five of them, they were drunk when they did the deed. They couldn&amp;#039;t even remember the names of two of the guys the next morning. Five out of 10 preferred drunken sex to sober sex.  Interesting findings indeed, even though some fall clearly in &amp;quot;tell me something I don&amp;#039;t know&amp;quot; territory. First, eight isn&amp;#039;t a shocking number. (For the record, nine is the average number of sexual partners for an American woman today. If it&amp;#039;s news you want, look to New Zealand, where it&amp;#039;s 20.) I venture to guess that there are a couple of guys each of us might like to erase from memory. And does it really come as a big surprise that we&amp;#039;re more likely to let our hair down and go wild after a few drinks?  But before you could say &amp;quot;last call,&amp;quot; the findings had been reported far and wide. Many news organizations cited the survey as an academic study, though there was no academic expert involved, and ran screaming headlines based on the following statement, made by a FemFresh brand manager:  &amp;quot;These results are a clear indication that British women today are severely lacking in confidence. The fact that alcohol plays an integral role in their love lives shows that women are looking for a boost in self-esteem when it comes to their bedroom antics.&amp;quot;  While the company calls the &amp;quot;survey&amp;quot; shocking, it&amp;#039;s this leap that floored us. Exactly how do you get from questions like &amp;quot;When sleeping with someone for the first time, would it be safe to say you always have a drink or two inside you?&amp;quot; to the fact that women have no sense of self-worth? That&amp;#039;s when ELLE decided to peer a bit deeper into truths and trends about women, booze, and our behavior in the bedroom.  First, in America as in Britain, it does seem that we&amp;#039;re drinking like fish. &amp;quot;We started from an assumption that, you know, women are binge drinkers,&amp;quot; said a spokesperson for FemFresh. In that assumption, they may be right on target. Sharon Wilsnack, PhD, a professor in the department of clinical neuroscience at the University of North Dakota, spent 20 years tracking the drinking habits of U.S. women. Sex and the City plotlines to the contrary, &amp;quot;when we looked, we didn&amp;#039;t find huge differences [in how much women were drinking],&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;but what we did find were huge increases in intoxication. I think it&amp;#039;s possible that young women particularly are drinking more intentionally\u2014you know, to get drunk.&amp;quot;  It&amp;#039;s certainly happening with the college set: There, what Wilsnack would call binge drinking\u2014i.e., the consumption of four or more drinks in a row by women, or five by men\u2014now has cute monikers like &amp;quot;pregaming&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;frontloading.&amp;quot; Some bright, young co-eds have even found a new way to recycle their Poland Spring water bottles. &amp;quot;My friends will fill up a water bottle with vodka\u2014one bottle is a little less than half a fifth\u2014and take it with them when they go out. It&amp;#039;ll be gone by the end of the night,&amp;quot; says Julie Saunders, 21, a senior at Central Michigan University.  At Columbia College in Chicago, hot chocolate or coffee with Bailey&amp;#039;s Irish Cream liqueur is the carry-along cocktail of choice during long, cold winters. But usually, says Emily Cotty, 21, &amp;quot;we pregame at home, then drink at the bar.&amp;quot;  For twenty- and thirtysomethings, happy hour is &amp;quot;practically Pavlovian,&amp;quot; says Tia Patel, 35, a marketing manager in New York. &amp;quot;Alcohol is a social elixir, yes, and increasingly part of the social construct\u2014it&amp;#039;s like signaling your brain that when you have a fruity cocktail in hand, it&amp;#039;s time to have some fun.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Binge drinking is so common that it&amp;#039;s almost like there&amp;#039;s nothing wrong with it. They don&amp;#039;t realize that that&amp;#039;s not life,&amp;quot; says Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD and author of Happy You: Your Ultimate Prescription for Happiness.  With our workaday lives awash in alcohol, it only follows that it&amp;#039;s practically baked into dating: In the FemFresh survey, 45 percent of respondents claim that alcohol allows them to relax, unwind, and lose all inhibitions with a new date.  &amp;quot;I always drink on dates,&amp;quot; says Patel. &amp;quot;In fact, I dated a guy I had been set up with who didn&amp;#039;t drink, and it was impossible for us to break through those initial first-date jitters. We didn&amp;#039;t last past date five.&amp;quot;  Of course, it depends on the type of get-together: &amp;quot;I always have a drink if the date&amp;#039;s at night,&amp;quot; says Diane Edwards, 31, an advertising account executive in Manhattan. &amp;quot;Just not necessarily at brunch or picnics.&amp;quot;  And there&amp;#039;s good reason that as far back as the advent of absinthe, alcohol has been a go-to social lubricant.  &amp;quot;Alcohol inhibits our GABA\u2013a neurotransmitter in the brain which is like a damper,&amp;quot; says Lombardo. &amp;quot;It lifts off that heavy blanket, and it tends to affect the frontal part of our brain, concerned with reason and rational judgments.&amp;quot;  Once you remove the heavy blanket, it&amp;#039;s certainly easier to jump between the sheets.  The interesting thing is that while a buzz may make hooking up easier, college-age women we spoke to seem to behave more conservatively on bona fide dates. This flies in the face of FemFresh&amp;#039;s findings: Instead of drinking liquid courage because she&amp;#039;s worried about what a guy will think of her once they&amp;#039;re in the sack, she won&amp;#039;t drink at dinner for fear he might not deem her worthy of date two.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s kind of a turn-off to drink too much on a first date. You want to make a good first impression,&amp;quot; says Saunders. Cotty agrees: &amp;quot;I drink with my girlfriends but not always on a date. Ordering the drink affects his perception of you.&amp;quot;  What this could point to, whether the clothes are off or on, is what Lombardo refers to as &amp;quot;disordered thinking&amp;quot;\u2014or a constant vigilance about how someone perceives you.  &amp;quot;It might be: He thinks I&amp;#039;m fat. How do I look? How do I sound? Every detail and being in tune with that,&amp;quot; she says.  Then there&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;spectatoring,&amp;quot; a term first coined by sexperts Masters and Johnson back in the &amp;#039;70s. The condition\u2014wherein a woman steps outside of herself during sex, whether to critique her physique or to make a to-do-list, rather than focus on the act\u2014led to decreased pleasure and fewer orgasms in studies.  In that case, within limits, alcohol can help. According to the FemFresh survey, three quarters of women claimed they felt more able to &amp;quot;let their hair down and go wild&amp;quot; after a few drinks. Wilsnack&amp;#039;s findings supported that: 60 percent of her subjects said it was true, sometimes true, or usually true that when they drank, they felt less inhibited about sex.  Of course, any red-blooded woman who&amp;#039;s dipped a foot in the dating pool may wonder why you need studies to discover such things.  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think it has made me do something I wouldn&amp;#039;t do otherwise, but I can think of two times where it led to kissing\u2014alcohol-fueled make-out sessions\u2014that might not otherwise have happened,&amp;quot; says Debbie Cohen, 33, a speechwriter in New York City.  Of course, drinking can lead to a whole spectrum of not-your-normal-self shenanigans: Edwards says she&amp;#039;s guilty of &amp;quot;singing karaoke songs that are way out of my range. That has been more embarrassing than any drunken sex I might have had.&amp;quot;  And there are interesting findings behind why booze might make women in particular more &amp;quot;affectionate.&amp;quot;  Once upon a time, Wilsnack used Harvard undergrads as her lab rats in experimental drinking studies. At half the parties, they served alcoholic drinks; at the other half, soft drinks. After the students were done imbibing, the researchers employed a long-standing psychological text\u2014asking them to look at pictures and tell stories about what they were thinking and feeling. They then compared the changes in students&amp;#039; attitudes at the wet and dry parties.  For men who had been drinking, what increased were themes of power: being strong and macho, &amp;quot;beating the other guy.&amp;quot; For the women, what went up were themes of feeling closer, more attractive, or more intimate.  &amp;quot;We believe that there are physiological changes that take place which women may interpret differently than men,&amp;quot; says Wilsnack. &amp;quot;When you drink, there is vaso-dilation\u2014your blood vessels widen, and your skin feels a little warmer.&amp;quot;  What guys might read as a call to fight-or-flight-type aggression, women &amp;quot;might see as sexual warmth. If not arousal, then at least attractiveness,&amp;quot; says Wilsnack. In other words, while he&amp;#039;s busy crushing beer cans, you&amp;#039;re donning beer goggles.  (Interesting note on those: A recent study by the UK&amp;#039;s University of Bristol found that while tipsy, men and women both rated opposite-sex faces as more attractive\u2014only by morning, women&amp;#039;s double vision had worn off, while men were still under the googly-eyed influence.)  No wonder half of women polled claimed they&amp;#039;re bound to have a couple of drinks inside them by the time they get around to sex with a prospective partner.  But, while alcohol makes a great dating aid, the same doesn&amp;#039;t really hold true for mating: According to the FemFresh survey, 75 percent of women in committed relationships reported that they preferred to have a glass of wine or two before hitting the sack with their partner. Six percent reportedly said they&amp;#039;d never had sex stone-cold sober.  And the 50 percent who preferred drunken sex might want to rethink their strategy: The truth is, while a drink or two may help put you in the mood, anything after that can spell diminishing erotic returns: &amp;quot;Initially, alcohol increases libido, but it also decreases lubrication,&amp;quot; says Lombardo. &amp;quot;And if you drink enough, it then decreases libido, so orgasm can take longer to achieve, independent of the dryness.&amp;quot; Now that&amp;#039;s hot.  The thing is, while we might want to monitor just how much we&amp;#039;re tossing back, survey findings aside, not a single woman we spoke to agreed that she drank with an aim to feel better about herself\u2014in bed or otherwise.  &amp;quot;Those times when I have had a one-night stand and was drunk,&amp;quot; says Edwards, &amp;quot;I planned on having one and went out hunting for it. The alcohol happened after. That&amp;#039;s not to say some women don&amp;#039;t use alcohol to bolster their confidence, but if anything, I feel fat, drunk, and bloated after I&amp;#039;ve been drinking all night, so what&amp;#039;s the point?&amp;quot;  Cohen concurred: &amp;quot;If I drink too much, I feel gross and sluggish,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;and I&amp;#039;m less likely to have sex.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;It makes me more relaxed, but it doesn&amp;#039;t help with body image,&amp;quot; says Cotty.  So what&amp;#039;s really going on? Perhaps the last paragraph on the company&amp;#039;s press release about the survey will shed some light:  &amp;quot;This really is very worrying, and we would suggest that women talk to their partners about their insecurities before hitting the bottle prior to love making [sic]. The FemFresh range of intimate cleansing products is designed specifically for women to give them that added bit of freshness and assurance whether it be in their sex lives, work life, or simply every day,&amp;quot; concludes Kathryn Lakeland, brand manager.  Which makes you realize that perhaps more than alcohol should come with a warning label. &amp;quot;If this survey had been done on men,&amp;quot; says Lombardo. &amp;quot;They would have concluded: `Yeah, men like to relax. You have a couple of beers, and you want to get it on with someone.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Too bad FemFresh isn&amp;#039;t marketing to them. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a10509/women-alcohol-sex-367991/>