Keeping Score: The Sport of One’s Body Count

“What’s your body count?”

It is a question that seems to circulate casually (and crassly) among modern generations. Its meaning: “How many different people have you had sex with?” The question implies a transactional, impersonal maneuvering through sex, reducing a partner to the noun of a “body.” More importantly, it raises the question: why does body count even matter? With an increasing focus on the number of sexual partners someone has had, everyone seems to have a different opinion on how many is too many. Your total can shape views on compatibility and reinforce double standards in relationships. Most importantly, your score is everything: too low, and you are inexperienced; too high, and you are a slut.

It is impossible to discuss the social parameters that define the scoring rules of a body count without referencing the social contradiction between the Madonna and the whore. Social conservatism has been rising in the United States. Trends revolving around “tradwives” and “alpha-males” have been popular for years, gazing longingly back at an archaic fantasy that was never based in reality. In this fantasy, women are Madonnas: domestic, caring, and submissive creatures, devoid of passions that could disrupt the patriarchy in which they exist. Yet, women have never been single-faceted, which is what creates the flipside of the coin: the whore.

Under the Madonna half of this system, the perfect score (for women, that is) would obviously be zero: winning a game by never playing. This system has created an impossible double standard that has stood the test of time. Virginity has historically been valued in women. It was deemed necessary for a woman to be a faithful wife to ensure legitimate heirs, so women were kept sheltered and uninformed, a dynamic Bridgerton dramatizes. Yet, for men, it was normalized to frequent brothels and have mistresses, as they were not constrained to the same sexual rigidity as their female counterparts.

Times have certainly changed, yet the allure of virginity remains. Once “taken,” it is not regained—it is your first score. I think that it is unfair to peg your first time as unimportant, but I also do not think that it should be seen as devaluing for either men or women. This “score” is experience. In the game of body count tallies, it simply means you are on the board.

From then on out, you are a player. The lines that distinguish between too few, too many, and just enough are ill-defined. However ambiguous, there seems to be an awareness of judgment. I know many people who have lied about their body count when others asked.

So, what is the “perfect” amount? What constitutes enough knowledge to be experienced, but not too much to have carelessly “slept around”?

I do not have a right answer, but most people seem to settle anywhere from three to five. The answer, however, is almost always gauged in ratio by how many people the person asking is assumed to have slept with. Understandably, from an ego standpoint, you do not necessarily want to be wildly more or less experienced than your partner.

Body count plays out much like golf: to be on par is perfect, except everyone’s score sheets and course are kept a mystery.

“Love Island USA” season seven is a recent pop-culture example of body count and its value. Contestants had to reveal or guess each other’s body counts among other things in the game. In this, the girls with lower scores were audibly praised, while the men with high scores—reaching over 100—were criticized. While part of a cheeky game, it was meant to expose the contestants to each other and the audience in their potential “value” as partners.

Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney’s recent ad for Novig—a sports prediction market app—drew attention and controversy. A famous actress, nude on regular TV, marketing sports. She is also often cited as a poster child for the conservative aesthetic. She is both the Madonna and the whore, a sex symbol and ideal—yet her sexual and private life has rarely made headlines. Sweeney’s dual image acts as a modern intersection between sports, sex, and entertainment, one which is becoming increasingly entangled with political and moral ideologies. At face value, her physical assets have nothing to do with sports, and yet, sports is one of the biggest markets in the United States. And, after all, sex sells.

Clearly, sex is everywhere in the media. Still, it is the taboo aspect that makes it exciting—the idea that the number of sexual partners is intrinsically entangled with relationship worth.

If no one can fact-check, and no one can be believed to be completely honest about their body count, then what is the fascination with keeping score? It all seems to stem from an obsession with gauging one’s own behavior within the flock, trying to follow a path without a map. Yet, notoriously, bedrooms usually have doors, so even the best peepers struggle to get an accurate read on what goes on between the sheets.

This has not stopped some from wanting insider access to others’ intimate details. Often called “locker-room talk” or “conquest contests,” male sports teams and organizations are infamous for secret competitions and tallies of sexual escapades. While these stories often linger as urban legends or word-of-mouth rumors, the general narrative stays consistent enough to be based in some truth: contests exist to see how many people members can sleep with and how quickly. Generally, this is regarded as a degrading practice, not because casual sex is bad, but because valuing someone as a number, a body, especially if they are unaware of the scheme, is demeaning.

As for score and the game of it all, it revolves around the enigma. To play the game, you have to be on the board, but too many scores and you are notorious—a psychology that takes hold in few other areas. Needs are needs; I have no qualms with that; however, sex, no matter how casual, transactional, and forgettable, isn’t a race to the top like adult creator Bonnie Blue. There is nothing wrong with notches on a bedframe. Still, when those notches become tied to an individual’s value, and more often than not a woman’s, as a person and partner, human and relationship value, that is when the sport of sex crosses a line.

Frankly, what happens in the bedroom is nobody’s business. The double standards, impossible expectations, and social contests make winning impossible. So what is the point of partaking in such a game?

Sophia Gonzalez ’28 (sophiagonzalez@college.harvard.edu) honestly doesn’t care about your body count, and you shouldn’t either.