Zoe Strimpel - The Man Diet

Just as Lillian did, many women feel numb or detached during non-intimate sex. But luckily, her story shows that you can work on it and improve your emotional experience of sexual contact pretty quickly.

Like Lillian, Lisa, 31, is in dire need of the Man Diet. I include her story because it so perfectly – and woefully – captures that detachment the modern sexual woman needs to combat. Lisa told me that she has sex with her eyes closed because not being face to face with an actual person helps her remain thoroughly detached and tough throughout. The one time she did open her eyes – with a boyfriend – she saw him looking everywhere but at her, and promptly closed them again.

Wham bam

Lisa’s a lovely girl, very warm, clearly sensitive, and open. And yet, she says defiantly, as though having subconsciously taken on the male preference for ‘wham bam’ sex: ‘I’m not a big cuddler – especially if I don’t like the guy.’ Also she says she ‘loves’ rough sex. ‘Doggy style is my favourite position,’ she says, obedient again to male preferences. Why does she close her eyes, why doesn’t she like to cuddle? ‘Because it’s all about me. It’s my moment.’ If that was the case, you’d think she’d at least be getting some serious ‘me-time’ pleasure out of it, but Lisa has never orgasmed with a man. ‘The truth is, we’re playing the men’s game,’ she says. ‘They’ve got all the rules set up to suit them. We can fight it or match it – so I match it. I’m a postmodern feminist – I don’t think we need to be like men, we’re good as we are etc etc, but … with sex it’s different.’ And clearly, as women like Lisa and Lillian make abundantly clear, the man’s game of strings-free sex isn’t exactly a non-stop jig of healthy fun.

What they show, too, is how far women have internalised masculine sexual stereotypes, making them their own with a flick of the pseudo-feminist whip (and then, in the case of the more emotionally tuned-in, feeling lousy about it). As Germaine Greer puts it so well in The Female Eunuch: ‘Love-making has become another male skill, of which women are the judges.’

Natasha Walter’s excellent survey of contemporary female sexual culture, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, takes a searing look at women’s sexual mores and their context. One group of well-off, late-teen female students she interviewed spoke in hostile, competitive, mercenary and utterly soulless ways about sex:

‘I’m much more attracted to the guys who don’t give a shit,’

‘We were saying that one week we should go out and try to notch up as many lovers as we can, with the most variety possible – age, gender, jobs, backgrounds …’

They go on to cite their feeling of solidarity with Miranda in Sex and the City when she has to call her long list of past lovers after contracting an STD; they also admire Belle de Jour, the call girl, and other sex diarists as glamorous examples of non-committal, pornographically adventurous sex. Walter concludes: ‘Because they had so successfully subtracted emotion from their sex lives, these young women were perfectly in tune with the culture around them.’

These girls are probably a good deal younger than you and me – after all, they’re not even 20 yet. Perhaps their aggressive ‘I’m a shagger’ standpoint stems from the fact they’re not yet worried about settling down. But equally, I think it’s even more poignant that while they could be starry eyed and dreaming of ‘the one’, they’re setting themselves up as sexually liberated toughs for whom ‘no strings’ sex is the only sex. They’re the women of tomorrow.

The wrong kind of fun

The sex-mad, attachment-loathing students in Walter’s book seem more directly influenced by sexual imagery and sexual pressure than most of the professional women between 23 and 35 that I know (including myself). All the same, I have felt very driven by a particular notion of ‘fun’ attributed to and expected of the single woman. In fact, the word fun crops up a hell of a lot in relation to the no-strings sex single women are meant to be having lots and lots of. I remember in the early days of my current single spell somewhat shakily telling my friend Carol about an alcohol-drenched encounter with someone wholly inappropriate, and her replying: ‘Ah well, it’s just fun.’ Says Wendy, 31: ‘All my friends are pairing up so I do want to meet someone special. In the meantime … why not have fun?’ Or, as Ruth says: ‘People will constantly ask: “Why are you single?” You’re supposed to say: “I enjoy being single. I enjoy having unencumbered sex with strangers.”’

But all that pressure to have fun stops being fun and becomes more like an exhausting task. ‘[Sexual encounters with men] feel very achievement based,’ says my friend Molly, 27. Almost every woman I interviewed for this book used the words ‘tiring’ or ‘exhausting’ in relation to fun – whether it was in dating to the max, going out non-stop, or making the effort to appear fancy-free. ‘It’s exhausting being empowered,’ as my friend Michelle, 27, put it.

Bringing home the bacon

That mercenary, bedpost notch approach to men isn’t healthy and it doesn’t make most women particularly happy. But neither do a lot of things that seem (or are) fun at the time. Which is why, despite its seemingly obvious badness, I can relate perfectly well to the urge to ‘get the numbers up’. There’s something that seems empowering about it, like you’ve gone out hunting and have brought in several good pheasants that you can cook and share with your friends (what else is the post-shag narrative breakdown with your mates if not a triumphal communal meal, hosted by you?). There’s also the vague sense that you’re delivering one in the eye to those guys that think women always get all attached, needy and psychotic after sex. Needless to say, that’s a terrible reason to do something, not least because the only eye that’s getting something in it is yours, when you’ve slept with someone rubbish and he doesn’t even call. Delving deeper, I think some of us think that the more men you sleep with, the more attractive you must be. Enjoying the intense but often false intimacy that a sexual encounter provides is also a reason for accepting loads of NSA sex.

Note the bragging, bravado twang to the way I used to refer to hook-ups, before the Man Diet put me off that notchy approach: ‘bringing home the bacon’. It was tongue-in-cheek, but telling. With or without pork metaphors, friends often congratulate each other on numbers of men shagged or bagged. The presence of an alien pair of male shoes outside a flatmate’s bedroom door elicits back slapping the next day. A good friend of mine used to check in with me: ‘What’s your number [of sexual partners to date]?’ Still another would say: ‘I want to get to 35 before Christmas.’

I’m not just moaning here, or being holier than thou. This attitude towards sex was making me feel fragmented, anxious and doubtful about my worth. I’ve seen it have the same effect on other women. And because something as simple as swearing off no-strings sex made me feel about a thousand times better – even though I’ve slipped once or twice – I’m hoping it’ll do the same for you, via the Man Diet.

Sex and the single girl

The neon pink link between fun and the single woman was drawn with powerful clarity by Helen Gurley Brown, former editor of Cosmo, in her 1962 classic: Sex and the Single Girl. No social theory here – oh no. Just jaunty tips and the dos and don’ts of having affairs with married men; decorating your apartment in a man-friendly way; and workplaces where you’re more likely to meet men. Reprinted in 2003, Gurley Brown jauntily speaks of not needing a husband in your prime years (read: prettiest). Indeed, she says that men are more fun taken in large quantities than on their own.