Marya Timonina by Danil Golovkin for Russian Vogue Jan 2010Updated Oct 11, 2011

A few weeks ago, we published a story on Sensuality News that fuels our main points in this earlier article on American women and sexual honesty. New research says that men are more likely to look at faces first in a porn flick, than women are.

While women are shredding men for their porn-watching behavior, we may be more focused on pure genitalia than men are.

This original 2008, updated in 2010, article share critical information about women’s searching behavior online. It’s an eye-opener and helps readers understand some of Anne’s strong views on American women and sexual dishonesty.

Updated from Anne’s Original Jan 2008 article:

NYT writer Ruth La Ferla reported in The Newly Uptight that many designers in the Fall 2008 designer collections are going bourgeois to the core, favoring the meticulously tailored look that evokes the White House years of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Pundits correctly underscore the nation’s desire to find stability and international respectability in the safety of a smart suit. Shopping in London and Paris, before attending Salon de Lingerie two years ago, I saw an abundance of corsetry looks and restrained boning.

By Fall 2009 corsetry looks were hot, hot, hot, and Playboy bunny ears were back in vogue. Two sides of the same coin.

Under that simple sheath, there’s some sexy, shenanigans going on. This is exactly my point about American women.

Looks are Deceiving

Nothing much has changed with American women and sex, since I wrote the debut ‘Sex Talk’ column for Sexy Futures (now Sensuality News) in 2008.

Looks remain deceiving. Listening to women, it seems that the majority of women have little interest in sex, if we forget Victoria’s Secret Angels and Cosmo girls. Another day we’ll discuss sexual dysfunction and the young woman with multiple sex partners.

A woman’s number of partners and sexual satisfaction aren’t necessarily on the same wavelength. Again, looks can be deceiving, and talk is cheap.

I suggest that we proceed with caution on any topics involving American women and sex. Getting inside our minds requires clever strategy, and often even we won’t listen to our desires, preferring to speak out of both sides of our mouths.

Women’s very survival has depended — at times — on the art of deception, and we continue the practice in 2010.

Bourgeois, puritanical, seemingly uptight women have created some of the greatest historical scandals in the history of the world. Restrained corsets often spawn creative minds.

What I’ve learned as a business executive and long-time women’s trends consultant about all things sexy, is that American women — and women internationally — are sensual explorers. What we say in focus groups and do in cyberspace are two different word groupings.

In total, American women are generally more deceptive than European women in admitting the range of sexual desires.

Lost Libido

Unaware, perhaps, that chocolate is a medically-proven aphrodisiac, Joan Sewell lamented her dormant libido in her 2007 book I’d Rather Eat Chocolate. I cried over all the media coverage she got for her clever, humorous but also sad book.

Joan and Kip got married knowing that he wanted sex five to six times a week, when Joan was happy with once or twice a month. Even then — sex was a duty.

Sewell’s one-woman witty chronicle of her attempts at stoking the fires of her own libido got more media coverage than the yaw-dropping 2006 internet search statistics information about women’s habits online. While this entertaining author downed bonbons alone in her bed, preferring them to sex with her inordinately patient husband Kip, women in astounding numbers were running positively wild in cyberspace.

Whatever you read about women and sex on the Internet, follow their digital footprints for the real answers.

Ladies — not to frighten you. The Internet harvests information about us all. It’s the total numbers that are astonishing. No one is tracking you personally and anonymity is comparatively yours.

It’s About Semantics When the Subject is Pornography

Surely you’ve heard that women hate porn.

Without entering a high fallutin’ discussion about erotica vs. porn, and female-centric films, let me just stick with the facts.

2006 Internet search stats confirm that women hate the word porn, hitting the return key only 4% of the time in the 23 million searches for the word porn.

Having spent more time researching adult sites than I ever want to admit to, I understand totally why women detest the word porn. It’s gross out there.

The astute researcher digs deeper into women’s habits in the Internet’s erotic arena.

Men Will Be Men: True?

Now for the subterfuge. The cliche is that women aren’t interested in sex online, based on our click-thru rates on the word ‘porn’. As girls, we would never admit to these facts, but we’re hanging out in adult cyberspace in record numbers.

In 2006 women executed:

• 50% of the 75 million searches for the word sex

• 64% of the 30 million searches for adult dating

• 56% of the 14 million searches for teen sex

• 64% of the 13 million searches for adult sex

• 50% of the 12 million searches for sex chat

• 59% of the 8.5 million searches for cyber sex

Yikes!

At the risk of upsetting every potential guy client, who might be pondering the pros and cons of Viagra, I’m about to drop a real bombshell. Regarding women over 50 . .. you know … menopause, too tired, just no more interest in sex … well again, you can’t judge a book by its cover.

The 2006 Internet search statistics divided women into five age groups: <18; 18-24; 25-34; 35-49; 50+

Marya Timonina by Danil Golovkin in Vogue Russia Jan 2010Hot and Hotter Mamas

By % the numbers of women searching by age group

• Those 37 million women searching for sex: 20; 20; 20; 20; 20

• The 19+ million women wanting adult dating: 20; 20; 21; 20; 19

• The -8 million women checking out teen sex: 22; 19; 19; 22; 18

• The 8+ million women wanting adult sex: 19; 21; 21; 20; 19

• 6 million women wanting sex chat: 20; 20; 20; 20; 20

• 5+ million women searching for cyber sex: 23; 25; 14; 30; 8

Note 1: these statistics are global and therefore say one of two things:

1. Women in strict, traditional countries are displaying stunning, shocking behavior online or, to carry their fair share of the total, or:

2. Western women are even more greater contributor to the male/female imbalance than these global statistics indicate ..

Note 2: men have a lead in cyberspace adult activities, a fact that may affect their search activities, leaving them less inclined to search in Google having already established their favorite websites.

Debut and Curtsey

I’m not deliberately provocative as a consultant, but I don’t hesitate to state the facts, especially when they challenge common perceptions about American women. Women are complex creatures, and I truly believe that we regularly outsmart researchers.

As a trendmeister, I follow women’s tracks, whever they take me. I’ve brought Sexy Futures (now Sensuality News) to Anne of Carversville, believing these Internet statistics, an explosion of erotic media in mainstream fashion press and also being convinced that international and American readers won’t run me out of Dodge.

In London 2008, I watched the film of my wallet, credit cards and passport being lifted from my handbag in London — after the event. The thief was a 20s-something white woman. The manager of the restaurant, also female, was astonished looking at the film with me.

“It was a woman!” she gasped, totally incredulous. I wasn’t as surprised.

Marya Timonina by Danil Golovkin for Vogue Russia, Jan. 2010Clean Slate

If you want to understand what’s really going on in the hearts and minds of American women, you must get out a clean sheet of paper and clear the deck of preconceived beliefs about American women and sexuality.

Twelve years after leaving my position as Design Director for Victoria’s Secret, I feel very comfortable telling facts as they are … from my personal perspective, of course.

If you want to understand women and our attitudes about sexuality, just remember that looks are deceiving. Some of us say one thing and do another. We’ll discuss physiology in the future. Hook us up to desire-measuring machines and we can break the circuits.

Often women speak in half-truths, having cultivated the art of survival in a moral world that condemns us for embracing sensual desire.

I don’t blame women for sensual ambivalence, but I know that the reality of women’s lives sabotages our self-love and self-image.

Perhaps I can add to the conversation, making women understand that vast numbers of us remain elusive in these feelings about respectability and sexuality. Men correctly criticize us for acting like sex is a duty and a favor to husbands, partners and lovers. It’s a dagger in their hearts, franky.

In negotiating the terms of our sexual behavior, we’re navigating complex psychological, emotional terrain.

As a woman over 30 … ok, 40 … ok … I have a perspective that 25 year-old women don’t understand.

Alas, my dears, unbelievably little progress has been made in American women owning our sensual desire and embracing sex as the positive life-force that it is. Many of our international (one-third) readers wrestle with these same topics. I want them to understand that ‘Sex and the City’ aside, American women do not have it together in the sex department.

I hope to change that fact, which is why I brought sexuality home to Anne of Carversville, where it belongs. Anne

Photos from Touchpuppet: Marya Timonina photographed by Danil Golokin for Vogue Russia Jan 2010.