When It Comes to Mattresses, People Are Opting for Good Sleep Over Good Sex

Jezebel: It feels like, in this modern world, you shouldn’t have to choose between having good sex and having good sleep, but apparently mattress consumers are, in fact, being faced with this dreadful choice. This is an issue because of memory-foam mattresses, which are becoming hugely popular as a result of their unique way of forming around your body and supporting you while you sleep. The only problem? They’re terrible for having sex.

Unlike traditional spring mattresses, which offer plenty of support off of which to launch your sexual moves, memory foam is a bit too squishy. According to sex therapist Sari Eckler Cooper, who spoke to Barron’s, “There’s a lack of resistance for the knees and feet. And whoever is on the bottom is sinking into the bed.” Nothing like a little quicksand sex to finish off a night.

p.s. There’s a cat and a Labrador in our bed also…kinky.

Lady Bonobos Totally Kiss and Tell

Jezebel: Okay, they do more than kiss. When female bonobos are banging other female bonobos, they really want everyone to know.

The BBC reports on a new study published in Scientific Reports, showing that the female chimps, who frequently have sex with other females, are not bashful at all. In fact, they’re kind of a cross between the nerdy guy who totally wants everyone to know he made out with a cheerleader, and the wannabe mean girl who’s always cozying up to the queen bee. The study found that lower-ranking lady bonobos were especially psyched to have sex with higher-ranking members of their group — and they made loud, excited chimp-sex-noises to let everyone know. They were especially vocal if the alpha female was around — apparently they want her to know when they’re getting it on with someone impressive. Says study author Zanna Clay, “As a low-ranked female, advertising [a] social-sexual bonding with another dominant group member may serve to strengthen their social position, and signal this to the alpha.”

Clay also offers this somewhat hilarious precis of her findings: “Using vocalisations, females only advertise sexual contacts with important group members. It’s all about climbing up the social ladder for female bonobos.” Chicks, man. All they care about is status. Why can’t they just love me for me?

If Straights Don’t Have Sex With Their Spouse Every Day, Do the Gays Win?

Jezebel: You know Christian conservatives don’t believe in sex before marriage. You probably know they also tend to believe in having lots of sex aftermarriage. But a new argument is emerging: the sex isn’t so much about making babies as it is about pleasure. Not pleasure for its own sake, however, but for the purpose of strengthening Christian marriages so that they can be bulwarks in the culture war against the gay menace.

Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy With Your Spouse and Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together sound like standard advice manuals of the sort found in every bookstore’s self-help section. But as Tracy Clark-Flory explains, the two books (each authored by conservative male pastors and their wives) hide a profoundly reactionary agenda behind their ostensible concern for helping couples achieve marital bliss. Both books are hostile to pornography, homosexuality, and masturbation. Anything other than monogamous, heterosexual married sex is, the authors promise, a recipe for enduring misery.

Of course you’re committed to it

Jezebel: Friends, what we have here is the “world’s first movie of the female brain as it approaches, experiences and recovers from an orgasm.” Watch as the body’s most complex organ goes from a quiet red to a scorching hot yellow-white, as synapses fire and oxygen levels change. Fireworks! The Guardian reports that the clip was pieced together using images from a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. The lady in question, Nan Wise, 54-year-old PhD student and sex therapist, laid down in the scanner and stimulated herself. “It’s my dissertation,” Wise told the Guardian. “I’m committed to it.”

Click on the image to head to the link:

Guilty as charged

Jezebel: A new study alleges that British women think about food more than sex, and that a significant minority think about it more than they think about their partners. Take this with a grain of salt, though — the study was conducted by Atkins. According to the UK Press Association, the diet company surveyed 1,290 UK women, and found that 54% thought about food more than sex. Just over 37% thought about eating more than they thought about their significant others. And one in four women apparently put more effort into dieting than into their relationships, while one in ten would feel worse cheating on a diet than on a partner.