When I was a freshman in college, the idea of having a ‘high’ body count sounded ideal. In my head, it represented a validation that someone thought I was physically attractive, which was something that I always struggled with growing up. The more people you had sex with, the more experienced you would be, the more fun stories you would have, and the cooler you would be.
The term body count is complicated, as it’s more of a term that you throw around with your friends without clearly defining it. For most, it means the amount of people that you’ve had sex with (and even the definition of sex varies from person to person). In my specific case, body count refers to penetrative sex with a male partner. I wish I could say that every experience I’ve had was able to be quantified as ‘yes, this was sex’ or ‘no, this wasn’t,’ so even my own number goes back and forth in my head.
It’s not as though I was aiming for a high body count, but it was always on the back of mind when I got with a different guy. There was a mental list that I’d check off after a new partner, letting the number count go upwards. I was never directly involved in hookup culture: with almost every person I was with, I hoped that something more would come out of it. I wanted to matter to someone more than just sex.
After a few years, a high body count started to feel like failure. The prospect of having sex with someone new feels exhausting, especially since with me, emotions are always brought into the mix. I keep getting with people who don’t want to commit to anything, but they don’t tell me until afterwards—it makes me feel used. I never thought I was in hookup culture to begin with, but now it feels like I’ve unknowingly been in it all along. Maybe it’s not that someone never cared about me, but it still didn’t work out.
From there, it’s an odd cycle of thought. These experiences should feel liberating; I don’t want to subscribe to the idea that girls who have a high body count are shamed while guys who do the same are considerably cooler. An ex-boyfriend once even told me that he refused to date a girl who had a body count higher than five since he didn’t think they could be trustworthy. I don’t believe that either, of course, but part of me feels like there should be some limit for myself.
In the end, I know that I shouldn’t be defined by anything I chose to do with my body, and that judging others is simply counterproductive. A lot of these worries are fueled by external circumstances, which have nothing to do with who I am as a person or my worth. There should be less focus on the number and more focus on the experiences. I just have to keep telling myself that.