What's your score?

For Some Young Women, Love Is a Numbers Game

By Laura Sessions Stepp
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22,2004

Some young women keep it in their head, others in a drawer of their bedside table. One even preserves it on a spreadsheet in her laptop.

We're talking about "the number," that sum of sex partners that college women either have had or hope to goodness they can avoid reaching. In the highly sexualized atmosphere of campus, a number gives them something to compare and dish about with their close girlfriends.

Jennifer Broussard, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania a year ago, used to tally up her companions on a sheet in her organizer, attaching dates and footnotes. She'd dial up a girlfriend to ask things like, "What counts? What doesn't? I'm about to pass my benchmark. Is this guy worth it?"

Keeping score is not new, of course. Think belt notches of yesteryear or a general estimate, privately held. As some sexually transmitted infections increase among the young, keeping a number and names could even be the responsible thing to do.

But chatting about -- and even recording -- each incident in detail?

"We always talked about the number in high school -- in secret," says Broussard, who works in Manhattan for a consumer product licensing agency. "Now more and more of us are admitting that it is not something to be ashamed of. We're clearly more open about it with each other."

These women analyze their numbers as if they were comparison shopping for the right size and color of shoes. They tell each other that sex is separate from love. And few adults tell them any different. Sex education teachers lecture on body parts and disease, and we know that parents would rather throw themselves in front of a truck than talk in depth about sex and romance.

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