Patricia Barnes-Svarney - Why Do Women Crave More Sex in the Summer?: 112 Questions That Women Keep Asking - and That Keep Everyone Else Guessing

Why Do Women Crave
More Sex in the Summer?

112 Questions That Women Keep Asking
and
That Keep Everyone Else Guessing

PATRICIA BARNES-SVARNEY

NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

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First published by New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, June 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright Patricia Barnes-Svarney, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Barnes-Svarney, Patricia L.

Why do women crave more sex in the summer?: 112 questions that women keep askingand that keep everyone else guessing/Patricia Barnes-Svarney.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-58873-4

1. WomenSocial conditions. 2. WomenPhysiology.

3. Human bodySocial conditions. I. Title.

HQ1150.B37 2012

305.4dc23 2011048199

Set in Bembo Designed by Elke Sigal

Printed in the United States of America

PUBLISHERS NOTE

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is complete and accurate. However, neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book. The opinions expressed in this book represent the personal views of the author and not of the publisher.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

In memory of my mother, Helen Margaret Barnes,
the most womanly woman Ive ever known.

When I meet my girlfriends at a caf, restaurant, bookstore, or sundry other meet-and-greet places, the usual thing happens: We talk. And talk. One thing leads to anotherfrom boyfriends and husbands to the latest gossip about the caf down the street that just opened or closed to the cost of getting from here to Orlando, Florida, via plane or train or car for vacation. But sometimes we get distracted.

Take, for instance, a recent chatter-filled meeting in which coffee became the topic du jour after we gave our orders of regular, decaf, and teas to a very patient waitress.

I only drink decaf coffee, because regular makes me jittery, said girlfriend number one.

Oh, try the rough stuff and go regular, said girlfriend number two across the way.

Well, I heard that women get more jittery without coffee, said girlfriend number three.

No, I didnt hear that but my boyfriend said a swig of espresso will slow him down in the thinking department.

No, it makes me think better, added girlfriend number four.

The only thing coffee is good for is peeing too much, said the tea drinker.

Isnt it a diuretic? said girlfriend number one.

Kind of, but not really, said girlfriend number two. But I heard it helps gallstones in men.

Oh, dont be silly. Where the heck did you hear that? came the response from someoneI was losing track.

Confusion seemed to be flaring, and since Im usually considered the voice of reason, I needed to stop the proverbial verbal snowball from getting too big as it rolled down the hill.

Now, ladies. Lets all just drink our respective drinks and I started to say.

You know what I think? I think youve been reading those girlie-girl magazines again, said girlfriend number three to number one.

Well, Ill have you know started girlfriend number one.

My only choice was to bring out the big guns.

CHOCOLATE! I yelled.

Every femaleand I mean every female in the cafturned and looked at me almost expectantly. It sure settled everyone down.

And suddenly I knew it: There had to be a secret science for women. A meaningful, amazing, frightening, irritating, head-smacking, backslapping, thorn-in-the-sideyet sometimes usefuldifference for women living on this planet. Right then and there, out popped some womanly questions: Why did we all have differences in how coffee affects us or our significant others? Why were we so animated about our food and drink choices? And of course, why would every woman stop talking when they heard the word chocolate?

After a great deal of data collecting, research, labor, self-reflectionand the occasional clandestine study of women out of the corner of my eye (I was taught not to stare)Why Do Women Crave More Sex in the Summer? was born.

Not that its been an easy road. After all, the foundations of womens science are not exactly stellar. Take, for example, the ancient Greek physician, mathematician, and all-around smart guy Aristotle, who used pure logic to decide that women have fewer teeth than men (he never bothered to count them); he also said that women are passive and men active (he never lived in a womens dorm). Overall, he believed that women were mutilated men.

During the eighteenth century, the fair sex didnt fare any better. President Thomas Jefferson insisted that his two daughters have clean clothes properly put on, because apparently nothing was so disgusting to a man of the seventeen hundreds than a want of cleanliness and delicacy in their women. He believed, as did most of his male peers, that women did not require education beyond what they needed to be proper wivesand that the female was there to please the particular person who happened to be her representative to the world: father, husband, or brother. Ouch.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, lets not forget the great eighteenth-century writer whose political philosophy had a direct influence over the French Revolution: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He stated in one of the books of his 1762 influential treatise, mile, or On Education, that a womans education should always be relative to that of men. He further suggested that women were there to please men. No wonder women in illustrations from that era are never smiling. And I bet the highly proper supertight corsets didnt help. Double ouch.