Sexual availability and math

When I was nineteen, I studied at a university in the UK. I was oversexed, and my mind was blown by the phenomenon of “Page 3 girls.” For those readers not familiar with the phenomenon certain British tabloids reserve their third page, each and every day, for a nearly full-page photo of a topless lass, with what space isn’t taken up with her photo devoted to (typically asexual) facts about her (or, at least, they did when I was nineteen).

The range of poses was narrow, as was, as I recall, the range of types of woman: they were all eighteen or nineteen, white, and generously bosomed (C, D, or DD cup, almost always). They all smiled broadly, as if posing for a school photo. And there was never anything remotely suggestive about them (other than their breasts) – it was as if the papers were just showing off the terrific youth of their readers. Which I suppose, in a sense, they were.

At the time, I didn’t notice the asexuality of the whole thing – I was blinded by breasts. (Incidentally, a quick review of the web today suggests that either times have changed or my memory isn’t quite right – today’s Page 3 women are older, and more varied in every way – and, the whole enterprise appears an order of magnitude more sexy/sexual than I remember it.)

Anyway – the funniest thing about my engagement with this all, in retrospect, was that even as I was stroking my cock with one hand to the pictures, with the other, I was reaching for my calculator. Well, maybe not at EXACTLY the same moment, but….

I did a shocking amount of math that year.

If the population of the UK is 57 million (as it was then), and the life expectancy is about 75 (as it was then), then, assuming no population growth (for simplifying purposes), every year, 57 million/75, or 760,000, people are born. Of those, half, or 380,000 are girls. Which means that, in any given year, there are 380,000 eighteen-year-old women in the UK. Or 760,000 eighteen- or nineteen-year-old women.

Of those, there was one a day in each of the, say, three tabloids that published Page 3 girls at the time. That’s 1,095 women a year. Add to those (and I did) the models in the five or six men’s magazines on most newsstands at the time – figure each one had five women a month, that’s another thirty women per month, or 360 per year.

And, again, for simplifying (and aggressive) purposes, I would assume there was no duplication – no woman posed twice.

Then, in any given year, approximately 1,355 women were willing to pose nude, or topless, in the UK.

And here’s where the math really became important: that meant that 1,355/760,000, or 0.18%, or 1.8 out of 1,000, women of ages eighteen or nineteen (and by extension, of any age) were willing to pose nude.

Let’s just call it two.

So what that told me was that two out of every one thousand women were sexually available in that way.

Somehow – this gives you a sense of my level of self-confidence at the time – I concluded that those two were the only ones with whom I had a chance.

And I grew mightily depressed.

(I’m much less of a geek now, and I get laid much more than I did then. Perhaps, primarily, because I’m not constantly calculating the improbability of getting laid.)

3 comments

  1. Oh my, I know so many kinky math teachers who would love reading this. They tell the most random statistics like this. I am sharing, and thanks for sharing. (And, I believe, you’re right: if you aren’t in the calculator as much you have more time to be in the ladies.)

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