Dating in a pandemic: What’s sexy now? - The Australian

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From The Weekend Australian Magazine

An hour ago
An hour ago

6 minute read

Has Covid killed sexiness? Encouraged us to put away our cleavages, elasticate our waistbands and enshroud our lower halves in shapeless fleecy jogging bottoms? Does it feel inappropriate, now, to “dress sexy”? To bedeck ourselves in the kind of pieces we – only six, seven months ago – routinely integrated into our wardrobes? The low-cut and the tight-fitting? The flesh-flashing, boob-elevating, leg-lengthening, waist-nipping? The extravagant, the dramatic, the daring, the shocking? Might that strike a wrong note in light of All That Has Happened? Seem frivolous, crass – perhaps even demonstrate a blatant disregard for social distancing in its wanton invitation for attention and, ultimately, physical touch?

What of lipstick and high heels? Rendered redundant by face masks and limited social opportunities, working days spent clattering round our own homes, and rare nights out spent handing over contact details to maître d’s for tracing purposes, reminiscing about outmoded concepts like “atmosphere”? What of Spanx and other shape-enhancing underwear? And bras, forsaken gleefully by so many barely a week into lockdown? Did anyone put them back on again, or did they simply not bother? Throw out the lippie and the thigh-flesh-tamers; bequeath the heels to charity shops where they’ll fester in the window display like remnants of a half-forgotten civilisation?

How about the pre-Covid push and pull of flirty interactions with strangers, baristas, potential future lovers, when loaded air kisses are now characterised by what we recognise as “heavy droplet expulsion”? If we’re single, does the world seem newly, bleakly, endlessly sexless? Are all potential conquests literally half-hidden from us behind face masks? Are the opportunities to meet anyone new blighted by household-bubble limitations and seated table plans in pubs? Does anyone ever one-night-stand any more?

From the perspective of fashion trends, yes. As far as the digitally dispersed runway collections are concerned, blatant sexiness is simply not a preoccupation. Oversized, form-swamping tailoring and an awful lot of knitwear dominate – an aesthetic movement that Hannah Almassi of fashion site whowhatwear.co.uk calls “nu-cosy”. “Comfort has become of paramount importance to us from an emotional and a practical perspective,” she says. “The era of Covid fast-tracked a pre-existing shift towards comfy dressing. It took a pandemic to make the look really thrive.”

Very few of us have bothered with heels since March. Working from home made them irrelevant; forays to the supermarket to queue for 20 minutes on the faint promise of loo roll made them unthinkable; and a winter in uggs rendered stilettos as foreign a prospect as corsetry. In the boots category, one style dominates: ankle boots with wildly corrugated rubber soles. These are the kind of footwear you’d need in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Flat, solid – they’re the aesthetic opposite of the high heel. Alison Loehnis, president of Net-A-Porter, tells me she’s waiting on delivery of a pair (Prada’s) as we speak. But does she think these boots represent the formal end of high heels, and a corresponding end of sexiness? “No! We will wear stilettos again,” she insists.

Still, Loehnis acknowledges that the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on fashion habits. “There was a real evolution in what women were buying. In the earliest stages, they bought loungewear. Leggings. Then lingerie.” No! Really? “Yes! I think women felt, ‘OK, I may be wearing a tracksuit, but I’m going to wear something lacy under it.’ Then sportswear, then earrings, which I think again was, ‘Yes, I’m in a tracksuit, but I’m going to zhoosh it up a bit.’ Then came tops, which was all about Zoom, of course.” She thinks we’re now buying clothes as a promise to ourselves of better times to come: “Expressions of hope, almost.”

And what of our behaviour? Is the muted sexiness of our attire a reflection of the muted sexiness of our physical interactions? According to one study, the percentage of virgins among 18- to 25-year-olds is higher than at any time on record – and those figures were gathered before coronavirus enforced the idea that to touch a new person is to kill their grandparents in one fell swoop.

The world is less sexually active; less inclined towards casual hook-ups, more towards online conversation – the inevitable consequence of our not being allowed within 1.5m of any stranger. On the plus side, this means some countries have seen a massive reduction in new cases of sexually transmitted diseases. (The ACT reported in May a 52 per cent reduction in the number of people testing positive to gonorrhoea and a 34 per cent decrease in recorded cases of chlamydia.)

Activity on dating apps increased as opportunities for physical interaction diminished. Tinder registered the busiest day in its history on March 29, when there were more than 3 billion “swipes” – indications of interest, or not, of other clients on the world’s most popular dating app. As lockdown progressed, it also reported that messages sent through the app were longer – 30 per cent on average – which suggested that conversations were getting deeper.

As lockdown restrictions lifted and people were allowed tentatively to re-enter the dating arena in the flesh, one sexual health group, the Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK, released official guidelines for engaging in safer sex during a global pandemic. Having established that 84 per cent of us had abstained from sex with people we didn’t live with through lockdown (no mention of how many of us abstained from sex with the people we did live with), it recommended that sex in the post-lockdown era involve no kissing, the wearing of a face mask and, uh, orientations that don’t involve being face-to-face. And because heavy breathing put one at risk of transmission, “larger, more open, ventilated spaces” were recommended as venues.

The concept of “Covid cuffing” has also been floated: the idea that single people, terrified of going back into a second lockdown alone, are spending their time looking for long-term prospects (whom they might “cuff” into relationships), rather than casual hook-ups. In August, when dating app Badoo surveyed 1000 users, 70 per cent said the prospect of locking down alone again had focused their efforts in finding a partner.

But people lie in surveys. Is this truly how we’re behaving in the age of corona? Have we really forsaken sex for intimacy, compatibility and the idea that any port in a lockdown is better than no port at all? “No,” says R, 35, my most single and active of male friends, who, it’s fair to say, made an art form of commitment-phobia in the era of online dating. “It’s different, definitely, but not necessarily less sexy. It’s more relaxed. Dates in parks rather than bars, which are more intimate, less flashy. You’re not trying to prove you have status; you’re not trying to prove you’re cool. You can’t do that in a park.”

But what of the women? “I think people flirt more than before,” says E, a female friend who’s enjoying what she refers to as a “Covid romance” with a man she met while working out in the park. (He asked her for tips on a chest press.) “The lack of social interaction through lockdown means people are more open, more chatty.”

So, Covid hasn’t entirely killed sexiness. At worst, it has accelerated and exacerbated previously existing trends towards sexlessness: the leveraging of Instagram’s fake, posed sexuality as an alternative to facing up to, and embracing, real-life, real-world, real-time sex. At best – can we call it “best”? – could the virus and related crisis have made us more flirtatious in our eagerness to re-engage with humanity? Pass me my mask and my megasoled boots. I’m going out on the pull.

SEX & SEXINESS IN THE TIME OF CORONA

BEFORE: Casual hook-ups and “ghosting” (ending online contact with a paramour suddenly, and without explanation).

NOW: Long perambulations in parks.

BEFORE: Wondering if you’d been stood up in bars.

NOW: Gazing at the “waiting for host to start meeting” message.

BEFORE: Sexting.

NOW: Lengthy exchanges concerning the surprising resilience of the human condition.

BEFORE: Matching your mani to your pedi.

NOW: Matching your mask to your frock.

BEFORE: Aftershave and perfumes.

NOW: The lingering aroma of hand sanitiser.

BEFORE: Chlamydia.

NOW: Loneliness

Topics

coronavirus

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