No Sex Please, We're British

We should be proud of being prudes

There’s nothing quite like the silence that follows the appearance of a sex scene on our family’s television screen. They always come out of nowhere. The couple in question are simply holding hands, smiling at each other as they share a bottle of wine over a quiet dinner. A moment later, clothes are being ripped off bodies, the screen becomes a blur of jiggling flesh, and the sound of heavy breathing takes over the living room. My family’s reaction is always the same. My father loudly clears his throat, having found something of inordinate interest in last week’s paper, my sister and I grimace in a moment of shared panic, and my mother, worst of the lot, scrambles for the remote in the hopes of (at best) turning it down, (at worst) flicking onto another channel.

For once, this seems to be a problem that extends beyond my family. Friends, cousins, neighbours report symptoms of the same crippling awkwardness whenever a moment of intimacy flashes up on their television. Some can trace the origins of childhood trauma back to the evening they stayed up past bedtime and Naked Attraction appeared on the screen before anyone could stop it. A breast here, a buttock there, and Britain is a nation in tatters. How intimacy became our collective Achilles’ heel I cannot say, but four years at a multinational university have taught me this is a distinctively British problem.

Take group changing as an example. Being English, I change in an intensely priggish way, looking around me carefully to see if I’m out of eyeline, scuttling into a corner in the hopes of retaining my modesty. In my second year, I even had a wardrobe that doubled up as a changing cupboard, my own private sanctuary if the room got too crowded. The contrast with my two European housemates was stark. The notion of hiding didn’t even cross their minds, and body parts were displayed in a blaze of Continental confidence that left me and fellow Brits stunned. They reported that this was nothing out of the ordinary. All their friends, even friends’ parents, had seen them naked at one time or another. In summer, skinny-dipping was a must, and if someone happened to film the diving, all the better. I was presented with a video of four German bottoms flinging themselves into a swimming pool and was left speechless. In no situation could I see the moment recreated with the friends I had grown up with.

The problem extends to intimacy. Inside the bedroom, I suppose, we are no different to our Continental neighbours, but transpose romance to the outside world and you are faced with a fear that borders on the phobic. Public displays of affection, unless performed when inordinately inebriated and/or at the back of a sweaty club somewhere, are about as un-British as you can get. A couple holding hands, perhaps pecking each other on the cheek, is tolerable, but one step into the realm of snogging and the Brit is out of there. Yet in the melting-pot world of St Andrews, the same rules don’t always apply. More times than I would care to say have I stumbled across an American couple canoodling in a corner of the library and had to excuse myself. The revulsion I feel is so visceral I hardly even notice its arrival. Afflicted by my British heritage, prudishness appears to be written in my DNA.

A recent trip to sex-positive Berlin opened my eyes to a whole new world. There, couples love and lust after one another with brazen confidence, so lost in each other they can’t see anyone else. Sometimes, for me at least, it is too much. Fondling under any form should always be kept in the bedroom. But perhaps we Brits go too far in our rejection of intimacy, robbing ourselves of the joy that should come with being in love, or even just that of being naked. No, spooning in public is not for me, and there is almost no situation in which I could face West Sands in my birthday suit, but there is nothing wrong with embracing a smidgeon of Continental confidence. In the spirit of sex positivity, perhaps leave Naked Attraction on next time it pollutes your screens. Between the fits of tortured giggles, you might just find yourself surprised.

Illustration by Darcey Bateson