Danger Danger Will Robinson - there's a full on RANT heading our way!

Geez it's disheartening to be a reader sometimes. According to the enlightened, cashed-up, metrosexual, pro-feminist, militantly male readers of FHM magazine, a third of them want to marry a virgin. Yes, when they grow up. *Sigh*

Caroline Marcus of the Age writes that "Of 57,000 men polled by men's magazine FHM, 28 per cent hoped to marry a virgin, while 41 per cent wanted a bride who had five partners or fewer, and just 5 per cent wanted a bride who had slept with more than 15 men.

The survey, which ran on the magazine's website for two weeks last month, attracted mostly men in their late 20s, who had jobs and were university educated."

Hmm, would these survey sods be smug little Generation Y Gits who still live with their parents, don't pay any rent, don't help out around the house and still have their meals cooked and washing and ironing done by Mummy perchance?

Tertiary educated? What did they study at uni - abstinence and chastity? No, wait - that's what the girls should have been studying, according to these unworldly wankers. But hey, aren't these the same girls that they would have pursued, caught and slept with (albeit in a beer bong fug) at uni? The same ladies that, several years later, these boofhead blokes assume are not only also grown up, educated professionals but have somehow magically converted back to being virgins?

Marcus goes on to point out - but hey, let's face it, any FHM readers would have turned the page after the first paragraph in order to read their horoscope and see if they understand the day's Calvin and Hobbes comic by now - that findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Health and Relationships show that only 11% of women and 5% of men in the FHM readers' age group had slept with just the one partner.

Instead, the Australian Longitudinal Study of Health and Relationships shows that Aussie blokes had an average of 9.5 bedtime buddies (the 0.5 was a fellow FHM reader during their 'experimental' phase) and women had 4.7 (the 0.7 was an FHM reader after staying the night and holding a semi-intelligible conversation with their random root).

So whilst a lot of females might be flocking to the cinemas to see an increasingly haggard Carrie and Co get it on with shoes and shags in 'Sex and the City', their blokes are NOT going to actively pursue such gals for longer term activities such as marriage, motherhood or weekend trips to Bunnings.

It also seems to say:

a) some men might lie a teensy weensy little bit about how many women they've bumped uglies with; or

b) there's a much smaller pool of women who shag a great deal more blokes than they're prepared to admit to in surveys; or

c) a bit of both?

Why the emphasis on virginity? Do you buy a house purely from the photo in the Real Estate section? A car from seeing it flash by for five seconds on TV? And what if you survive the courtship, spend your parents' live savings for the bloated wedding reception and find that you're both duds under the doona? Whatever happened to 'try before you buy' and 'practice makes perfect'.

I look to my own experience for evidence. Even after a relatively low-key wedding in my parents back yard, no speeches, $12 worth of material for my outfit and 60 guests, we were so exhausted by the end of the night that our ~ahem~ 'sexual celebration' was a fairly perfunctory effort done only out of duty. It certainly wasn't the most memorable, erm, session, and to think it might be the first foray into fooling around for someone is so very sad, tragic and desperately wrong.

But what do I know - half of marriages end in divorce anyway.

So girls - the first question you ask a bloke who catches your eye is not 'What's your name' or 'What do you do for a crust', it's 'What magazines do you read?'. If 'FHM' is the answer, fling your alcopop into his eyes, angrily thrust the empty into his crotch and get the hell out of there.

End of rant. Off to find Love Chunks and give him a big, grateful and heartfelt hug.