Interesting piece in the Times about the first research study conducted about the friends with benefits phenomenon. Of 125 young adults, 60 percent reported having been involved in a FWB situation:

One-tenth of these relationships went on to become full-scale romances, the study found. About a third stopped the sex and remained friends, and one in four eventually broke it off — the sex and the friendship. The rest continued as friends-with-benefits relationships.

Further it found that the common thread in these arrangements was a fear of emotional attachment:

The relationships tend to have little romantic passion, but stir the same fears that stalk lovers: namely, that one person will fall harder than the other.

Paradoxically, and perhaps predictably, the study suggests, these physical friendships often occlude one of the emotional arteries of real friendship, openness. Friends who could once talk about anything now have an unstated taboo topic — the relationship itself. In every conversation, there is innuendo; in every room, an elephant.

Pretty spot-on, in my opinion.

During my time at Harvard, I’ve had six friends with benefits. I’m currently friends with five of them and still hooking up with two as of last week (though I’m determined to become “just friends” with one of the two and probably should break it off with the other one too). It can be on-and-off with most of the guys, and I’ve definitely revisited some old flames in moments of weakness/drunkenness. In fact, I recently re-hooked up with my first ever friend with benefits (from high school) after a five-year gap. We’ve been friends for so long after our initial experience that I’d almost forgotten about it altogether. Kissing him again was incredibly strange.

Personally, I don’t think that emotional elephant exists in my relationships, at least not any longer since I’m in the unique position of overanalyzing all components of my interactions with men in the process of writing about them. That makes it difficult to ignore the non-physical aspects of relationships and means I’m much more honest to myself about what I expect from certain people. Of the six FWB, I’ve had romantic feelings for 1.5 (the half being a guy I wasn’t entirely sure about) which is pretty safe if you ask me. As far as openness goes nowadays, I have no doubt my friends with benefits know where we stand. This article actually comes at a really opportune time since I’m feeling an ironic combination of commitmentphobic and hormonal. Time for a new pal?

So any thoughts on the study and the long-term feasibility of these relationships? Sixty percent of you guys should have interesting FWB stories of your own to share …

It’s official: there is absolutely nothing redeeming about Harvard’s social scene any longer. As of this morning, the Undergraduate Council’s Party Grant program has been eliminated amid concerns of underage drinking, alcohol abuse, and “overcrowding”. The most WTF part of the press release:

It is quite apparent that the UC Party Grant program, in practice, has funded parties where the focus is on drinking. Alcohol abuse is the number one student health concern at Harvard as it is on other campuses nationwide. We have taken many proactive steps to mitigate the harm that results from high-risk drinking and have also tried to develop spaces on campus where students can socialize with alcohol safely and legally. The UC Party Grant program is at odds with the message that students, parents, faculty and administrative leaders of this community should be sending about responsible and safe alcohol use…

… The common spaces of the House are better suited for hosting parties with guests, and in these settings Beverage Authorization Teams can be used to make sure that only those over 21 may be served alcohol.

Poor freshmen. The press release goes on to talk about the UC doing things for the “greater good” instead of just the burgeoning drunkards etc. Maybe it’s just me, but I actually think depression is going to skyrocket on this campus if the booze is taken away. There is very little to look forward to as it is. Without the occasional tipsy end-of-week party, what’s left? And all the emphasis on drinking age? Um, roughly 1/10th of the kids here come from places where they’d legally be allowed to drink anyway.

This is basically ridiculous. As if the higher ups who made this decision didn’t do the free love/Studio 54 thing back in the day. It’s not like the party grants were funding our experiments with shrooms and LSD.

Thank god I have a fake I.D.

I don’t know if there is a happy medium between meritocracy and diversity, but I hope that this is indicative of its possibility. I’m a pretty staunch proponent of affirmative action, especially when it comes to race (and to a lesser extent socioeconomic status, which is great for low-income kids but not fantastic in terms of racial diversity). Surprisingly, my opinion on the subject is more controversial than my support of mandatory HPV vaccination or same-sex marriage, and I find myself having to justify this viewpoint all the time, even at Harvard and even to my liberal-minded friends. As an Asian American, it seems particularly contradictory for me to take on this view since it’s against my self-interest. So here’s an explanation:

When I started high school, my mother had a plan in mind. That plan involved straight As, perfect SAT scores, and eventual admission to UC Berkeley. Surprisingly, I managed to deliver on the latter without either of the former. But while scores of second-generation Chinese teenagers would’ve killed for my position, I would’ve killed my mother if she forced me to go there. Berkeley’s population, with 42% of students identifying as Asian, was too similar to my alma mater where the student body was 48% Asian. I already lived in a city with the highest proportion of Asian residents in the country. The prospect of spending college in the same minority-majority illusion of my first 18 years was hardly appealing.

Besides, while the children of my mother’s friends were mostly science or engineering majors (stereotypical but reality), I aspired to freelance for New York magazine, toyed with the idea of a sex column, and dreamed of attending journalism school. I wanted to write for the American public — and the public was white, black, and brown, in addition to yellow. And so Northwestern was in, Berkeley was out.

But I never made it to either. Though I initially gave Cal a chance, our love affair (some would call it an arranged marriage) ended abruptly when my 14-year-old self first saw the campus during a February downpour and decided that flipping burgers at In-N-Out would be preferable to the gray prison before me. Four years later, I’d be at another prison — not Northwestern but one that was brick-fortified and ivy-covered. Harvard, however, was redeemed by an inmate population as colorful in personality as it was in skin tone. Best of all, my mother couldn’t argue. I got a plane ticket out of California; she got the pride that came with Crimson parentage.

Nowadays, there are a lot of things I miss about the San Gabriel Valley, where signs came in both English and Chinese (not that I could read the latter) and dim sum was just a short drive or walk away. Boston couldn’t be more different from home. Besides Sunday morning conversations with my mother, I hear Cantonese maybe twice a year here — each time because I’ve made a rare venture into Chinatown. With only one other undergrad hailing from Monterey Park, California — a good friend of mine, thankfully — I find myself in the new position of a minority. But I don’t mind. At Harvard, just about everyone is a minority in some respect.

As much as I complain about how unhappy Harvard makes me sometimes, I question if I’d be more satisfied at a place like Cal. Berkeley is a fantastic academic institution — one I’d recommend to just about anyone, but it’s not the place I’d go to meet people different from myself and it’s not somewhere I’d like to see my little sister at, if only because I think she needs to escape the same high school bubble I was caught in. Admittedly, Harvard is in the enviable position of having an abundance of applicants who are both diverse and equally qualified. Not every school is quite so fortunate, but that’s not an excuse as to why diversity should be lacking, especially since the initiatives at UCLA seem to bring about very tangible results.

Maybe I underestimate how much I would’ve ventured away from the familiar had I gone to Berkeley. Still, for all the autonomy I may have over who I become acquainted with, I doubt that my groups of friends there would be as diverse as they are at Harvard. And though I don’t value my relationship with JB because he’s gay any more than I love CK because she’s black, race — like everything else — still matters. I am positive that my relationships with people of different colors, sexual orientations, religions, etc. shape and influence my world view for the better and that I will be better off when I graduate for having known and loved people who are not mostly white, Asian, or Californian. Perhaps I would’ve met some of them (or their equivalents) anyway, but I know that at Berkeley, it would’ve been much harder to forge a bond with a tongue-ringed five-foot wonder with a Southern drawl and skin several shades darker than my own. And wouldn’t that have been a shame?

Great news, blogosphere! Yours truly has been nominated for Best Sex Blog, Best Female Sex Blog, and Sexiest Sex Blogger in the 2006 Sex Blog Awards. Much thanks to my readers for rocking the vote! Who knew people actually listened to my self-promotional bullshit?

Winner of Best Sex Blog appears on Playboy Radio so click here to vote on the finalists. (Not that my “ingratiating” voice hasn’t already graced the airwaves…)

To showcase my erotica chops, here’s a “Best of Sex” on Sex and the Ivy:
Lead Me Not To Temptation
Giving It My All
Saying Yes Was Never So Easy

To showcase my assets, this picture has been taken just for the occasion — must prove that I’m not hideous after all. Do you see the amount of Crimson in this photo? I’m so full of school spirit I could burst.

I think Playboy recognition of the Ivy League is long overdue. No offense to the Rhodes Scholars out there, but isn’t it time one of us won an award that’s actually interesting? And wouldn’t a sex blogger be the best ambassador of Harvard?