A new study reveals that women's sexual preferences tend to be a grey area.
Lifestyle website Yourtango.com reports that researchers at Boise State University in the US have found that in a group of heterosexual women, 60 percent were sexually attracted to other women, 45 percent had kissed a woman, and 50 percent had fantasies about the same sex.
“Women are encouraged to be emotionally close to each other,” Boise psychology professor Elizabeth Morgan told Yourtango.
“That provides an opportunity for intimacy and romantic feelings to develop.”
When otherwise heterosexual women fall for other women, emotional connection is usually at the core, says Yourtango writer Jessia Cruel.
Lisa Diamond from the University of Utah told the site that many people, with the right person or under the right circumstances, are willing to consider being in a relationship with someone who falls outside their usual “type”.
Does that make them bisexual? Not exactly.
“You can still be heterosexual and have interests, experiences or fantasies with the same sex,” says Morgan.
In addition, sexuality gets more, not less, fluid as time goes on. In a study conducted by Diamond, the older a woman was, the more likely she was to choose “unlabeled” as her sexuality.
“We have this idea that sexuality gets clearer and more defined as time goes on,” Diamond told Yourtango. “We consider that a sign of maturity to figure out who you are. I've seen it's really the opposite.”
Neuroscientist Ogi Ogas analysed more than a billion web searches, half a billion search histories and millions of erotic websites and e-books, and found that women are just as likely to search for “sexy pictures of Ryan Gosling” as “sexy pictures of Jessica Alba.”
“Women in the media are often sexualised and women constantly get the message that appearance should be important to them, so they're used to viewing women in a sexualised way,” says Morgan. - IOL