The vernacular, booty call, might carry negative connotations for some people. That’s because it refers to a social taboo: the soliciting of casual, non-committal, recreational sex. But unlike other kinds of short-term sexual relationships such as “one-night stands”, “hook-ups” and “chance encounters”, booty calls often involve a prior acquaintance between parties.
In general, booty calls are invitations extended to non-long-term partners with an intention, expressed explicitly or implicitly, to engage in sex. Past studies have shown that approximately two-thirds of casual sex occurred among ‘friends’. But for what reasons might people opt for sex with known acquaintances, as opposed to one-night stands with strangers?
And some considerations will inadvertently be called into question: Should there be any form of emotional investment? Should there be continuance or intimacy if the basis of that relationship is non-committal sex?
Norman Li, a psychology professor at Singapore Management University’s (SMU) School of Social Sciences, thinks that while much has been written about one-night stands and monogamous marriages, not much is known about the booty call; a phenomenon which, in his view, is a middle-ground between purely short-term and long-term romantic and sexual relationships.
In the paper, “The ‘booty call’: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies”, Li, together with co-authors Peter K. Jonason from New Mexico State University and Margaret J. Cason from the University of Texas, Austin, examined what drives people to make, accept or reject booty calls.
Mars and Venuses on Earth
Men and women have different priorities and exercise different strategies when it comes to romantic relationships. Access to sex is high on the list for most men. For most women, it is a committed relationship. A study conducted at a US-based university campus in 1989 supports this; that when approached for casual sex by a random stranger, 75% of men said yes whereas all of the women said no.
From a biological perspective, women prefer committed, long-term mates because they are “physiologically required to make a substantial prenatal and postnatal investment to offspring”. They will have more to lose if their partners do not back their ‘investments’, so to speak. Men, on the other hand, need only to put in the amount of energy it takes to have sex. What's more, men will benefit, reproductively, if they mate with more than one woman.
Biological design, of course, does not always translate into social realities.
Man or woman, humans desire an arrangement where they can derive maximum benefits at the lowest possible cost – in life and in matters related to sex. And where sex and romance are concerned, a compromise between both male and female ideals could be the booty call, which consists of sex in the short-term, desired by men, and familiarity, with the potential of long-term commitment, desired by women.
“For men… a booty call offers sexual access at a low, although not minimal, cost. For women, a booty call relationship offers more affection than a one-night stand,” the authors wrote. At the same time, an existing platonic friendship that turns sexual may have a greater chance of becoming a long-term relationship.
Research also suggests that women who are open to uncommitted short-term sexual relationships tend to attract better-looking men – and good looks suggest good genes. As such, the authors believe that women may engage in booty-call relationships so as to test and enter into a long-term relationship with an attractive man.
Why take booty calls?
Looks matter to both men and women when it comes to casual sex. Several studies have inferred this, so the authors hypothesised that physical attraction would feature as the single-most important factor in the success or failure of a booty call. Their study, conducted with 75 US-based participants with a mean age of around 21 years, confirmed this. Physical attractiveness was the top reason that both men and women gave for accepting or rejecting booty calls.
The study also found that prior friendship provided people with an impetus to accept booty calls, not reject them. Men were more likely to accept booty calls because men, in general, want access to sex. Women were more likely to accept a booty call if they felt compatible with the man. They would reject booty calls if it made them feel ‘trashy’ or if the other person was arrogant and called only for sex.
The authors explained: “For both genders, physical attractiveness is a key trait in the acceptance and rejection of booty calls. However, the genders differed in that men tended to value items related to sexual access more than women did, whereas women were more likely than men to accept a booty call because of a past friendship, compatibility, and personality… Thus results supported our predictions that, although booty calls are largely a sexual relationship, men may focus on the sexual nature whereas women may emphasise long-term relationship aspects.”
Participants were also asked to rate possible reasons (based on how they felt and how they believed their partners felt) why their booty calls might not have transitioned into long-term relationships. What the authors found was men tended to reason that they were only looking for sex. Women, on the other hand, reasoned that booty calls did not become long-term relationships because the men involved did not want a long-term relationship.
The authors noted that men seemed to hold the upper hand on whether or not the booty-call could be converted into a long-term relationship. Women might want a long-term relationship with their booty-call counterpart, but as the findings suggest, this desire rests upon the willingness of the men to allow such a progression.
Placing the booty call
Findings from the study confirmed for the researchers that booty calls represent a compromise between the ideals of both men and women. For men, it provides short-term access to sex; and though they might be expected to make some investment in such a relationship, the amount invested would be considerably lower than that of a long-term relationship. For women, booty-call relationships offer more intimacy and affection, compared to one-night stands. More importantly, it allows a means to which women may seek and test the potential of a long-term relationship with an attractive man. Two specific findings suggest this.
One, women reported that booty-call relationships did not become long-term relationships because they thought the other party did not want such a progression - not because they did not want it. Two, women stated that they would reject booty calls if they felt that the other person had an incompatible personality. Yet, a complementary personality did not, in itself, provide enough reason for women to accept a booty call.
“These results may reflect an asymmetry between the benefit of a good personality and the cost of a bad one for such relationships,” the authors contended. But all in all, due to a generally vague understanding of such relationship dynamics, booty calls have been difficult to place within conventional socio-sexuality frameworks. One thing is for sure: people overlook a whole range of human sexuality strategies when they only see relationships in absolutes – short-term versus long-term.
While the booty-call resists easy categorisation, the authors proposed that booty calls may fall somewhere between the ‘low long-term mating’ and ‘high short-term mating’ components of romantic and sexuality interests (depicted in the figure below). Further research will be required to verify the two-dimensional representation.
From booty calls to booty text-messaging
Are booty calls initiated via phone calls - as the term suggests? 61 US-based participants with a mean age of 19.6 years were surveyed, and 64% reported a booty call that resulted in sexual activity. As the researchers had predicted, phone calls were the most common means of initiating a booty call.
“These results differentiate booty calls from other sexual relationships whereby acquaintances make arrangements in person,” the authors wrote. They pointed out that the communication medium served as a differentiating factor because the technology involved required parties to exercise forethought whilst arranging for sex. But this is subject to change as communication technologies evolve.
The authors believe that digital communication technologies will prevail over phone calls eventually, as applications become more user-friendly. A more detached and less intimate form of communication may emerge, based on the way in which people communicate via mobile phone text messaging. “Instead of having a direct conversation and actually having to get rejected or to reject someone who calls for a booty call, individuals can opt to protect their self-esteem and the self-esteem of others by using text-based communication.”
And as technologies enable users to send text messages to several parties with just a few simple clicks, people will be empowered to make multiple booty calls at one go, thereby increasing their chances of success. The popularity of social networking tools and instant messaging clients will create new avenues for creative mating strategies too, as men and women continue in their quest to negotiate between sex and romance… or perhaps a new compromise.