Bonk by Mary Roach
In her latest book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach explores the scientific study of all things sexual. This may, at first, sound like a researcher’s dream come true, but in the end Roach often finds that sexual research is an under funded area of scientific inquiry—not to mention the fact that sex researchers often have a difficult time gaining the respect of their peers.
In her previous books, Roach has tackled the subjects of cadavers (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers) and the possibility of an afterlife (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife), thus making this her first book about living subjects. Indeed, considering that most living people do have sex, it’s a wonder that the kind of research being done in this field isn’t more mainstream.
The most well known sexual researchers are, undoubtedly, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, though Roach is unable to interview any of them for her book (Kinsey and Masters are, alas, deceased; Johnson declined Roach’s interview requests). Instead, she relies on discussions with more marginal researchers, like Ahmed Shafik, who has mainly studied various bodily reflexes, and Geng-Long Hsu, a Chinese doctor who performs urological surgery on men in order to cure impotence. These researchers and their subjects of study are certainly by turns amusing and grotesque, though they appear to have little practical value for the average man or woman wishing to improve their sex life.
Roach notes that the most popular research into sex and its accompanying problems currently surrounds erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra, which are almost entirely useless to women. In an effort to dig deeper into the subject of female sexual dysfunctions, Roach mentions an unusual variety of tests and researchers, including one that ultimately finds that the smells of cucumber and Good ‘n’ Plenty candy increase blood flow to the vagina (i.e. turn women on). What smells turn women off? Everything from the scent of cologne to cherries to “charcoal barbeque meat.”
Curious indeed!
If you’re interested in sexual research, in scientific inquiry on unusual subjects, or just want to read a book that will fulfil a desire to fill your head with useless facts about sex, this book is a terrific choice. Roach is at times truly hilarious, and her footnotes at the bottom of most pages are always worth reading. Nothing is beyond the scope of her research, and while some might figure a book about sex research could be as dry as the original Masters and Johnson reports, Roach proves this is not at all the case. Definitely worth picking up, especially for the odd looks you’ll garner reading this on public transportation.
