In the fabulous novel ‘The Slap’ a husband and wife get turned on while cleaning up after a dinner party. He lifts her onto the dishwasher and they have throbbing, swishy sounding sex. The scene earned Christos Tsiolkas a nomination for the ’Bad Sex in Literature Awards’ and turned me on about as much as scraping bits of food off plates.
Let’s face it, for most of us, dishwashers are not sexy. Or washing machines, vacuum cleaners, brooms, dusters or irons. But the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg seems to think they could be.
In her hugely influential book ‘Lean’ Sandberg encouraged women to lean in at work. Now she’s tempting blokes to lean in at home by suggesting they may get lucky if they do so. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Sandberg talks ‘choreplay’ – the theory that a woman will be turned on by seeing her partner doing chores.
Sandberg quoted a study that found couples that share chores more equally, have more sex. She ignored research in the same journal that begged to differ. The only thing less sexy than housework is academic research but suffice to say, the evidence is highly debatable.
It’s blindingly obvious to all women that resentment ruins desire faster than clothes dry in a hot wind. Blokes who do bugger all can hardly expect a naked wife to tickle them with a feather duster. But while there’s no doubt that not sharing the load dampens desire, that doesn't necessarily mean a bloke in an apron is a turn on.
He may actually be a turn-off.
Sexual Anthropologist Bella Ellwood-Clayton wrote ‘Sex Drive – In Pursuit of Female Desire’ and says the greatest enemies of the erotic are familiarity, monotony, multitasking and "the never-ending list in our head". She told our ‘Debrief Daily’ podcast on ‘Libido’ (click here to listen to it) that when we have to constantly negotiate childcare, cooking, cleaning and life it’s easy for couples to drift into becoming flat mates rather than lovers
