The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey, part two

a continuing report on the state of the sexual union

In January 1982, Playboy published a 133-item questionnaire that asked its readers to report on their sexual habits and attitudes. More than 100,000 people responded. We tabulated the results and ran an introductory article about them in our January 1983 issue. The news was mostly good, and it was picked up by the national press. Our findings suggest that America is no longer in a sexual revolution but a sexual evolution. Changes that began in the Sixties and Seventies have reached fruition in the Eighties. People are doing more of everything and having a better time. In particular, men and women appear to have become sexual equals, partners in pleasure. Women have learned from men that sex can be an adventure; men have learned from women that intimacy can be an adventure. Most of the people who answered our questionnaire are in relationships. One in 20 lives with someone, eight in 20 are married and the rest are unattached. The majority of single people who've never been married see one person more than others or have a steady partner. Twenty-three percent of the single men and 11 percent of the single women are dating around.

Many people have charged that the sexual revolution's most important product is the one-night stand--that it has unleashed a plague of casual sex on the land. When we look at the figures, it becomes clear that the best sex exists in relationships. We asked the computer to break down our findings in terms of marital status. We wanted to know how the married differ from singles, how cohabitants differ from the divorced. The results were unexpected. Marital status is a major factor in determining sexual behavior.

One of the entrenched stereotypes in our culture is the notion that singles live a catch-as-catch-can sexual life. For all the glamor of the chase, there is the harsh fact of rejection. Most previous sex surveys treated the singles lifestyle as a passing phase. Kinsey, Hunt and Redbook labeled it premarital sex--the phrase alone is enough to reveal the bias. One of the first questions we asked happens to be one of the most frequently asked questions in the street: "Getting any?" The answers are surprising. It seems that among our readers, single people engage in as much sex as married people. And couples who cohabit--who remain legally single while acting married--have it best of all. Indeed, when we look at the sexual behavior of cohabitants, we discover that they lead very interesting lives: They have intercourse with greater frequency and greater satisfaction than married or single readers. They are in a class of their own.

A small but significant number of the people who answered our survey are divorced or remarried. (We included the answers of widows and widowers with those of the divorced.) We discovered that the people who have been in and out of marriage possess great sexual energy. They are not sexual failures, doomed to repeat past mistakes. In many cases, they seem to have come out ahead.

The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey presented us with an opportunity to assess sex in the real world. Much of what we know about sex has come from academia. College psychologists usually study the sex lives of college students. Our readers are older. The average age of the single males in our study is 25; the single females' average age is 24. The average age of our married respondents is 34 for husbands and 29 for wives. Our divorced readers are 36 and 32, remarrieds 39 and 31, cohabitants 29 and 26. These are the veterans of the sexual revolution. Participants, not observers.

How much is Enough?

Intercourse is still the standard by which we measure the quality of our sex lives. The men and women who answered our survey have a clear notion of how much sex is enough. Once a week is the cutting point. The majority of men and women who say they make love at least once a week say that they are satisfied with their sex lives. However, as soon as the level drops below once a week, they express discontent. Seventy-five percent of the men who make love once a week say that while they are satisfied with their over-all sex life, they want more intercourse. Sixty-four percent of the women at that frequency say they want more. (In contrast, only 24 percent of the men who make love four or five times a week want more intercourse. A mere 16 percent of the women who make love that often want more intercourse.) Almost every sex survey since Kinsey's has commented on the relationship between satisfaction and frequency of lovemaking. It is probably not a cause-and-effect relationship--more likely a circular one. The authors of the Redbook survey noted that "the more you like it, the more often you do it, and the more often you do it, the better it is." Given that standard, how do our readers stack up?

Let's re-examine those figures. The cohabitants are the most satisfied with the amount of intercourse they are getting. (Little wonder; compared with the other groups, they are rutting like weasels. Don't those people have jobs?) In the other groups, we notice one striking fact: No matter how much they are getting, men in any category are less satisfied than the women in the same category. For them, there is no such thing as enough. They want more intercourse, and they are more likely than women to do something about it: Men are still the initiators of sex--72 percent say that they always or usually start the ball rolling. While women have become more open about their desire, they still lag behind men. Only 19 percent say they usually initiate sex. The vast majority--66 percent--say they initiate sex "sometimes."

Go back to the chart for a moment. At first glance, it would seem that singles are second-class citizens when it comes to sex. They are getting less than any other group. However, the term single encompasses a variety of situations. There are singles dating around, singles dating one person more than others and singles who are going steady or are engaged. When we break down the figures for frequency of intercourse by social situation, an interesting pattern emerges.

Those figures show that singles in a relationship are twice as likely to have intercourse twice a week or more as singles dating around. They are more active than the first-time marrieds but not as active as the cohabitants--the people who are legally single but who live together. When we moved to question 16--the frequency of intercourse per night--we discovered some startling differences among the groups that suggest that while the frequency-per-week figures may resemble one another, they tell only half the story.

As you can see, the vast majority of people who go to bed with the same partner each night do it once a night. Singles and divorced people, in contrast, are inclined to fuck their brains out. Why? One obvious reason is that variety is a powerful aphrodisiac, while familiarity breeds contentment. If you think your partner is going to be there forever, you don't seize every opportunity. The unattached have a different approach to sex. Singles are more likely--when they do have it--to have sex repeatedly in the same night. For single people (including the divorced), it's a safe guess that sex is more attached to performance than it is for married folk. Nothing is taken for granted. There is a vague, unspoken notion that if the sex is not terrific, they may never see their partner again.

The Elusive Orgasm

We know how often our readers do it; do we know how well? For years, we've been told that friends make better lovers. The (continued on page 178) Sex Survey (continued from page 92) Kinsey, Hunt, Redbook and a host of other studies have suggested that women become more orgasmic with a partner they trust, that marriage improves a woman's sexual response. If two people know each other, they can coordinate their moves, read each other's signals, bring each other to mutual satisfaction. In contrast, strangers are the proverbial ships that pass in the night--it's a matter of luck if his moves fit her fantasies, and vice versa. When it works, it comes as such a surprise that first-time lovers are inclined to view it as true love. Most of the literature from the feminist movement has suggested that the single woman is a victim of the sexual revolution--she takes chances against stacked odds. The man is always satisfied, leaving her high and dry. If you believe Shere Hite, women never reach orgasm until they've sent their lovers to sexual obedience school.

Our findings are much more upbeat. Forty percent of the women responding to our questionnaire (regardless of marital status) said that they have orgasm every or almost every time they have intercourse. An additional 38 percent say they have orgasm sometimes during intercourse. That is good news. It suggests that sex doesn't get better after the wedding, and it doesn't get worse after the divorce, and it's pretty terrific if you're just living together or between relationships. The vast majority, regardless of social situation, seem to be able to make sex work. A wedding ring is not a sexual aid.

If the women in each social category are essentially orgasmic during intercourse, are there any other differences? When we asked how long it took to reach orgasm, we obtained some interesting figures. First-time husbands and wives take an average of nine and 11 minutes, respectively, to reach orgasm; single men and women take an average of 11 minutes; and divorced men and women average 12 and 13 minutes. Male cohabitants say that it takes them ten minutes to reach climax; female cohabitants take an average of 13 minutes. What do we make of those figures? Beyond the fact that they show basic differences among groups, they show the progress of the sexual revolution/evolution. Kinsey estimated that three fourths of all men ejaculated within two minutes. Today, no matter what your marital status, you take longer. Our findings verify something Morton Hunt discovered in 1972: "Nowadays the goal is as much to maximize the enjoyment of the whole act as to reach its peak moment. Prolonging the act is no longer an act of altruism, done only for the female's sake, but something done for the sake of both partners."

Before we assess differences among groups, we have to assess over-all progress. The point of the sexual revolution was to improve the quality of sex for all groups. Sex in marriage has improved noticeably. Sex among other groups suggests that the unmarried prolong the performance to "maximize the enjoyment of the whole act." We are doing much better than our forefathers.

Oral Sex

In part one of our report on The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey, we said that oral sex has become an accepted, if not an essential part of our readers' way of sex. When we asked our readers how they would change their sex lives, almost two thirds of the men said they could always go for more oral sex. The figures for women are significantly lower--only slightly more than a third say they desire more oral sex.

Intercourse is the meat and potatoes of romance: Without it, you don't have a relationship. And oral sex is the spice. Perhaps no other sexual activity invokes such expectations. It is naughty; it is nice. Some people feel that it is the most intimate sex act. In our first report, we noted that almost everyone has tried it. About a third of our readers say that oral sex provides their most intense orgasm. It allows the most direct stimulation, and many people find the simpler roles during oral sex to be liberating--each partner gets to be giver or receiver or, when the mood strikes, both. Is it better to give than to receive? Consider the chart above, measuring the people who perform or receive oral sex every time or almost every time they have sex.

The sexual revolution changed marital sex significantly. The married people we heard from do more of everything than the married people in the Kinsey, Hunt or Redbook survey. Kinsey reported that approximately half of the married people he surveyed had tried oral sex at least once in their lives. Today, almost everyone has tried it and about half do it almost every time. More than 90 percent of all the husbands say they enjoy giving oral sex and between 72 and 81 percent of all the wives say they do. That is important news: Some people have been reluctant to experience fellatio or cunnilingus out of the mistaken notion that their partners find it distasteful. Others limit the activity, sensing that their partners perform out of duty. Our findings suggest that, to the contrary, the majority of lovers do it for the joy of it. Our unattached lovers go down on each other with reckless abandon, but the marrieds are not far behind.

Masturbation

In part one of this report, we found that an overwhelming majority of our respondents engage in masturbation, and they do so with a greater frequency than the people Kinsey and Hunt studied. The majority no longer feel guilty about pleasuring themselves. In no other area has the change been so great. In three decades, we've gone from viewing masturbation as neurotic to viewing it as natural. When we studied this behavior in terms of marital status, we came up with some interesting figures.

People who are single (and who have never been married) masturbate more than people who have a permanent companion. One could conclude that the proximity of a partner inhibits one from masturbating. More to the point, if you are having intercourse on a regular basis, you are less likely to masturbate.

When we compare figures for frequency of masturbation with figures for frequency of intercourse, we discover a predictable relationship. Given a choice, the people who have regular sex partners will opt for intercourse. (For example, the cohabitants, the group with the highest frequency of intercourse, have one of the lower frequencies of masturbation.) The unattached male respondents (singles and divorced) masturbate as much as or more than they make love. The more people say they masturbate, the less likely they are to say they're satisfied with their sex lives.

Although the questionnaire did not ask about it, it is our experience that both men and women tend to view male sexual desire as a limited resource. Women who discover that their husbands masturbate in private view it as a form of cheating. They ask themselves, Why does he do this? Haven't I satisfied him? Perhaps they feel that masturbation somehow steals sexual energy that should be reserved for sex with them. The amount of masturbatory activity--even among married people--suggests that it occupies a new place in the erotic equation. We have a sexual life that we exercise with another person and we have one that we exercise in private. It is a separate activity or a possible turn-on when done in the presence of a partner.

Who Gets Married?

In Sexual Behavior in the 1970s, Morton Hunt tried to put into perspective the massive changes of the sexual revolution. He did not predict a society based on casual sex. He tried to reassure America that although the statistics showed that everyone was doing more of everything, most people still wanted to get married.

When we released the first findings of The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey, we were asked repeatedly, What did the statistics bode for the future of marriage? It's a good question. Given the divorce statistics (half of recently contracted marriages will end in divorce) and the statistics for extramarital sex (young married women are fooling around at a mind-boggling rate), one has to ask, Why would anyone get married? We looked at the statistics and tried to figure out who is getting married.

Our findings suggest that the people who marry for the first time are somewhat more conservative than those who adopt other lifestyles. They are the last to lose their virginity. They are more likely to have lost it in a serious relationship. They have had the least sexual experience. Nearly half of the married men and women say they've had five or fewer partners. For them, their activity as singles has been premarital.

Can those figures be explained by the effect age may have on sexual experience? Not readily. Our first-time-married respondents have higher average ages than the single ones but fewer sexual partners.

First-time-married women are the least likely to have asked a stranger to have sex; people in first marriages are the least likely to have experienced anal stimulation (manual or oral) other than intercourse, the least likely to have used drugs to enhance sex and to have played a passive role in their partner's fantasies.

Is Sex better the second time Around?

As we study the computer print-outs, an interesting pattern emerges. In some categories, single and married readers form one group, divorced and remarried readers a second. Leaving the cohabitants aside for the moment, we began to call the two other groups the first-timers and the veterans. On question after question, the readers who have never been married, or who are married for the first time, say they do less than readers who have concluded a first marriage or are presently in a second one. Our findings suggest that people who remarry are more adventurous the second time around. For example:

• Fewer than half of the single and married males who answered our questionnaire have ever engaged in anal intercourse. More than 60 percent of the divorced and remarried males have done so. The same pattern holds for women: Sixty percent of the single and married females have engaged in anal intercourse, compared with 70 percent of the divorced and remarried females.

• Approximately one third of the single and married men have had sex in public, compared with almost half of the divorced and remarried men. (The same pattern holds for women.)

• First-timers are less likely to have engaged in group sex. They are also slightly less likely to use sex devices.

How do we explain those differences? Perhaps people who are dating and people who are married for the first time hang on to idealized pictures of their partner or idealized pictures of what a relationship should be. Men may have inhibited notions of what a wife can be asked to do--it's why the French have mistresses. Women can carry their own inhibiting notions as well. People who have had a relationship dissolve are less likely to fall prey to the same illusions. They are more apt to consider what went wrong the first time and how it could be better. We should note that the cohabitants--the couples who have refused for one reason or another to seal their relationships with a marriage license--are also more active than the remarrieds or the first-timers on most measures. They keep each other on their toes.

Finally, when we asked our respondents to rank the elements most important to their personal happiness, love and family life are still at the top of the list for everyone except divorced men, who rank sex as more important than family life. (Sex comes up as a middle choice for everyone else.) Women continue to rank love higher than men, even though we have ample proof that they have learned about all the pleasures of recreational sex. Friendship came up strong as a requirement for personal happiness with singles, divorced and cohabitants of both sexes. Why? Because friends replace family for those without legal ties, and fluid relationships help the legally unattached not to overinvest in any one relationship. So, while healthy sexuality thrives, the traditional values--love, family life and friendship--are reaffirmed by our respondents.

Extramarital Sex

Coping with infidelity is the unfinished business of the sexual revolution. While most people are willing to accept the idea that there is no difference between single sex and marital sex, that there is no blame attached to what you do before you are married, they balk at granting the same status (sex is sex) to extramarital sex. Many observers have begrudgingly gone along with the first part of the sexual revolution but have predicted the unraveling of the moral fabric, a world in which every marriage ends because of an affair.

Actually, the figures suggest something else. Kinsey predicted that half of the married men and a quarter of the married women he studied would eventually fool around. Our figures suggest that by the age of 50, almost 70 percent of the men and 65 percent of the women have had an affair. Overall, our figures are in keeping with the Hunt report. Almost 45 percent of the currently married men who answered our questionnaire have had an affair; 34 percent of the married women have.

However, like Hunt, we found that in young marriages, wives are fooling around more than husbands. Apparently, society's message to young women is changing. Mothers used to tell daughters that if there was trouble in the marriage, have a child. Now that same daughter may choose to have an affair. Some people will try to work things out within a marriage; others won't. About two thirds of the divorced men and women who answered our questionnaire have had an extramarital affair. Seventy-three percent of the remarried men and 64 percent of the remarried females have. Unfortunately, the responses do not reveal when those affairs have occurred. We suspect that the higher percentage for divorced and remarrieds reflects an attempt to salvage a first marriage through outside experience or to end the marriage by burning one's bridges. Question 70 asked if the reader has had sex with more than one person in the same 24-hour period. Roughly half of the single and married men and women have done so. In contrast, almost three quarters of the divorced and remarried men and women have had more than one partner on the same day. We assumed that the answer would provide a good indication of the frequency of affairs--seeing someone for lunch, for example, then returning to a steady partner. The divorced and remarried readers scored highest on this question, suggesting that they had gone through a period when, as one relationship disintegrated, they saw other people.

How serious is an affair? More than half of the men and three quarters of the women who answered our questionnaire say that an affair indicates a problem in the marriage. On the other hand, almost half of our respondents are willing to forgive their partners for having had sex outside marriage. Interestingly, men are more forgiving than women. Only 20 percent of the divorced and remarried think an affair broke up their marriages. For many people who discover that their partners are having an affair, extramarital sex is not just a statistic, it is a devastating emotional experience. But our readers seem to be telling us that some extramarital episodes are more serious than others. Sex can be casual just as it can be momentous, and its effect on a marriage depends on conditions beyond the sex itself. We do not present our figures casually. We do not endorse nor condemn extramarital sex, we merely try to understand the behavior.

Why do people fool around? We asked our readers to enumerate from a list the sexual reasons for engaging in extramarital sex. Our male readers say that an affair offers (1) sexual variety, (2) reassurance of their desirability, (3) change of routine, (4) better sex and (5) sex without commitment. Female readers say that an affair offers (1) reassurance of their desirability, (2) better sex, (3) change of routine, (4) sexual variety and (5) sex without commitment. The lists are strikingly similar.

When we asked readers to list the nonsexual reasons for having an affair, we discovered the same pattern. Both men and women cited, in descending order, (1) excitement, (2) reassurance of desirability (in a nonsexual context), (3) friendship and (4) spontaneity.

What do those findings mean? For one thing, they indicate the death of the double standard. For years, it was assumed that men could engage in an affair in pursuit of cheap thrills--that boys would be boys, and there was a difference between extramarital sex and true love. If a woman strayed, it was a more serious offense, since we assumed that women had sex only in the context of a meaningful relationship. Our findings suggest that there is no single reason for fooling around and that the men and women who indulge in extramarital sex may do so for the same reasons.

The common wisdom holds that a man will seek outside marriage what he isn't getting at home. If his wife doesn't perform oral sex, he'll seek it elsewhere--either in an affair or with a prostitute. But given the freer behavior of married partners, we suspected that the old reasons no longer held.

The figures indicate that men who say they receive oral sex occasionally are more likely to stray than men who say they receive it almost every time they have sex. However, men who say they never receive oral sex are the least likely to stray. If you aren't getting any, you don't know what you're missing; and if you are getting it all the time, you don't look elsewhere. The figures for intercourse are similar.

People who have engaged in public sex are also more likely to have had sex outside marriage. We cannot say if they performed those acts with their lovers or with their spouses. It would seem, however, that extramarital sex appeals to the adventurous, who view an affair as another form of sex, an additional experience.

When we examine the promiscuity index--the number of sexual partners a person has had--we come up with a significant finding. Sixty-nine percent of the men who have had more than ten partners have fooled around within a permanent relationship. Fifty-four percent of the women who have had more than ten lovers have also had affairs. We don't know if those lovers have been premarital or extramarital. It seems, however, that those who develop a taste for variety retain it after marriage.

Women who say they are sexually satisfied are less likely to cheat; for men, it doesn't matter. No matter what they think of their sex lives, men fool around. So the spouses who blame themselves for their partner's affairs are wrong.

Infidelity occurs for a subtle blend of reasons. We wondered if money played a role and looked for a possible connection between income and extramarital sex. For the most part, money does not influence sexual behavior. However, when it comes to having affairs, the more money a man makes, the more likely he is to have an affair. To some extent, the same is true for women.

Perhaps the stress of a career leads us into extramarital sex. Perhaps a career brings us into contact with people who share our basic situation. Perhaps the rich are different from you and me. They have money; they can afford hotel rooms. Perhaps it goes back to the most primeval of drives: the hierarchy of the successful, in which the dominant males and females mate with whom they choose. Power, ambition, success are sexually attractive. The board room is not so different from the bedroom.

We did find that people who lose their virginity before the age of 16 are more likely to be unfaithful than those who lose it later. People who start early are more likely to have experienced anal intercourse and group sex and to have had more sexual partners.

The Honeymoon is over

Here is an anecdote: A father sat down with his daughter to explain why sex is not important when it comes to choosing a marriage partner. "See this jar? If you put a nickel in it every time you and your husband make love, you will fill one jar in a year. But the second jar will take a lot longer to fill."

The daughter looked at him and asked, "Can I put a quarter in for every affair?"

Time is the enemy of fidelity. When we compared relationships that had lasted more than four years with those of shorter duration, we discovered a dramatic shift in behavior. People who have been together for more than four years are less likely to describe themselves as faithful. And their behavior matches their self-assessment.

There is a significant drop in fidelity after four years. When we examine figures for sexual activity, we discover the roots of that restlessness. At the beginning of this article, we pointed out that sexual satisfaction was directly related to the frequency of intercourse. When we compare those who have been married longer than four years with those who have been together for four years or less, we discover a dramatic drop in sexual activity. (We cannot say that the short-term marrieds will suddenly cease their activity. We are studying not the same people before and after but two separate groups of people.)

Look at those figures. Only half as many married and cohabiting males make love four or more times a week after four years as before. Married men lose interest in greater measure than married women. Note the dramatic decline in activity reported by female cohabitants: from 51 percent to only 14 percent. Our guess is that after four years, the cohabitants begin to re-examine their relationship. Either it is building toward a permanent one or it's a lost cause. Single women seem to come to the same conclusion.

There is a similar dramatic decline in figures for frequency of intercourse per night. (See the following chart.) Thirty-seven percent of the men who have been married for four years or less do it twice a night or more. After four years, only 22 percent of the married men are that active. The same pattern holds for women and for all other groups.

The frequency of intercourse may decline dramatically; the frequency of oral sex remains relatively steady. When we examine the figures for people who say they perform oral sex every time they make love, or almost every time, we do not find so great a decline.

Outside sex, however, people who have been together for more than four years are less likely to report that they communicate satisfactorily with their partner. Contrary to the stereotype, men are more likely than women to say that they're dissatisfied with the level of communication. When asked to list their requirements for personal happiness, married men place friendship at the bottom of their list. (Married women rate it higher.) It seems that men are more dependent on their mates for intimacy. If the mates don't deliver, they have no one else to turn to.

At the same time, we should point out the importance of friendship in the list of reasons for extramarital affairs: Friendships often turn into sexual relationships.

By any set of measurements, the cohabitants in our survey are in the best sexual shape of all. During the first four years of their relationships, cohabitants get more of everything--from frequency of intercourse to spontaneity and variety in their sexual activities. Cohabitants are more sexually satisfied than marrieds are during the same first four years. We think there are a few logical reasons why the cohabitants score so high: (1) They are still performing for each other, (2) they are in a voluntary relationship, (3) they constantly reaffirm their commitment to each other by not walking out, even though they have the freedom to do so, and (4) both partners have the reasonable expectation that their relationship will grow into something more traditional (33 percent of the cohabitant men and 39 percent of the women rank family life as the first or second most important element of their personal happiness). After they pass the four-year mark in their relationships, sexual activity drops off drastically, reflecting the dissatisfaction that a number of our respondents report with long-term relationships.

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Given this picture of declining sexual activity for married couples, we wondered what our readers would do if they had it all to do again. The majority of our married and remarried readers would do the same things, including having children. Divorced men and women and cohabitants are slightly less enthusiastic about marriage: Many with children say that they want to cohabit or marry without kids. Perhaps the most significant of those figures is that more than half of the singles without children want marriage with children.

When we look at the figures for married people who have children, we discover that their sex lives are not affected by those children: Having children does not diminish the frequency of intercourse or oral sex. But actual behavior is different from the perceived reality. Although married fathers are getting as much sex as husbands without kids, they are less likely to say they are satisfied with the frequency of intercourse.

In the first report on The Playboy Readers' Sex Survey, we suggested that women are the primary beneficiaries of the sexual revolution. They've made incredible gains in terms of sexual behavior and, in doing so, have improved the quality of life for men. They don't have to have a permanent relationship to be happy. The unattached man, once again, turns up as low man on the totem pole--supporting the finding by many sociologists that men without partners are more vulnerable to social and psychological stress than men in steady relationships. All things considered, however, everyone is doing quite well, thank you.

Tune in to our May issue, when this report will turn its attention to the effect that sexual identity has on one's sex life. We'll answer Woody Allen's famous question, Does being bisexual make it twice as easy to get a date on Saturday night?

How many times a week do you have intercourse?

Percent who said the frequency was satisfactory

Percent of singles who have intercourse twice a week or more

How many times a night do you have intercourse?

"The vast majority seem to be able to make sex work. A wedding ring is not a sexual aid."

Marital Status and Frequent Oral Sex

Marital Status and Masturbation

Average Number of Sexual Partners

Does income affect fidelity?

Is fidelity affected by length of relationship?

Is frequency of intercourse affected by length of relationship? Part one

Is frequency of intercourse affected by length of relationship? Part two

Are you satisfied with your present sex life?

By James R. Petersen in collaboration with Arthur Kretchmer, Barbara Nellis, Janet Lever and Rosanna Hertz.