Midway through November, it's become apparent that it's more than just the weather that's hot right now.
Everywhere you look, love (or at least lust) is in the air, percolating between sun-kissed lovers in tank tops and pre-distressed shorts.
There's a tangible sense of energy in the air, and for a lot of us, it's coming across as arousal. There's something about the inescapable heat and endless daylight that makes us want to fuck, but that feeling is more than just an illusion.
People really do get hornier in the summer. Even when the rampant swamp ass and mosquito bites should make people less attractive, some ironic force and unseen chemical reaction conspire to make them the opposite: purely and eminently fuckable.
Here's why.
1. Sunlight makes your serotonin levels skyrocket ...
According to Ashwini Nadkarni, M.D., a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, sunlight tends to make people more hornier because it boosts their mood and makes them feel extra lovey-dovey towards others.
"Sunlight has been shown to have an association with serotonin, a key neurotransmitter in the ability to experience pleasure," she explains.
Interestingly, a serotonin boost is the same reaction that's responsible for both improved libidos in people taking SSRIs for depression, and the hyper-charged horniness many people feel on certain drugs like molly or cocaine.
2. ... and your melatonin levels plummet
If serotonin makes you horny, melatonin does the opposite. Melatonin is more like, "Go to fucking bed you horny weirdo."
It's the sleep hormone.
Jessica O'Reilly, Ph.D., Astroglide's resident sexologist, explains that sunlight blocks melatonin production, which is bad for your sleep but great for your libido as melatonin can interfere with sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and serotonin itself.
No wonder those long summer days turn into hot summer nights
3. More time socialising and exercising
O'Reilly also thinks that all the outdoor stuff we do, be it grilling, water skiing, hiking, walking more often or lounging by the pool all increases our awareness of our bodies and those of others. As a result, we tend to look a little bit better in the summer. Couple that with the increased socialization that longer days and better weather allow, and you create a safe space for boners to be themselves.
4. Pleasures of the flesh
According to Dr. Nadkarni from above, summer libido spikes also due the amount of skin we show. Most people are one triangle-shaped cloth away from being naked, and all the pleasures of the flesh we have to feast our eyes on only remind us that it feels as good to touch people as it does to look at their scantily clad bodies. Creepy ... but hot ... but creepy.
5. The heat drives us inside ... where we watch porn
According to a study from Villanova University, June and July see the highest number of sex-related Google searches. We mean ... why have Air Con if you're not going to use it?
6. Sweat = pheromones
When it's 108 degrees outside and most of your skin is exposed, your sweating body is much better at conveying chemical signals to others through pheromones.
Many studies have shown that male pheromones expressed through sweat have an arousing effect on women, and men are capable of unconsciously detecting whether a woman is ovulating (and therefore more fertile) via pheromones as well.
7. When we were young bucks in school, summer is when we'd experiment and get into trouble
This one's speculation on our part, but doesn't it make sense that the heat and long days would initiate a kind of Pavlovian response in us that recalls the many summers we spent as kids fucking around and getting into trouble?
With no schoolwork to bog us down and the U.S. government making it illegal for anyone under 15 to hold a job, we'd run wild, steal our parent's liquor and fingerbang each other at Water World.
We'd go to summer camp and have sexual awakenings at the site of peri-pubescent body parts we never previously thought about bouncing on the saddle of some poor, beat up horse named Cheyenne.
We'd swarm the local ice cream store and listen to our friend's older sister explain what giving a blowjob was like.
We'd have our first kiss, then our first make out, and then we'd lose our virginity in a hammock at our friend's parent's Summer Solstice BBQ.
The memories are endless, and they're inexorably tied to season.
Once June rolls around the corner, they come flooding back and our bodies prime us to do what we've spent 10 year of adolescence doing; prowling for ass in the summer heat.