Austin Is America’s Sexiest City?!

Here’s a shocker for you: Austin, Texas was recently named America’s “Most Sex-Happy City” by Men’s Health magazine. That’s right, Austin. Texas. A bastion of blue in a state of red. The city whose motto is “Keep Austin Weird,” and whose unofficial mascot is testicular cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.

Not New York. Not L.A. Not even Miami. Austin.

As your Austin correspondent, I must say this takes me by surprise. For one thing, I never knew we were in the running for such a survey, and given the disturbing lack of sexy good fun in this town, I would never have considered my city a shoe-in for the top spot, much less a place in the top 10.

Then again, Men’s Health‘s reasoning seems a bit… kinky. Austin is #1 in condom sales, which makes sense in terms of placing sexual habits for both the straights and the gays, but we’re 15^th for birth rates (?) and 23^rd for STD rates (?!). According to their rankings, 1^st place for STDs means the city with the most STDs, so 23^rd out of 100 is not exactly complimentary, but would certainly stand to show that sex is occurring. Unfortunately, it seems it’s occurring between “dumb and dirty” Texans (as a commenter put it), which isn’t much to brag about. Oh, and dude, the correct nomenclature is STI—Sexually Transmitted Infections. Just FYI.

As for birth rates, I’m not sure how this statistic necessarily correlates to sex happiness. Just because you haven’t aborted your little lovechild after a particularly fast and furious one-night stand doesn’t mean you’re happy with your sex life, while conversely, there could be plenty of abortions being performed on women who enjoy sex, but would be happier without its annoying side effects. Yes, I just referred to children as “annoying side effects” of sex.

At any rate, I find this revelation profoundly disturbing, and I hope you Angelenos are appropriately dismayed by your failure to place higher on this list (54 out of 100, claims the Austin-American Statesman). For heaven’s sake, Shanghai rates sexier than Los Angeles. What is the world coming to? Or perhaps more accurately, why isn’t the world cumming more frequently in our truly sexy cities?

Image by John Maffei. Information from WSJ blogs.