In the age of promiscuity, women have more sexual partners than men

Being bold and brazen in the bedroom won Carrie Bradshaw and her friends a legion of female fans.



But viewers who think the 'anything goes' sexual antics in Sex And The City is fiction should perhaps think again.



Life, it would appear, is more than a match for art.



Young women are becoming more promiscuous, with more sexual partners than men, researchers have found.



Life imitating art?: The sexual antics of Sex And The City aren't fiction after all



By the age of 21 they have had sex with an average of nine lovers - two more than their male partner.



And a quarter have slept with more than ten partners in the five years since losing their virginity - compared with a fifth of young men.



Young women are also twice as likely to be unfaithful, with 50 per cent admitting they have cheated on a partner - half at least twice.



Yet if their man was caught being unfaithful, 99 per cent of the 2,000 women surveyed said they would show him the door.



The sex survey, for More magazine, also found women crave more sex but still believe men enjoy it more than they do.



The survey follows a U.S. study earlier this year that found teenage girls who watch a lot of TV shows with a high sexual content, such as Friends and Sex And The City, are twice as likely to become pregnant.



The researchers for that study concluded: 'One problem is that these and similar programmes glamorise sex while hardly mentioning its downsides, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.'



Lisa Smosarski, editor of More, suggested that there will be no turning back for today's sexually confident young women. 'Our results show that after decades of lying back and thinking of England, today's twenty-something women are taking control of their sex lives and getting what they want in bed. And why not?



'Women today have increasingly busy and stressful lives juggling study, jobs, friends, family, career and their relationships,' she said.



'Sex is a great and free way to relax, unwind and have fun in today's fairly stressful society.'



The survey found more than half of the women were not in love with the person to whom they lost their virginity.



And only 32 per cent believed love to be an important factor before having sex. Seven out of ten confessed to having had a one-night stand and a fifth had enjoyed more than five.



Only 1 per cent said they would wait until marriage to have sex.



One in four said they would marry for money whilst 39 per cent would sleep with their boss for a promotion. And 27 per cent would have an affair with a married man, while 14 per cent would sleep with their best friend's partner.



The study was carried out to launch More's safe sex campaign, which starts this week.

It found that almost a fifth of the young women surveyed had contracted a sexually transmitted disease while 21 per cent had been persuaded by a man not to use a condom when they wanted to.



Miss Smosarski said: 'Whilst women aren't embarrassed to take the lead in the bedroom, it seems they're not so forthright when it comes to contraception.'