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There are reportedly hundreds of different sex positions today. If you’re familiar with the Kama Sutra, you know that it states that there are eight core ways people do the deed, and eight ways each one can be cross-formed with the others, to create a total of 64 positions. You might have unofficially tried many of them, not knowing their names. However, there are some sexual positions that just about everyone knows the name of: missionary, 69, doggy style and reverse cowgirl.
Several organizations have polled Americans to figure out how they like to get off (like this one and this one), and while the results are not always identical, the aforementioned four always tend to rise to the top. Have you ever wondered where these positions came from, and how long people have been doing them? We did a little digging to find out. Here are the origin stories of the most popular sex positions.
Missionary
Good old-fashioned missionary. Literally. It has a reputation for being anything-but-lit. However, it consistently pops up as a favorite position among couples. Serious couples like this position because it’s the most intimate one. There can be plenty of eye contact and kissing – which can be nice if you’re into that sort of thing.
Historians and sex experts argue on the exact origin of the name. Many, like the writers of an article in Current Anthropology, maintain that some hundreds of years ago, missionaries were traveling the world and witnessed native tribes doing the nasty in other creative ways, and tried to lecture them on the “proper” way to do it. And so, it received the name “missionary.”
However, artwork and images of people doing it missionary style appeared long before the alleged missionary/ native story.
