Tens of thousands were polled.
Knowing the sexiest place on Earth seems like a good thing. Whether it means you want to live in it, visit it or work to make somewhere you like better out-sexy it, it just seems like useful knowledge.
But sexiness isn’t as objective as it could be. It’s easy to say with some certainty that, in terms of temperature, Furnace Creek in Death Valley is the hottest place in the world, with temperatures of 130 degrees Fahrenheit regularly recorded. Nobody’s going to argue with a thermometer.
But the other hotness? Impossible to agree upon.
When discussing a place, what does sexiness even constitute? Can a place itself be sexy? Landscapes are beautiful, but are they sexy? The search for the sexiest place on earth leads to question after question. Fortunately, we aren’t the first people to wonder.
In 2015, Men’s Health combined statistics of condom sales, birth rates, sex toy sales, and—extremely questionably—rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis to determine America’s “most sex-happy” city. Texas got two places on the podium, with Austin coming out on top and Dallas scoring silver. While ‘sex-happiness’ is a delightful phrase, it’s not exactly the same as sexiness, highlighted by the fact that sexiness has never been indicated by high syphilis rates.
In 2019, travel company Big Seven compiled data from other surveys on things like online search habits, the proportion of single people, and the number of romantic date spots to conclude Miami was the sexiest place on the planet.
Another survey in 2019 looking at various elements of women’s lives concluded that London was the global city in which women were having the most sex. Half a million participants’ input was used along with data concerning contraception, sexual equality, access to sex toys, and more. Paris came second, and Auckland third, with LA coming in fourth.
In 2021, researchers looked at huge amounts of Google data in what they termed the Sexy Search Index, looking at searches for kinks, sex toys, and sex advice. They concluded that the population of Portugal was the most sexually charged in the world, with BDSM, threesomes, and electrostimulation topping the list of kinks they were Googling.
The makers of a now-defunct adult app looked at data on sexual activity, sexual experimentation, sexual satisfaction, sex toy consumption, porn consumption, adult entertainment, swinger culture, access to contraception, LGBT friendliness, and gender equality, concluding that Paris was the most sex-positive city in the world.
A German sex magazine did a 2021 study looking for the most sexually liberal city in the world. To do this, Lust Magazine looked at the number of gay bars and sex shops, availability of PrEP, the number and scale of LGBT events, and the legal situations regarding sex work, contraception, and changing gender. They concluded that New York was the world’s most sexually liberal city.
A sexy place, surely, must be filled with sexy people. But where are the people the sexiest? The same travel company that named Miami as the world’s sexiest city, Big Seven, also asked people to name the sexiest nationality, in which Ukrainians came out top, and the sexiest accent, which was won by New Zealand. 21,000 people were asked by U.S. News to define how much they associated various countries with the term ‘sexy’, a poll topped by Brazil.
33 different men have been named the sexiest alive by People magazine, of which a whopping 23 hail from the USA and the vast majority have lived in Los Angeles at least at some point. The UK came second with four, three Australians made the list, two Canadians, and a lone Irishman (good work, 2001 Pierce Brosnan). There is obviously a huge bias there—People magazine is American, and 96% of the people named have the same two jobs, so as data goes, it’s all pretty useless.
In fact, it pretty much all is. All the data really demonstrates is that people are after different things, and any given place has multiple factors going into how sexy it is or isn’t. A beautiful deserted beach, for instance, might seem sexy to some, but nowhere deserted is going to top a poll based on nightlife or Googling habits… Ultimately it’s all a little silly, as there is surely sexiness to be found anywhere if one looks hard enough.
