In light of the recent exponential boom in Pinterest use over the last couple of months, I thought that this week I’d write about two topics that you wouldn’t expect to fit together: sex and Pinterest. To flesh out the connection between sex and Pinterest, I did a little experiment. Check out what I found.

Hypothesis: searching for “sex” in the Pinterest search bar will bring up images of scantily clad, near-naked female supermodels. Or possibly people having sex.

Method: I typed “sex” into the general Pinterest search bar.

Results: I was surprised to find neither near-naked female supermodels nor images of couples copulating. Here’s what I did find:

Political information related to sexuality

• A photograph of Mitt and Ann Romney outside a foreign sex shop with a click-through link to a NYT op-ed article investigating the pair’s investment in Goldman Sachs, which owns a 16% share of Backpage.com, the United State’s largest online prostitution ad forum
• An infographic smartly depicting the fact that in the United States, you can legally marry your own cousin in more states than you can marry your same-gendered partner
• A video about a proposed law that would require men to be declared medically impotent before filling a prescription for Viagra
• A creative Venn diagram explaining the difference between gender identity, sexual orientation, and biological sex

Recipes with the word “sex” in the title

• Better Than Sex Cake
• Better Than Sex Chex Mix
• Sex in a Pan
• S’more Sex Cake

Products and images that use the word “sex” in their description

• Make-up company NARS features a blush dubbed “Sex Appeal”
• Clothing store New York & Company’s striped blouse called “Sex at the Office” (which they removed from their site after two days)
• Beauty product company Lush sells a “bath bomb” called “Sex Bomb”
• The popular book “Sex at Dawn” by Christopher Ryan
• Hundreds of pictures of shoes with the description “Sex for my toes”
• Books about how to talk to children about sex
• Every product ever featured on Sex and the City

Conclusions: Pinners use sex to promote their political opinions, help educate others by spreading sexual health news and information and (not surprisingly, as Pinterest is still an online shopping community) to promote consumer products. Which, at the very least, is more than we can say for the average Calvin Klein billboard.

Send Mary your sizzling sex questions at [email protected].