Female Supremacy Articles - Page 21

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Like supercharged Shirley Valentines, these women see casual sex with the locals as just as much a part of their Caribbean holiday as the beach and the sun. And they are prepared to pay for it - one way or another.

Sex tourism, of course, is more usually associated with the men who visit the seedy fleshpots of the Far East. Yet with rising divorce rates and young professionals remaining single for much longer, the number of women travelling abroad for sex has boomed over the past few years.

So much so, in fact, that the phenomenon is increasingly being seen as part of mainstream culture. At the cinema, Vers Le Sud (Heading South) features actress Charlotte Rampling as a 55-year-old sex tourist enjoying the attention of a parade of muscled locals during a holiday in 1980s Haiti.

Even Radio 4's Woman's Hour - a forum of middle-class discussion - this week featured a segment about the rights and wrongs of sex tourism for women, featuring a self-confessed female 'sex traveller'.

In London, a new play, Sugar Mummies, opened this week at the Royal Court theatre, focusing on the antics of four middleaged women who visit Jamaica to sample male prostitutes, or 'rent-a-dreads'.

Among the cast is Lynda Bellingham - previously the wholesome face of family values in the Oxo television commercials - playing Maggie, a divorcee and habitual sex tourist with a rampant libido.