Infamous on-stage kiss between Madonna and Brittany Spears.

It all started when Madonna kissed Britney Spears on stage, followed by Katy Perry who sang a song about a girl she kissed – and now it seems the “flexisexuality” trend is fast catching on.

The new word has been coined for the growing number of straight women who flirt with bisexuality. It refers to people who have a sexual preference but refuse to be bound by it.

Pop culture, itself, seems to celebrate that flexibility in songs like Katie Perry’s , ‘I Kissed a Girl (and I Liked It),’ a song that 19-year-old Alisha Garrison said “made girls be more free to do whatever they want,” reports ABC News.

Flexisexual is also known as heteroflexible, pansexual or queer, all subtle variations that mean they are not closing any doors.

Other examples from the entertainment industry include Lindsay Lohan who was dating DJ Samantha Ronson, insisting she wasn’t a lesbian but bisexual, Drew Barrymore , who said, “Being with a woman is like exploring your own body, but through someone else.”

An ABC report from San Antonio, Texas, said flexisexuality is also part of the high school culture. A 2003 study from Northwestern University found that compared with men, women’s sexual arousal patterns may be less tightly connected to their sexual orientation and more “flexible.”

Some like to do it to attract boys’ attention and simply like to live up to the menagea-trois fantasy of the men they seek to please. And some think it even “indirectly mocks” the gay community.

Lisa Diamond, associate professor of gender studies at University of Utah, has been studying the topic for years, and confirms women are more flexible in their sexuality and for a variety of cultural, and perhaps biological, reasons.

Via Times of India