Peccadillo is a perverts' bar, and we're all perverts now. By that I mean that making everyone young and beautiful also made us all bored to death with sex. All men are hung like whales. All women are tight as clams below and inflated like life buoys above. Jaws are square, skin is tanned, muscles are toned, and no one gets turned on. It's a global crisis.
-- Billie (Planet Blue)

Importance: Here, Winterson gives is insight into not only Orbus' status quo, but the nature of human sexuality. As Billie describes the impossible beauty standards made possible by genetic fixing, readers expect the society of Orbus to be among the most sexually active, the most fertile, and indeed, the most happy, considering no one could want for anything as far as aesthetics go. But as it turns out, flattening the aesthetic landscape—even flattening it at its highest—makes society sex-less, boring, and as...