Abstract
Before consenting to copulate, a female fruit fly gauges both her mating status and her suitor's quality. Three recent studies, Bussell et al. (2014) in Current Biology and Feng et al. (2014) and Zhou et al. (2014) in this issue of Neuron, dissected the receptivity circuit of female Drosophila, providing insights into how she integrates courtship cues, assesses her internal state, and directs the motor programs that facilitate copulation.