I let me eyes read the headlines of the women’s magazines at the drug store checkout. What a dumb mistake that was!
Okay, I get it. Sex sells. And women really do want to know the nitty gritty of what makes men tick physically. But the Glamour survey of 1,000 men about their sexual proclivities and the more narrative style Cosmo recap of “mind-blowing moves” leaves me more than a little unsettled.
Maybe it is just me. Maybe this is what liberation looks like, what the open discussion of sex should be like in a free country like America. But doesn’t it degrade the thing just a tad for the women reading the magazine and the men who are the supposed beneficiaries of so much … passion?
Interested in your views.
I like a good sex tip to try out a new trick as much as the next person. However, those lists of sex acts were really only titilating when I was still a virgin. And now, looking at Cosmo is not how I’m going to learn to please my husband.
Not to mention it seems like I’ve heard several times that a lot of the tips in there are weird and a guy would never want that done to them. It leaves no room for communication. “Young teenage girls, put ice cubes on your boyfriend’s balls!” …What?
Anyone else notice this: “The models photographed in Cosmo are used for illustrative purposes only; Cosmopolitan does not suggest that the models actually engage in the conduct discussed in the stories they illustrate.” What an odd disclaimer. I’ve never seen that before. What’s the point of that? Cosmo doesn’t want me to get the wrong idea about these models? Are they recommending doing something illegal to turn on your man, and these models don’t want to go to jail? Do they not want their parents to think they do such things with their boyfriends? Just sincere curiosity here – any… Read more »
I’ve always suspected that Cosmo is actually written and produced by horny young men writing under female pseudonyms. Can anyone say that the Cosmo cover model is only there to appeal to a female viewer? As a fairly mainstream guy with vanilla tastes who’s stereotypical in a lot of ways, I think it’s absurd that Cosmo and other mags like it have to tell women how to turn on a man. Speaking for myself, it’s really not a deeply complicated operation. You can be positive I won’t be faking arousal or orgasm. If you don’t know how to find verification… Read more »
P.S. I was not trying to imply that “horny” was a bad thing. Far from it. Just that the motives of the secret male committees who actually write Cosmo may be more about their own desires than about providing a wealth of useful, necessary information.
I would direct your attention to the Cosmopolitan Masthead.
Ha I wrote a piece on a similar thing a while ago called Cosmo Needs More Of The C Word.
Society continually promotes that ‘ideal’ look for women as well as men. In my view, it’s largely media and marketing to blame though. Promote crap body image and low self confidence and you’re selling products based around fear and hope.
The open “discussion” of sex currently occurring seems like a societal reaction, a pendulum swing to the other extreme, away from formerly repressed expressions of sex and sexuality. However, one could argue that these are not discussions so much as noise about sex. Genuine dialogue about sex and sexuality is still lacking, although not completely absent, from the public sphere.
Ugh. I HATE these magazines. They shove women into disgusting little boxes, have the same “sizzling sex moves” on a four-month recycle (and wtf about the only way to be awesome is to be all sexified and into the craziest sex move possible??), and they are pretty much about how women should change themselves to get a man, keep a man, and then some really awful stories that are supposed to be funny about what some girl did to some other girl who slept with the dude she put all this work in to keep. Women need to change to… Read more »
*you clearly don’t want to be in relationships with -us-.
Although, Cosmo does treat guys like maybe they’d like to be in a relationship with themselves over one with a female. Because all females are clingy – so here’s how to pretend not to be!
This gave me a mad.
“Please, for the love, Tom, this is NOT what liberation looks like. This is what sex sells + gender stereotypes + low self-esteem looks like. And it’s gross.”
Totally agree Nikki. That was the point of posting it. Totally insane.
Good feedback thus far. as a 43 year old guy – and clearly NOT in the demographic these rags pander to – a few things come to mind – sex does sell, or at least the inference that the reader will learn something they didn’t know about sex sells. It assumes that women suck or don’t do enough for their man sexually. If a woman chooses to believe the stuff written designed to prey on insecurities that are reinforced constantly then they will sell a lot of magazines which is the corporate goal. Here is my take on sex and… Read more »
Magazines post features like this for entertainment purposes. Clearly a woman acting this way would be considered a slut, but women will get excited that they may discover the secrets of being ‘The One.’ By the one I mean the “sex kitten” their boyfriends rub one out to, which is usually featured on magazines such as “Maxim.” A woman’s thought process=attention, attention, attention. I know I want to be the best sex his guys ever had, can Cosmo give me these secrets? Another reason, sex is exciting. You’re not going to watch a pg-13 movie if there is a rated-R.… Read more »
What I always find amusing is that while a lot of women I know ‘attack’ the magazines like cosmo as being anti women, anti feminist , these same women rush home to catch the next episode of “OPRAH”. Oh my god, if there ever was a form of entertainment that belittles women, tells them everything they are doing wrong and of course shows them how for 3 easy payments of $19.95 how they can fix it, it is OPRAH.
I agree… not into Oprah either.
Really? Oprah? Why? Oprah was the first major national platform to speak out about mother-on-child violence and sexual abuse, as well as one of the first major national platforms to give attention to the issue of men being raped. This really was SO taboo to even mention before and she got a lot, i mean a LOT of hell for both those topics whenever they’d be revisited. People didn’t WANT to talk about mothers abusing children, and they didn’t want to talk about men being raped and abused – by men or women, and yet she did it. Oprah has… Read more »
Have to say that I have been down on Oprah ever since Million Little Pieces which was a huge opportunity to teach about addiction–a disease which is defined by denial and lying. Instead she covered her ass and brought a whole group of people in their to lynch James Fry, an addict with no recovery who made up his memoir and didn’t hide it as well as so many others. Oprah is, in the end, about Oprah not about much else. Just my opinion.
Women are supposed to feel inadequate in all ways, including sex. The economy depends on women seeking, begging, and buying help. Sex is just one more to add to the list of things we are supposed to feel bad about (weight, wrinkles,orgasms, etc.).
Yeah, that’s a great way to sum up the feeling I get when I see those mags. It’s just more ways of keeping women on the consumer treadmill by exploiting feelings of inadequacy.
I’m sure there are men’s mags that do the same thing, but probably in different ways… and the ones I’ve seen don’t really put that much focus on pleasing the woman either, unless pleasing the woman means having a bigger dick (which has very little to do with what gets us off).
The economy is based on the idea that women cannot be self-sufficient.
Not surprisingly, women are socialized to be reliant on others in fundamental ways.
I honestly have never understood how magazines like that actually sell.
I find them to be the most superficial and degrading things to women… just from their covers (and the “headlines” on them)… and… I’m not a feminist… I just have self-respect.
Yup.
What’s with the disclaimer at the bottom? About the models?
I agree with PP who said that it’s about there being a “right way” to be or to act in sexuality. What a disservice to both men and women. That’s one of the reasons Eli and I started our sex and dating blog – to try to reconnect the heart, mind and body when talking about sex, but absent of prudishness.
And yes, the image of men portrayed in Cosmo isn’t exactly multi-dimensional. But neither is the image of women in Cosmo either.
Similar but way better: Marie Claire.
Joanna, I noticed that too. it’s very odd.
I get that, word for word it’s just dissociating the picture with the act (or rather the model with the specific act), but the (shallowly) underlying message seems to be a little bit judgemental of the sexuality the editors are actually panning in the magazine. IMO, not the type of sub message that a women’s mag should be sending.
That could have been worded WAY better.
I think that one magazine was sued for using a model’s image in an article about something sexual or STD related… It was a while ago, I should Google it. Probably relates back to our ridiculously litigious society. This is going to sound so stupid, but it reminds me of that episode of Friends where Joey modeled for what he thought was going to be an ad for cologne or something, and it turned out he was “The Face of VD” or some such. If you work in the entertainment/modeling industries, you know you have NO right to how those… Read more »
I always thought Cosmo was anti-feminist. Didn’t they used to be feminist?
Have no idea – I just call it “lame.” 😀
Anti-feminist. It’s disgusting.
I’ve never read Cosmo or any of those magazines because I think they mostly send terrible messages about what women are supposed to be like – as if the only things that are supposed to be interesting to women are beauty, fashion and sex. And yeah, like Anna said, the headlines seem to be the exact same thing every month. It really does creep me out, especially when I think about how popular this crap is.
One of the reasons I stopped reading Cosmo was because it so much of their content is the same old, same old every month. How many different ways can they rewrite articles like “100 Hottest Sex Tips”? So many of their articles say the exact same things every month, only in different words!
I happened to flip through that Cosmo earlier today and came away with the familiar unsettled feeling every time I get pulled to look at these types of magazines. What I sense is a big undercurrent of subliminal messages about “the right way to be”. If you do this, you’ll be good; if you do that, you’ll be bad. I think it’s totally limiting to women and their right to beautiful as their natural selves. Especially for younger women.
Really, I just don’t get it.
“What I sense is a big undercurrent of subliminal messages about “the right way to be”. If you do this, you’ll be good; if you do that, you’ll be bad. I think it’s totally limiting to women and their right to beautiful as their natural selves. Especially for younger women.
Really, I just don’t get it.”
You are making this comment at the “Good Men Project”.
Just think about that for a moment. Really.
Julie, have you ever found “good sex ed” in either of those magazines?
Reminds me of the SMBC spoof Cosmotopian
Good point.
What part is degraded? Truly curious on your opinion as I have my own. What i don’t like is the twee copy “Too hot to handle? Sex in the Kitchen!” and the poses that are straight out of soft core. I don’t dislike them out of prudery, but because who acts like that?? Just seems….young. Naive. Their marketing demographic is what? early 20s? Also…I can’t think of a better word right now than corporate soft core. Which somehow is making me thing of soft serve ice cream…. It just seems plastic. I think those same posts about sex, health, desires,… Read more »