More than just “about sex,” the Cosmo articles (at least from what I can gather from the cover) seem to be targeting women’s insecurity that they aren’t good in bed. The articles always seem to be titled “5 Things He Wishes You Would Do In Bed (But Will Never Ask For!)” or "3 HOT New Positions (Blow His Mind Tonight!)."
It’s the same marketing logic as “Disney Vault” and it works pretty well.
My GF reads Cosmo, it’s such inane drivel but you can’t deny the appeal of plastering the word SEX in 20-point type on the cover. A recent one had Hillary Duff on the cover along with the standard SEX article blurbs. shudder
My biggest problem with the magazine is that most of the writers are living in a fantasy world. Good luck finding guys that live up to the pictures and articles.
It’s like the writers have never actually spoken to a man in their lives.
They know that men generally think differently than women but their version of male though is overly simplified, romanticized, and mostly wrong.
Sadly, because we tend not to talk about things like that as much it’s often the only general picture of the male mind available at all.
The following should be on the first page of every issue:
To make your man happy, promptly ask him straight out when you want/need something. Don’t spend weeks dropping hints and getting frustrated when nothing happens.
Don’t ask the psychologically impossible!
I found it much more useful to cultivate friendships with gay men and get sex tips from them. They know how to please men! They get to know the, uh, ins-and-outs from both the, er…giving and receiving um…end…of thi— okay, there’s just *no *way to make this sentence not obscene, I give up!
Anyhow. It’s the same for men as it is women, I expect. Howcome for years I never told my lover that I wanted him to do that thing with the clitoris? 'Cause I didn’t know it myself until someone else showed me! Yes, asking and communicating is a good step, but we don’t always know what will get our engines revving. “Tips” aren’t a *bad *thing, but there are only so many of them to be had, and yeah, Cosmo’s been printing the same list for 20 years in new fonts, near as I can tell. (I never bought one, but used to work at a store with a magazine rack.)
But, but - their Compendium is so big.
There was no innuendo in there at all. Promise.
We should be consulting lesbians?!
(I think learning what we can from watching their films is step most of us have already got covered . . .)
Almost all women’s magazines, and rock magazines, too, are controlled by the advertisers. Their features about the hot new stars and programs are cuddled up next to ads for them. The people on the cover are clothed and painted with the proucts on the first six pages. And so on, and so on. It’s just a glorified catalog, with the tittillating SEX features to ensure supermarket sales.
To anyone else who thinks that they can learn stuff from Cosmo they might have learned if they had a big sister, the things I’ve learned from my big sister are more accurately reflected by *Self, Martha Stewart Magazine, Bust, *Stephen King’s On Writing, the owner’s manual to the '93 Ford Escort, and the food guy in Vogue. It was delivered in a cross between the Jerry Springer Show and A Christmas Story, but, yeah, I think that pretty much sums up my relationship with my older sister.
Is she cute?
She’s engaged.
That wasn’t the question! Cuteness and engagement are both transitory conditions! :mad: