I've stopped getting magazines of that ilk to save paper and money. But I do always get miffed at the "how to please your man" tips. While both partners should have a sense of giving and receiving, Cosmo always seemed uneven. Last time I checked, guys really didn't need a 100 point plan to have an orgasm. I would also feel cheated when I would see the same unusual sex tips reused after a year or two.

I LOLed

Worst part is the fact that it's old news. Like really really old news, what in the world have these researchers been doing? Why only men's pleasure? Is women's sexuality is really that uninteresting to talk about?

The male interviewer did actually suggest a similar book on female sexual pleasure to the researcher, and the female interviewer laughed him off and gave him a push. Even the researcher had a big smirk on her face, so obviously such a concept is a joke, to them at least. Also, what kind of "scientific research" is this? It made Cosmopolitan, but I bet you wouldn't find it in "Lancet", "Nature" or any other reputable scientific/medical journals. This is just pseudo-science. What about the bit where the male interviewer claimed that this book would help so many people all over the world!!!!! This stuff is laughable on the surface, but so many young women read mags like Cosmopolitan which perpetuate the message that their main goal in life should be about pleasing their man, from the way they do their hair to their behaviour in the bedroom.

It seems some readers don't get that this was satire. I thought that even if the fact that it was from The Onion wasn't enough, the reference to a diet book called "Shit Yourself Thin" might have given it away.

Ahaha. I do so adore the Onion. :)

Funny satire is funny

This now makes me curious, since I never pay attention to men's mags. Do mags aimed at guys (e.g., GQ, Maxim) have tips for pleasing women? I always got the sense that what they offered was more along the lines of how to spice things up, etc. -- i.e., still focusing on men's pleasure at least as much as women's -- but I could be wrong since, like I said, I don't read those publications.

Also, I heart the Onion. AWESOME ONN segment.

Law Fairy -- To the extent that mags like GQ and Maxim do exhibit some interest in what will please women, it's more in the "what will attract women" sense -- i.e. Don't you want to be such an awesome guy that beautiful women are falling all over you, etc etc. If it talks about pleasing women at all, it's only incidentally, along the road to attaining Badass Dude status. (At least, this has been my impression -- I haven't looked at them in a while though, so I suppose I could be wrong).

Then again, the Cosmo advice always seemed to me to be sort of more about how they think women ought to behave and think, and less about what actual guys actually like, so hey.

Whether satire or not, Cosmopolitan and its clones constantly run articles like this in reality, and young women read it often unquestioningly. When I was 17, I started buying an Australian Cosmo clone called "Cleo", and my Mum was really against me buying it. I thought she was just being a prude and stopping me from finding out about sex. She used to say to me that it portrayed young women in a narrow, stereotypical way, but I wasn't prepared to listen. Of course, I now realize that their view of women's sexuality is becoming a man pleaser above all else, and my Mum knew it. Oh, the stubbornness of youth... If I'd listened to her I would have saved myself a number of years worrying about how attractive I was to men, wasting energy following all the "tips" the mag gave me. I took a round-about route getting here, but it shows that it is possible to progress and view these magazines for what they really are.

law fairy,
Magazines like GQ do have some stuff about pleasing your woman. GQ and maxim really go after different audiences. Maxim/stuff/fhm are on one end of the spectrum with something like GQ being in the middle and mens health being the best of the mens magazines in my estimation, it too has a lot on pleasing your lover though only in a hetero kind of way.

idiolect,
I can see that, the whole dont you wanna be so cool youll get a lot of chicks thing, especially from maxim and its ilk but other mens magazines focus on the desire a lot of men have to please their partners and the inadequacy a lot of men feel, many many guys want to do their best and there are magazines out there for that. the only part about it that bothers me is in the end they often are telling men its all about achievement in much the same way the womens magazines reduce it all to sex

geo
guys can use a 100 point plan to have a great orgasm, or are you reducing male sexuality to the ol' thrust and repeat?

I loved this.

Maxim and other lad mags (FHM, Stuff...) focus more on things like "How to trick your girlfriend into having anal" and "How to get women to do X." Lots of advice about getting what you want from women.

Law Fairy, I can't speak for Maxim, which to my eyes just seems like a more conflicted (and less reputable) Playboy, but GQ is more lifestyle-oriented and text-heavy, covering fashion, politics and media in a distinct voice. From what I've read, there isn't really a lot about women in its pages -- although there was a pretty heinous feature in a fairly recent issue about the wives (and husband) and love lives of the presidential candidates at the time.

In fact, I think probably part of the reason some of my feminist female friends subscribe to GQ is that it offers in a men's magazine what a lot of women probably wish a mainstream women's magazine would offer: clever journalism that isn't dressed up in self-effacing femininity, a healthily small dose of fashion and a lot of substantive articles on relevant topics (e.g., not beauty tips, sex tips or alternately heartwarming and terrifying stories about people in crisis designed to make the readership feel so lucky for not living in dirt huts/having unidentified diseases/losing loved ones in natural disasters).

So don't buy Cosmo. You vote for products with your green dollars. If you don't like Cosmo then don't vote for it.

Everything you need to know about pleasing your man or woman you can learn by having a conversation with them.

Cosmo's just selling ad space and dented egos.

I didn't mean to make male sexual pleasure sound simplistic. What I meant was that guys tend to know what gives them pleasure because they are encouraged to explore it from an early age, while I know adult women who have never masturbated, don't know where the clitoris is, think the vagina is "icky," and other things that would impede them from knowing what is pleasurable for them.

My husband and I were standing in the checkout line and I'm rooting thru the celeb rags. Husband picks up Cosmo and says, "What ever happened to just plain old fun?" Then we cracked up because he wondered if the pages were tear-out so people could hang them on the wall next to the bed for reference. He's right though, when did it happen that women were taken out of the "sex for pleasure" equation?

I love The Onion as well. Most times.

Here's something I wrote and posted elsewhere about Cosmo.

Smilin an pleasin massah: women as house slaves in Cosmo headlines

Here's a small selection - feel free to post your own examples and parallel:

"Decipher every move your man makes. You can gauge crucial information with a simple glance at him. By picking up on the subtle nonverbal messages he's sending, you'll discover tons of clues about his personality and how he really feels about you."
- Cosmo, summer 2008

"In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (when talking about "pure slaves")... described their 'tendency to repose on a superior mind and rest on a higher power.'"
- James O. Horton, wilsoncenter.org
Tactics used in creating the "perfect slave": "To implant in the slave a sense of personal inferiority... and awe the slave with a "sense of the slave-owner's enormous power" so the slave would "stand in fear"...'
- A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies, Floyd W. Hayes II - part IV: Discovering the Meaning of Black Identity: Psychic Dimensions of Oppression.

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"Do guys think you have girlfriend potential? This quiz will reveal if you're sabotaging yourself."
- Cosmo headline, summer 2008

"A good slave, like a good wife... was one who did not become masculine or rebellious... he or she, never outgrowing dependence, would thus retain a master's fondness forever."
- James O. Horton, op. cit., explaining the views of pro-slavery advocate George Fitzhugh
"(A slave owner was counselled to) 'attempt to persuade the bondsman to take an interest in the master's enterprise and to accept his standards of 'good conduct' '... thus the slave owner sought to train slaves to accept unquestioningly his value system or criteria of what was good and true and beautiful."
- A Turbulent Voyage, op. cit.

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"Sex Tips from Guys - their all-time favorite mattress moves, revealed"
- Cosmo, summer 2008

"A black mother taught her daughter... to seem accommodating and tractable to the slaveholder, smiling and ready to please..."
- Little Known Facts about Slavery, website - www.theblackmarket.com
"I been cooking out for white people since I was nine years old. I am a good cook they all tell me and I tries to be clean with my cooking."
- interview with Mary Mays West, Widener, Arkansas, age 65Répondre à votre article
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I had seen this in passing, but hadn't watched the video until reading this post and the funniest part is that I didn't even realize it was the Onion (aka not real). It was so true to Cosmo that I believed the story to be true. HA!