Yesterday I was flipping through the latest edition of Cosmopolitan magazine and it's left me a little depressed. The last memorable encounter I had with Cosmo was when I was a kid and one of my sisters left the "Cosmo Bedside Astrologer" paperback lying around the house. As you might imagine, this made for some hilarious reading: it was predicted that I, a Sagitarius, would be making love at some point in 1971 on horseback. (Grown-ups are so weird!!!).
But yesterday's brush with the "liberated" Cosmo girl was, quite simply, saddening. Yes, there are a couple of token articles about how to take care of yourself - don't hike alone for instance, or you might (literally) lose your head like that pretty co-ed from Georgia, or achieving your own whopper orgasm - but the overhwelming gist of the magazine was what to say/do in bed to: (fill in blank) deliver unto him an enormous orgasm, make him yell "you go, cowgirl!", decode his body language, what new position to practice.
What is bringing me down here is not the focus on enjoying sex - enjoy away! - but the endless concentration on the actions a woman should take to please and understand her man. I don't know, but doesn't decoding a man's body language, in and out of bed, sound like a helluva lot of work? I get tired and confused just thinking about it If I thought there was even the hint of a solid center here - specifically the woman's - I wouldn't care. But to equate hot f***ing as the sole path to enlightened emancipation, at a time when young women (Cosmo's demographic) are so otherwise bombarded with physical "to do" lists for obtaining perfection is irresponsible. And I don't know if I'm depressed because I was surprised at how positively shitty the magazine content was, or that I should be surprised at all. Am I that old?
I encounter so many women who are at best sheepish about parts of their body; their soft, aging underarms, disappearing bums, saddlebags, large calves (OK, that's me) and it reminds me that, for most of us, developing a sense of peace about ourselves is truly a life-long jprocess. How do we tune out the constant bloody, debilitating noise that tells us - at every juncture in our lives - how we should look? How we should be (as a housekeeper, a single woman, a mother, as a wife?). And increasingly early on, how to please sexually.
Go ahead and have sex, sex isn't the issue. Just make sure there's a you in place before you start wondering how to please everyone else (which, as I've learned, Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph isn't actually possible). No, really have sex and enjoy it, because - if the recent spate of TV ads featuring 30-something women are any indication - you might just end up orgasming over a bloody truffle. Personally - and much as I love chocolate - I can only imagine this happening if someone were to invent a chocolate vibrator. And that's a lot coming from me.
Top, Cosmo Cowgirl Below, Ghirardelli nirvana.
Did you know they now sell vibrators at the pharmacy! We read it in lu-lu mag.
PS- we found a great use for cosmo! Teach girls how to recyle!
Posted by: Jamie & Emily | September 07, 2008 at 12:34 PM