Note that Sexactivator is marketed as a product for men to turn on "your woman" — suggesting that a guy slip weird pheromone shit into a stranger's drink is apparently a sleaze-bridge too far. Still, it's hard in a not to assume that some men will use this at bars or parties with women they don't know. Especially when it's touted next to Mate Magnet Cologne. After all, "using pheromones have been proven the most gorgeous women will desire to have you immediately." (Also, using grammar.)

The sad thing about these products in general (and yes, there is a sad thing, among many scary and enraging things) is that they bank on the idea that men need products to artificially induce women to like them. This implies not only that women deserve to have their autonomy subverted by chemical agents, but also that men are not enough on their own. Mate Magnet and Sexactivator are sort of like men's versions of wrinkle creams and fat-burning supplements — the opposite sex does not like you as you are, advertisers shout, but they will love you with this snake oil!

Men's Fitness [Official Site]

• A journal for plastic surgery says that 98% of women who have breast reconstruction after an elective mastectomy are satisfied with their surgery. • Children conceived with a sperm donor should be told at age four about their origins to lighten anger and shock at their parents. • A Romanian court ordered that a surgeon pay a 33-year-old patient whose penis he had accidently severed during an operation $795,000. Yeah, that is a big "uh oh." • More Penii!: A Portuguese couple continue a tradition of manufacturing 2-foot penis-shaped ceramic bottles that is said to have dated back to the 19th century. • A baby's smile can create a "natural high" in the brains of mommies. • A South African woman with a "soft heart for animals and a tart tongue for most everyone else" runs an animal shelter in Abu Dhabi. • The General Synod, the governing body of the Church of England, is set to debate over the issue of appointing female bishops, sparking a debate between traditionalists and progressive members of the Church. • Swiss researchers suggest that same-sex transplants should be performed after they found an 8% chance of rejection when a male kidney was given to a woman. • The Monday after a three-day weekend always sucks, so here is a cute video of a bunny opening up an envelope with his own paper-nomming!

Related: Full size female advertisement [Coloribus]
Full size male advertisement [Coloribus]

Related: Knob [Urban Dictionary]

We started with the chocolate vagina kit, since it seemed a lot less complicated, seeing as how I didn't need to be aroused or anything. We had to mix this powder with lukewarm water, then pour it into this scoop thingy, and then press it up against my crotch, all in a span of two minutes, otherwise the stuff would've hardened and been useless.

I pressed it up against me and all of a sudden the excess mixture started pouring out the sides, running down my legs and getting all over the floor. It was all thick and creamy and it seriously looked like I had some kind of VD, or someone had just shot a lump load all over me.

Sorry for sharing that. Anyways, I started screaming because that shit was getting all over my floor (which I just mopped), so my boner donor ran and got a towel. And then we just started laughing maniacally. There I was, standing in my robe, a bra, and slippers with one hand on a dripping crotch and the other holding a glass of wine. I totally looked like Nelson Muntz's mom.

I had to hold the shovel up to my crotch for four minutes. After enough time had elapsed, I pulled it off (luckily, it didn't stick to my hair), and did not like what I saw. I don't mean to get all precious about my pussy or whatever, but this is not an accurate impression of it.

I guess there was a giant air pocket, so we peeled a dry piece of mixture up off the floor and stuffed it in there. We put the vagina mold in the freezer, per the directions, and then got to work on the chocolate dick kit.

Okay, I'm here's the thing about that: If you want a sexy, fun time, don't do this. It's really weird and mechanical and there's sooooooo much start and stop. For instance, first we had to cut the provided dick tube down to the size of his erection, so I had to blow him for a little bit so that we could figure out how long to make the tube, and then left him hanging there as I was hacking the tube down with scissors.

Then I had to combine the molding powder with water, using a thermometer to make sure it was 98º. I had two minutes to mix the stuff, pour it in the tube, get him hard again, and then shove his peen in there, all before the mixture hardened. It was really stressful, and also, impossible. We couldn't do it on our first try. First of all, my dog began humping my donor's leg, and she just wouldn't let go. And by the time I mixed the stuff and blew him, the mixture had hardened in the tube and he couldn't get his dick in there. So we had to start all over again.

This time, we were practically pros — a well-oiled machine of genital casters. He mixed the stuff and poured it in the tube, while I blew him until he was at full mast. Then he stuck it in the tube, and we waited for two minutes until it had set. (When we pulled it off his dick, it totally queefed!) We placed it in the fridge and then went to work on the dick candle kit.

At this point, we felt like we were sweatshop workers in a sex toy factory. We did the mixture/blow job routine again, and he jammed his dick in the tube. Except this time, we had issues of a different kind. His dick is curved, so it was hitting the side of the tube, so we turned it, as per the directions, so that all sides would be covered, but then a bunch of the stuff poured out, and there wasn't enough left in the tube to give him full coverage.

I was like, "Oh, well we can still do it, it'll just be a shorter candle."

"No way!" he said. "Tracie, I ain't goin' out like that." He insisted we start over, since he wanted it to be longest candle it could possibly be. At this point, with all the thermometers, measuring cups, bowls, powder and whatevs, my bedroom was starting to look like a meth lab.

We decided to take a break. All the stopping and starting of making out and oral sex and fingering that had been going on had proven to be really frustrating but also kind of an exciting form of foreplay, since we were repeatedly forced to put the breaks on. By the time we sat down on the bed together, we just started going at it, and after a few minutes, I was like, "Why don't we forget about the candle for now and you just fuck me." So he did. Twice.

In the morning, I melted the chocolate to put in the molds. They were expired or something and were all white. They look like Junior Mints but they're not.

I poured the melted chocolate into the molds and let them set for 5 minutes. My vulva came out looking like a diseased turd.

I'd like to take the time to reiterate that it DOES NOT LOOK LIKE THAT IN REAL LIFE. Got it?

And here's the cocklate:

I told you he was curved!

Point being, there are a variety of horrible-looking products on the market or that the handyman type can make himself to stretch the skin on his penis out [the link is safe for work, but the involuntary leg crossing may draw attention to you]. None of them look comfortable, and all of them would make me run screaming in horror from a man I found utilizing them. All of them require months to years of use to grow skin back over the head of a man's penis.

On the other hand, women are having collagen injected into the fronts of their vaginal walls, their vaginas remade and their labia surgically sculpted, all of which is probably more dangerous and definitely just another way of trying to live up to some ideal of what sex is supposed to be. So, yay equality? I guess?

[A side note from last week's discussion: medical research conducted in Africa shows that circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection in males by 50-60 percent. In one study in South Africa in particular, scientists stopped the trial after 18 months because the findings were so starkly in favor of circumcision that they felt it was unethical not to offer the uncircumcised participants circumcision. Yes, AIDS is not as big a problem here as in Africa, and, yes, condoms are more effective, but I think it's important to note that the scientific consensus, even at the UN, is slowly moving toward recommending circumcision for health reasons. I write this because someone is going to bring it up anyway in the comments and we should all read that information anyway. Knowledge is power or something.]

The Great Uncircumcision Debate [Time]
Restoration Devices [NORM]
Moving Forwards: UN Policy And Action On Male Circumcision (Part 3) [Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS]
Circumcision 'Reduces HIV Risk' [BBC News]

In addition to campaigning to end on-going circumcision practices, the movement has taken to endorsing a number of services and products that promise foreskin "restoration." Although, if you resent having your flap chopped, why would you be cool with attaching weights to your dick to get remaining flesh to move south — or put your penis in something called "The Tugger"? But that's just us. We're ladies. But ladies have some very strong feelings about dicks, too.

I, for one, have never seen an uncircumcised penis. (And I've only dated one Jew!) But family (and mine is a big, loud, immigrant Jewish one) is always at play, and if I ever had a son, I would want to have him circumcised, despite my otherwise latent religious practices. I have a friend, however, whose current boyfriend is not circumcised and claims that her relationship with him has helped her see the light. For her, this is dick as it should be: Whole and unrefined. Further more, she's convinced that circumcision is a form of mutilation and has sworn to never do it to any child of hers. Another friend refuses to sleep with anyone she discovers to be uncircumcised. So what's a girl to think about, as Auslander puts it, the foreskin's lament? Does an uncut member impact your sexual preferences and, subsequently, sex life? And does the debate also stir your motherly instincts, nascent or in action? And are the two impulses — what you'd want as a woman who has sex and what you'd want as a (potential or actual) mom — at odds with each other?

To Snip Or Not To Snip—That's Shalom's Question [New York Observer]