[Los Angeles, October 22. Image via INF]

We didn't realize that when we learned to tie knots in Brownies, the Girl Scouts of America were actually preparing us to "turn him into our love slave" (Fig. 1) Otherwise, the November issue is actually more about being a good partner (i.e. giving in to all of your boyfriend's desires) than a "bad girl." The article "What He's Really Thinking During Sex" claims to be "educational for maximizing your pleasure," but all we learned is that the handful of guys interviewed like Brazilian waxes, feel push up bras are deceitful, and are bored by the sight of their fiancée's naked body. And then there's Jeremy, 27, who says:

When you reach in a girl's pants it's like an exploratory thing: You're reaching around, hoping you don't feel anything weird. And if I am in there and feel some kind of bump or something, I'm like, Excuse me, but what the hell is that?

Maybe it's good that Jeremy is so vigilant about STDs, but are most guys really that focused on checking for abnormal growths? We may never know, because according to Cosmo, it isn't our place to question men about their thoughts or actions. The article "The Six Worst Things You Can Say To a Guy," advises that if a man is unreasonably upset about something minor like running late, we should just apologize, not tell him to lighten up. And we should never ask a guy, "Can you really afford that?" because, "It'll make him associate you with the least sexy, least desirable women in his life: Mom." Who knew men had such terrible Mommy issues?

(Click the image below to enlarge.)

Fig. 1

Like just about every Megan Fox interview, her comments veer from annoying to awesome... sometimes in the same paragraph. We're tired of hearing about how she's "completely, hysterically insecure" about her appearance and hates people looking at her (well, that goes for all starlets). But then she admits to Cosmo that she lies in interviews because she's bored. Whether quotes like, "male actors drop lines about their private jets, trying to seem powerful, but I don't give a shit. I don't need someone else's power. I'm obtaining my own" are true or not, they're certainly entertaining. Sadly, the rest of the magazine doesn't promote Megan's view of female power. In the article "Why He Calls You a Nag When You're Not," writer Matt Titus informs us that, "No matter how much we love you, we're only capable of listening to about 20 percent of what you have to say." According to his armchair psychoanalysis:

"In guys' minds we already did everything a woman (i.e. Mom) asked for 18 years, and it almost killed us. But now that we are, ahem, all grown up, we don't want to be told what to do. If we do everything our girlfriends and wives say, we will actually lose our manly status and turn into children again. Yes, we really think that."

Titus offers a tip for ladies who want to get their man to do what they want without nagging: simply walk out of the room when he's doing something that bothers you. In Cosmo's world playing games is always preferable to having a civilized conversation or treating guys like fellow human beings. But, that goes both ways. Our favorite sex tip from this issue involves your boyfriend treating you like a piece of meat... literally:

Have him tie your hands with a scarf and hang them on a hook on his door (the kind you would hang your coat or towel on) before he tantalizes you with oral. Since you'll feel totally like his sex toy, you can add to the arousal of being restrained by begging him to "release" you and let you orgasm."

What could be hotter than having sex while hanging from a meat hook? Oh right, using your dirty thong as a hair tie.

(Click on the image below to enlarge.)

Earlier: Cosmo: Wear Your Dirty Panties Around Your Ponytail

Sex Panic, Bad Girl Sex, The Sexy Ass Workout - at Cosmo, every day is your Sexiest! Day! Ever!


Cosmo's Man Manual claims to teach you to read his body language, but for some reason, this shot does not say "I love you." It's somewhere between the pensive stare you see on soap operas and the look you give someone before you hit them with an ice pick.


Cosmo ain't sayin' you a gold digger/you just ain't messin' with no broke frat boys. 59% of the magazine's readers say that they would "be more likely to go out with" a guy they're on the fence about if he was a baller. The also got Helen Fisher to say it's due to our lady biology. Cosmo's conclusion? "So when you're checking out a guy's designer clothes, as 74 percent of you do, you're really instinctually sussing out his resources."


Still wondering how to nab that Armani suit collar popper? Cosmo helps you figure out how much cash you can take him for by providing evasive questions. So posing a hypothetical about a friend struggling with debt really allows you to see if he has a negative credit score. Cosmo's expert, Pepper Schwartz, says "If he brushes it off as a common mistake, he might have a bad credit history himself." Or, he may be politely telling you to mind your own business.


On a date with Richie Rich and you need to impress him? Try using your thong (the one you currently have on) as a hair tie! It's supposed to sub in for your ponytail holder/cock ring in a pinch, but do I really need my lady juices all up in my hair? (My test panel consisting of four guys I can quickly call to fact check all had the same reaction: eww, why?)


Another sure fire way to impress a dude on a date? Act like an asshole. Cosmo advises us to get a free beer "without using your boobs" by grabbing an empty bottle, filling it with warm water in the bathroom then handing it back to the overworked bartender while accusing them of serving you a warm beer. Classy!


Later, we hear the tale of a guy with a 9 3/4ths-inch dick who calls it The Hammer and wraps his flaccid dick around his wrist as a party trick. His girlfriend won him over by telling his friends her "big vagina" could handle the Hammer.


The magazine's Sex 911 article leads with the horrifying "His Penis 'Broke' During Extra Vigorous Sex." The doc explains that we shouldn't thrust so high and wildly while on top, but how does that go with the sex advice on page 129? Am I supposed to control my thrust while doing the on-his-dick-back-bend-over-the-couch you describe?


Note to Cosmo: Being cocky only works when you can back it up with action. "Redesigning your company's Website...and have no freakin' idea what you're doing" is not one of those times. The sassy poses you included in the side bar are not going to fix HTML fail.


Finally Megan Fox is about to be the victim of a drive by if she doesn't stop talking about Angelina Jolie. The tabloids have it backwards - she isn't stressed out because of Brad, she's stressed from this fake celeb beef/stalkerish admiration/compulsive comparison. The pull quote above is actually Fox referring to the fact that Jolie is aging gracefully.

So, will having many partners loosen you up? Cosmo's complete answer: "No." Well, at least we didn't get a lengthy made-up explanation for the made-up question. Although, we wish Cosmo's editors applied this kind of brevity to their other relationship articles, like "4 Signs He's Into You." According to their experts, if he's making fun of his friends in front of you, he's totally smitten and going to propose next week. Oh boy, this is the kind of advice that turns insignificant male actions into false hopes and unhealthy obsessions. Below find out what other useful tips the issue has for you:

These fantasies — helpfully printed on punch-out cards for you to take to bed with you — are actually fairly tame (example: "We've just been to a wedding, and we look pretty damn elegant . . ."). But that's okay, because sex in the Sexy Issue isn't just for fun, it's also a tool. Sex can help you lose weight (try reverse-cowgirl for maximum calorie-burning) and it can help you secretly find out if a guy is on the rebound (if he spoons you too much, he's not over his ex, and will probably never love you). Helen Gurley Brown may be gone from Cosmo, but it's still about her three favorite things: sex, being skinny, and manipulating men. So put on those wedding clothes, hook your guy up to his lie detector, and settle in for our version of this month's cover lines — we burned 40 calories writing them.

Helen Gurley Brown, octogenarian Cosmo Girl For Life and pioneer of man-catching, nipple-rougeing, semen facials and general proto-SATC chicanery, is being lauded in a new book by Jennifer Scanlon as a feminist icon. Some, oddly, scoff. Says the Wall Street Journal's Charlotte Hays, "Ms. Brown's relationship to the feminist movement has always been, at best, ambiguous. Yet Bad Girls Go Everywhere, the first full-length biography of Ms. Brown, is inexplicably devoted to claiming her "rightful place as a feminist trailblazer." Well, good luck."

We know the arguments "con" bedroom canonization: Brown's ethos seems to have taken the "women's liberation" concept, subbed in "girl" and "the sex part" and ignored everything else. She's said a lot of tone-deaf things, espoused the gospel of "Skinny is God" and seemed more committed to a blithe amorality - an "if you can't beat 'em, join' em! attitude - than the advance of her sex. If it's not fun, she seems to say, screw it.

That, her biographer would say, is kinda the point: semen facials, single sex, man-pleasin' - all this was taboo before HGB and represents a freedom of sexuality - and a fun attitude - that would have been impossible if we'd just left the Women's Movement to those serious debbie downer do-gooders with their comfy shoes and pale nips. Then too, when it comes to actual cred, Brown's always been unflagging in her support for women's choice. Brown may have made her bones on essays with titles like "How to Get Men to Give You Presents," but the very fact that she could be tongue-in-cheek about this stuff was, some would say, a weird kind of empowerment. Think Mad Men: these were the times, Brown was just making the best of them.

Of course, Brown was a product of her time, and if she hasn't dated very well, does this tarnish her accomplishments? Any list of feminist heroes is littered with women whose positions were beholden to their times and who were less-than-progressive in certain respects. The difference is, Brown was a contemporary of a lot of women whose legacies are less ambiguous - Betty Friedan, anyone? - and so "realities" like being a "kept woman" for a series of rich men, then forcing a guy to marry her when she thought she was too old, don't go down quite as easy. In Brown's world, fish needed not only bicycles, but deluxe ones.

How do we define "icons" or "heroes" anyway? I think part of our resistance to Brown is that her path doesn't seem to have been exactly difficult: she was already a rich woman with a richer husband when she got the gig and the time was ripe for her brand of self-serving, man-pleasing liberation. But the funny thing is, Brown probably never wanted to be anything but what she was - a glamorous, thin "girl" whose sassy exuberance must have felt remarkably fresh in ways we can't understand in our Cosmo-fatigued culture. Should she have evolved? Ideally - and to be a "feminist hero" she would have had to. Is her legacy a problematic one, giving vapid, man-pleasing acquisition the gloss of feminism? Well, yeah. But at the same time, would a site like ours exist without her? Probably not.

Says Hays, "Readers will be pardoned if they refrain from buying into the theorizing of Bad Girls Go Everywhere. Maybe Ms. Brown is best understood "merely" as a shrewd and ambitious woman who knew how to get what she wanted by exploiting the less-elevated aspects of male desire — and how to publish a racy, self-help magazine for "girls" who wanted to be like her." Here's the question: is it her fault that there were - and are - so many?

The Secrets Of Her Success [Wall Street Journal]

Earlier: Sex & The Single Girl: Why Cosmo's Helen Gurley Brown Got Canned
Helen Gurley Brown Still Alive & Kicking; Still Hates Her Muffin-Top
Is Rubbing Cum All Over Your Face The Secret To Eternal Youth?
Oldie But Baddie

Cosmo's list was compiled by WB.com actor Ryan Hansen (who maybe should've added "That you've heard of me" to his wishes). In his top 10, he included that he wishes women knew that we look better without makeup, that we can use our breasts to grab men's attention, that men like it when we laugh at their jokes, and that we aren't supposed to poop.

Here's what we wish guys knew we know:
1.) We know the heterosexual among you you like boobs. We know they have multiple uses — like getting your attention — besides feeding infants. We just wish you knew that part, too.

2.) We know that you think we look just as good without makeup, and that we walk faster when we're not wearing heels. But we wish you knew that you are not our concern when we're getting dolled up. We dress to impress gay men and other women.

3.) We know that you like it when we laugh at your jokes. And we do — perhaps too often — even when they're not all that funny. Actually, many of us are more likely to fake laughter than orgasms, out of politeness.

4.) We know you think we're crazy at times. All you really need to know is that there is, indeed, a method to our "madness".

5.) We know that we have friends who can be total bitches. We wish you could even begin to know and understand the complexity of female relationships.

6.) We know that many of you like to pretend that our butt holes are strictly for anal sex (and, if we're lucky, some rimming), and that you don't want to hear about our bowel movements. We wish you knew that we don't give a shit, and that we will always talk about poop.

7.) We know that you don't like it when we make you look stupid in front of your friends. We wish you knew that you don't need us to make you look stupid in front of your friends.

8.) We know when our nipples are hard. And we know when you're staring.

9.) We know every hint, and pick up on every subtlety made in regards to getting a blow job. We wish you knew that if it ain't happening, it ain't happening.

10.) We know that you can sometimes smell our periods when we haven't showered. We wish we knew what to tell you about that, other than: "breathe through your mouth"

Ryan Hansen: 10 Things Guys Wish You Knew [Cosmopolitan]

While the movie had its flaws (it sucked), at least Mitra's character, Sonja, delivered fatal blows to her enemies — often from horseback — with a swift, sure thrust of her shimmering blade. But the magazine's "From Dusk Til Dawn" photo spread casts Mitra as a helpless babe in the woods.

Here, Mitra looks lovely, modeling a dress, which, of course, is the point of this fashion shoot.

This shot is not offensive, but the text — "maybe the hunter would become the hunted" — promises a femme fatale storyline which never manifests.

Here's the problem: Maybe the Cosmo editors didn't want to have Mitra as a vampire (even though she plays one in the movie she's promoting), so they hired some dude to play a bloodsucker. Why does she have to be so passive?

Is this what Cosmo readers want to see? The heroine of a fantasy film being dragged around by a dude who uses a flatiron?

She found it "impossible to resist" this guy? Or she was forced to sit still as he caressed her for this shot?


"Mall Cop" stays on top at box office [Reuters]
Cosmopolitan.com [Official Site]

#1 "…Make him lose his shirt."
There's a one-page layout in the front of the book that offers a handful of random ideas on want to do in the month of December. The different suggestions are wholly unrelated and don't seem to work toward a common goal, other to give women who have no idea how to spend the next 31 days something to do, but one of them is sex advice related:

Why don't you make him lose his shirt. Betting on funny stuff with your guy will turn this into one very sexy month. For example, wager whether your your boss will rock his reindeer tie at the office party. Competition amps up sexual tension, so once you win, ask for a heavenly full-body massage.

I was down with this one, as I love massages, sexual tension, and gambling. My man and I were already in the middle of a Trivial Pursuit kick when I happened upon this tip, so I suggested that the next time we play, we ante up some sex acts. He loved this. I, of course, opted for a full body massage, per Cosmo's wisdom, and then I received this email of the top five sex acts he'd like if he won, that he sent from work:

1) Full BJ: no time limit, no evidence (as in: swallowing)
2) Titty spray!
3) Um, how bout Hitachi plus doggy-style plus lubed finger in ass? That
could be good.
4) Interbreastsial coitus followed by jizz reservoir in that little throat
valley (you can throw in the Hitachi cuz I'm not a sore winner)
5) A long, luxurious foot rub. Kidding! Ball trim into HJ into ride em
cowboy, silly!

And that's just off the top of my head! Better brush up on your sports...

The only one I wasn't into was number one, mainly because the volume of his ejaculate is so freakishly large that I don't think I'd be able to handle it without some coming out of my nose. The next time we played Trivial Pursuit, I won. By the time we were done, though, I was too tired to cash in on my full body rub. (I wanted the works and didn't want to use up my massage on a quickie rub down.) The next day we played, but I was three sheets to the wind and feeling sick, so no one was feeling sexy. We played again the next night (we haven't been getting out much), and it took us both so long to actually land in the center spot and answer correctly that when he finally won I had to go to bed, so I told him he'd have to take a rain check, which he's yet to cash.

Now there's this slight tension between us because we spend our down time after work playing long ass board games that go till all hours of the morning, leaving me too tired to make good on his sex wagers. He thought that there was something wrong because I had this awesome fun idea to boost our sex life, but hadn't followed through on the sex. It had gotten to this point where I felt like we couldn't have sex again until I can fulfill one of the acts listed above, so I was avoiding sex altogether, kinda like when you mean to return an email correspondence, but then you forget, and then before you know it, too much time has passed. In the meantime, he's all worried that I'm one of those mythical women who, once she's gotten a man to make a lifelong commitment, they suddenly stops putting out. Thanks, Cosmo, for giving us an issue I never thought I'd ever encounter.

#2 "Four Sex Surprises Guys Love"
On page 72, Cosmo tells me that guys are "truly blown away when you throw a little unexpected twist into the mix—which is not to say that you need to be crazy. Just try one of these subtle suggestions to have the desired effect." Okay, I thought, this should be pretty awesome. First one up:

a.) Get Frisky Before Freshening
Um, done and done. I work from home, which means I rarely get out of a muumuu or my PJs, even when walking the dog, so seeing me all done up has turned into a rare occasion for the dude. Secondly, ever since I discovered dry shampoo, I've pretty much whittled down my hygiene practices to a weekly shower. To put it nicely, I can't remember the last time we had sex and I couldn't smell my own butt.

b.) Be His Steamy Alarm Clock
Apparently, "every guy fantasizes about being woken up by a woman who's already gotten the action started." I interpreted this to mean that when a guy has morning wood, you're supposed to start sucking on it before he wakes up. This was a total fail on my part. I have to wake up really early for work, and I keep my laptop next to my bed and jump right into my day as soon as I open my eyes. Each morning, I mentally debated an attempt at this, but I was always too busy, and frankly, if I'm gonna crawl back into bed with him, you best believe my pillow, not his penis, will be receiving head.

c.) Stay Semiclothed
OK, TMI time! I was wearing some nude thigh-length Spanx, and I was trying to avoid having the dude see me in them, because I feel they were the antithesis of sexy. But he walked in on me getting changed and he was like, "What are you wearing."
I mumbled, "A girdle."
Confused he said, "A girl hole?"
And I was like, "No, it's Spanx. It's like a girdle, but actually, it does kind of have a 'girl hole.'" And then I showed him the easy-access crotch-opening, and his face lit up. Then he ate me out through my "girl hole."

d.) Turn On The Lights
Snooze. But yeah, check. It's kinda the same either way, I think.

#3 "Sex Up Your Primping"
In a little blurb on page 115, Cosmo tells me to put on my makeup while half-dressed. However, what Cosmo doesn't know is that I put on my makeup stark naked while listening to T.I., and my fiancé seems to really enjoy it.

#4 "Make Sex Even Sexier"
In a two-page spread, Cosmo urges me to "get all five senses working at once" while having sex, and provides a "sensory menu" for me to follow. I was a little concerned about this one (see #2, part A), but I went for it. The three menus are broken down into Sensual, Spicy, and Steamy.

For "sensual" I was supposed to eat chocolate with him, look into his eyes, light a candle, assemble a playlist of sexy songs and get naked in flannel sheets. Instead, we ate Andy Capp Hot Fries, looked at the TV, lit cigarettes and lounged naked in my T-shirt sheets. It was great!

The "spicy" menu wanted me to listen to world music. I'd rather never have sex again than have sex with a man who would be able to maintain an erection while listening to that stuff.

The "steamy" menu required me to go on a tropical vacation and do some stuff with coconuts. I'll get back to you on how this worked out when I win the lottery.

So that's it. For the most part, I think these tips made my sex life a lot more generic than normal, however, I'm still working on paying off my debt of the sex bet. I'm good for it, I swear!

Cosmpolitan [Official Site]

Earlier: Well Isn't The Cosmo "Sexy Issue" Just A Sexy Breath Of Fresh Sexual Sexy Sex Air!

Unfortunately, we're having trouble tracking down the cover of the April 2000 issue of Glamour (any leads? email me.) But our own Anna was employed at Glamour in 2000, and she says: "The rumor around the office was that the magazine was getting letters of complaint." Apparently kids in supermarket checkout lines were all, "Mommy, what's an orgasm face?"

But the worst part of this whole thing, of course, is the manufactured insecurity this kind of story is designed to instill. It's not enough that you have to worry about your pores, your body hair and your weight: Now you need to think about what you look like while in the throes of ecstasy. Because at the very moment when you're about to shudder from paroxysms of delight, your man is judging you. Didn't you know? And really, who cares how you're feeling in bed. What is he thinking? That's ladymag gold.

Jessica Simpson Gives Us the Usual Fare For Cosmo [PopSugar]
Glossy Garbage [American Family Association]
What Do You Think When You See Her Orgasm Face? [FAQs]

'Cosmopolitan' Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man [Onion News Network]

Aliens that resemble "little people who look strange to us" and possess technology that is much more "sophisticated" than ours and if they weren't so goddamn peaceful "we'd be gone by now." Which me wonder — and here's your "Jezebel angle," dykes! — are women more or less likely than men to believe this guy. Surely someone has polled them!

Okay, if you said "men" you can pat yourself on your surface area because 69% of men believe in life on other planets, to 51% of women, which reminded me I recently got an email from my uncle, an uncle who used to work at NASA, because he has a daughter who is somehow involved in this whole John Edwards love child scandal, and he thinks it is a shame that the mainstream media is not paying enough attention to it, not because it is so epically important but for the fact that he gave up on the space program a long time ago; decided it was a waste of money, that it was always going to be struggling for funding and relevance because too large a portion of its purpose was devoted to the investigation of Unknown Unknowns as they say, and people — women especially! I have the data to prove it! — don't really care much for investigating things they can't really control, which one one hand is fair enough, but on another hand, leaves us wasting time gossiping — oh my God, when in the UK I read this survey that said 80% of British women's workdays is spent somehow on gossip, which sounds doubtful to me but I can't prove it either way — about people and things we cannot control but at least know to be real, because they are incessantly being photographed, to the point that when some piece of gossip occurs like the Edwards scandal, whose credibility as I see it is primarily being undermined by the fact that we do not want it to be true, for the sake of Elizabeth or the children or whatever — we ignore it as part of an interesting new tradition I might call "Original Cynicism." We ignore it because we do not want to believe human nature to be that bad, even though we fully know it to be capable of far crueler, so we shut it out I guess and move on to the next animal picture, which is fine, sure, but puppies are not the beings with the far superior technology which could be deployed to obliterate us in a millisecond! Were their intentions malevolent. Which the aliens', apparently, are not! How interesting, right? That they are superior to us, and at the same time also possibly kinder! But Moe that is so sappy, you say, is that how you are going to end this post? But what can I say folks, if you have gotten this far into any of my posts without saying "I call bullshit" or "This makes no sense" you have made everything worthwhile for the past year and a half.

Aliens Exist, But NASA Covers Them Up, Says Astronaut [Telegraph]
Ed Mitchell Apollo 14
Edgar Mitchell [Wikipedia]
Do Americans Believe In Life On Other Planets? [Cosmic Paradigm]

I did the quiz again and chose B), and that got me labeled "Blindly Ambitious," which, in Cosmo world, is a no no. Because showing your ambition makes you seem like an undainty "bulldozer," and nobody likes that in a lady. Just for the good of womanity, I took the quiz a third time, and chose C) and other answers that were similarly manipulative. Like for the question, what do you do when you hear that your crush is dating another girl, you're supposed to "Snoop around to find out how serious they are. If it's just a casual thing, you can still make a play for him." When I choose those sorts of passive aggressive responses, Cosmo was delighted, and called me a "savvy goal-getter" who could manage to be simultaneously "likely to succeed…and likable." Sigh. The takeaway: stabbing your coworkers and friends in the back with your fuck-me heels is a-ok by Cosmo standards as long as you have a shit-eating grin on your perfectly glossed lips.

Are You Destined For Success? [Cosmopolitan]

Yeah, that's right: RAPE! An endlessly thrilling topic, whatever the social context! Especially at the beach, I can totally see this playing out so well:

DUDE: Hey, hotness. The keg may be tapped, but I can show you a clothes dryer where a quarter-bottle of Malibu has our names engraved on them…

'COSMO' READER: Um, cool! So like, did you know, that if you slip something in my drink, I can totally find out if you had sex with my unconscious body the next day without having to drag the police into it?

Seriously though, rape should get talked about more, but it's odd to see Cosmo suggesting it's as simple and no-big-thang as, say, sticking a finger in his ass while you're in reverse cowgirl. But hey! Maybe I'm just old and rape is now so just so common it's lost its stigma as a discussion topic. How awesome would that be?

Cosmo

So, Why Do Girls Still Want To Be WAGs? (May) enlightened me so much that I'm considering giving up my A-Levels and taking a regular spot in a trendy bar, in the hope that I'll bump into a footballer, marry him and life will be complete. Seriously, though, what's wrong with these girls? Do they honestly think dating some rich guy before he gts bored and moves on to the next woman is fulfilling? Wouldn't helping starving children be more worthwhile? I'm a female football fan (yes, we do exist, and I don't have huge muscles and the ability to burp the national anthem) so next time I'm standing out in the cold watching my team, I may well hang around in the hope of grabbing a footballer to spend the rest of my life with. At least I could discus the offside rule with him!"