As human beings, there are a few things that are essential to our well-being.
Food, one of them.
Clothes and Shelter? Those too.
“Mind-Blowing” Orgasms and Sex Positions? Not so much.
It surprises me that a certain sexually explicit women’s magazine (let’s call it “Cos-no”) seems to be everywhere we acquire our essentials. It’s difficult to even get groceries without a shiny, plastic woman staring out from a cage of headlines about tips and surveys and polls. My own experience in reading this magazine has rotated between utter disgust at the innate stereotypes and vague entertainment at its ridiculousness. I shudder to think anyone, especially my fellow college ladies, are reading “Cos-no” for anything more than entertainment.
My main problem is the advice. For a magazine to profess that it understands the needs of women, it has to first understand the needs of a normal human being. While everything in the love and lust category is indeed important to us, it doesn’t normally consume us. Women have, you know, goals. Surprise! Maybe a hope here or there, or even some aspiration floating near our fingertips. I’m not denying the presence sex has in our lives, but this magazine patches out life like a sleazy Viagra commercial on after hours TV.
Does anyone have enough sex for the advice that “Cos-no” dishes out? Every issue I’ve ever spotted on a magazine rack has some promised, secret technique for seduction, “positioning”, or foreplay. These secrets not only pander to a subconscious need in a partner, but promise to paralyze them and cause cranial combustion*. Maybe it wouldn’t be half as bad if the advice was useful, but my look into this magazine’s headlines for April gave me no doubt that they’ve run out of advice to give. Here are 5 of my favorite examples of senseless advice from their issue’s title article, ’50 Ways to Seduce Him in Seconds’.
“Wake him up in the morning by sucking on his finger as if it’s his penis.”
Let’s face it. Most mornings, when we wake up, we’re focused on stumbling to the bathroom, or just going back to bed. I can’t stand waking up with one of my roommates happening to look in my direction. I couldn’t imagine anything that would freak me out more than waking up to my finger in anyone’s mouth. Also, without getting into the logistics of oral, that would be some absurdly intense finger sucking to wake up to. Don’t ever do this. Just go back to bed.
“Scoop an ice cube out of his drink, and drop it down your blouse… then lean back and tell him to find it.”
Something that slightly gets me about this is the fact that they don’t allude to where exactly this should be happening. Is this supposed to happen in your house, in a restaurant, a car? There are so many possibilities, and ambiguous advice is the worst kind. No one wants to sit in Olive Garden and watch you and your boyfriend fish ice cubes out of your shirt. Not to mention the fact that this is entirely unnecessary. Since when does a guy need a reason to go down your shirt if he already knows he has access? Save the ice cubes for something a little more intimate, and let his drinks stay cool and refreshing.
“When you come back to gym, walk right up to him and say, ‘The whole time I was on the treadmill, all I was thinking about was how much I wanted to go down on you.’ ”
Just … what. Who would do this and why does it seem like it would be a good idea? My time at the gym is most ordinarily spent convincing myself to stay the full two hours I intend to work out, and pumping myself up to actually finish my sets. What girl is in her last stretch on the treadmill and pumps herself up by thinking about doing the dirty on her boyfriend when she’s done? Thank you “Cos-no”, for once again assuming that everything women do has to do with making some guy happy. That’s not a negative stereotype about women that you reinforce in the half of your magazine that is in words and not pictures. Keeping in mind that this is from an easy seduction article, what guy would actually be turned on by this? It seems like something a guy would be weirded out by. Go take a shower. That seems more like the first order of business when you get home from the gym.
“Stare longingly at his package for a few seconds.”
Unfortunately the only examples of ‘longing stares’ I have in my head are those of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in Twilight. I feel as though looking at any guy’s package as if it loved me and also wanted to suck my blood is disorienting on to many levels of comprehension. There are better ways to make a guy feel wanted than to just stare at his genitalia. Even then, is there a guy who sees a girl looking at his genitalia and thinks “Egad! Time to use it!” If there were any guys like this, I’m pretty sure the blue lights on campus would see a lot more action.
“You know those treats you find at the bottom of a cereal box? One morning, I hid the new finger vibrator I’d just gotten in my guy’s cereal for him to discover. – Lisa”
Notice that in this testimonial-seduction tip from Lisa she doesn’t exactly elaborate on how her guy reacted to the discovery of a finger vibrator in his cereal. What if he’s the kind of guy who pours the milk first? What if he didn’t notice until he was biting into the little buzzer? Please don’t use this to spice up the morning-after, because it will only serve to make things awkward. Don’t do this ever. Leave his Trix alone.
Bottom line? Read “Cos-no” for the laughs because I’m pretty sure that they know they’re a joke. Don’t take the advice.