Cosmo SSL Review - Jan 2013 #1

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Waiting in line during Christmas shopping, Charlie and I saw the Jan 2013 Cosmopolitan Magazine: With Bonus Big Fat Astrology Guide to Your Love Life in 2013! So we were thumbing through it, and since we were on a kind of money bleeding splurge anyway, we decided to buy it. I say it was a good buy, too. Not only did I find out that I should be careful who I vent my job frustrations to, but it (as Cosmos always do) also has tons of discussions of female orgasm, which are begging to be SSL critiqued.

In all seriousness, Cosmo is something that young women and teenagers love to get their hands on. It is supposed to be for adult professional women, but honestly, it reads like a spicier version of Seventeen, and a lot of young people get their early learnings about orgasm from it. It is influential in this way, and so I think it should be critiqued harshly and often.

So, as I'm reading this Cosmo, I am noting articles that discuss female orgasm and writing SSL Review posts for each of them. This is the first, and it involves the section called "Confessions."  It's just like YM magazine's "Say Anything" column about readers' most embarrassing moments, and although it's more sexy, the things discussed as "embarrassing" are just as juvenile.

Anyway, Christine K. writes in saying that after a few dates with a guy, she invited him over for a night in to watch some movies, which she said "we both knew was code for hooking up." Ol' Christine K. was cleaning up the apartment furiously the day of, and had stuffed all her random knickknancks into her bedside table. Well, the lovebirds were all snuggled in her bed about to start watching a movie, when her man asked where the remote was...and well let me have her tell you the rest.

I remembered I'd thrown it into the drawer of my bedside table with the other clutter when I was cleaning, so I told him to reach in there and get it, since it was on his side. Well, he grabbed what he thought was my remote control...and pulled out my vibrator! I was so embarrassed, I couldn't even get into the mood after that. #SexFail
-Christine K.

 Come on, since when is the uncovering of a vibrator a Sex Fail? That's a Sex Win! Seriously though, this is a grown ass woman who invited a grown ass man over to her home with the shared assumption that the two will engage in sexual acts. Yet, for some reason, the very idea that this grown, clearly sexual woman might own a vibrator is somehow appalling and humiliating. Is it that he might know that she, gasp, masturbates? Is it that seeing a vibrator might let on to her man friend that she is, my lord, interested in sex (even though she already invited him over for what she and he both know is for a sexual encounter)? It just seems exceedingly silly and ridiculous that a woman would be so mortified by a potential lover finding her vibrator; so mortified in fact that she completely lost interest in the sexual encounter. I mean, really, finding a vibrator should get the party started, not ruin the mood. I think this just goes to show how awkward our society still is about women and our endeavors into our own sexual pleasure.

It's unfortunate that a magazine supposedly promoting female sexual confidence would publish a letter about the finding of a vibrator by a potential male sex partner in a section about dirty secrets and embarrassing events. It just lets all the women (and particularly the very young women) reading this know that masturbating or taking your sexual pleasure into your own hands is so strange and mortifying, that it's a #SexFail. I'd call this a #CosmoFail

This article gets 1 vulva. It only misses the 0 vulva rating because it acknowledges that women own vibrators.

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