Cosmocking

True Confession time:  I read Cosmo sex advice for years.  As my interest in women grew, and it was clear that Cosmo didn’t have any sex advice for queer girls (no kidding!), I stopped actually buying the dreck 9 or  10 years ago. Still, Ive been a faithful grocery-line reader until recently. Stopping even my free Cosmo peeks was part of an effort to reserve my attention for things that are positively beneficial for me and most of Cosmo’s advice seemed to fall into either the ‘boring’ or the ‘unsafe’ categories.

I guess you could say that Cosmo advice is beneficial, in that we all need a good laugh. But when you consider that people actually depend on its ill-informed, and sometimes downright dangerous advice – those articles on 77 sex positions in 77 days (ouch!) aren’t terribly funny anymore. But, a few people have recently put the funny back into Cosmo’s sex tips.  My current favorite is Holly Pervocracy’s Cosmocking series. A treat from the latest:

Your new guy wants to show you off to his posse at an upcoming house party.What do you wear? A numbered pinny and judging clipboard?

A. A slinky bandage dress that lets you flaunt your sick bod

B. Skinny jeans, a tank top, and ankle boots

C. The sexy mini your man loves you in plus a trendy tee

The correct answer is C. If it’s A you’re clearly too slutty and if it’s B you’re clearly too prudish.

I’m really starting to wish this slut/prude stuff came with diagrams. If you want to slut-shame, fine*, but at least tell me what a slut is! If dressing like a slut is so terrible, can we establish some universal standard of what that even looks like? It’s irrational enough to say “these are the good clothes and these are the naughty clothes,” but when you extend that to “you mustn’t wear naughty clothes and you should just know which those are,” you completely break my brain.
I guess I’ll go to the party wearing my usual party outfit: shorts or underpants and my own exceedingly comfortable skin. See, no “slutty” clothes at all!
…unless my shorts are a little too short, I guess, or my underpants are black or lacy or something. That could look sort of slutty.

*not actually fine

Beautiful.  Enjoy further Cosmocking here.
Sex is Fun devotes an entire podcast to Cosmocking. The Sex is Fun team actually try some of the Cosmo tips and report back on how they worked.  Surprisingly (at least to me) they aren’t all bad. Kidder notes that many of Cosmo’s suggestions are watered-down (if ill-informed) versions of  common senseplay activities. The cockring made of pantyhose is found to only work with pantyhose that cost more than an actual cockring. Ironically,Gay Rick and his partner Cole were the most successful in getting  Cosmo’s advice to work, despite the magazine’s obvious constant equations, which Lorax correctly showed to be 1 man + 1 woman = the heterosexual couple that Cosmo always assumes. Oh well, math was never Barbie’s strong suit.