Column:
Cosmo gives 100 ways to please society, sexism
Published Sept. 29, 2009
Cosmopolitan magazine was a right of passage for me. I spent hours picking through issues from the grocery store, library, wherever, mentally filing away the various tips and tricks long before I ever even had sex. It was dirty, mildly taboo, and I loved it.
Through the passage of years, the formation and dissolution of relationships formed with those aforementioned tips, my relationship with Cosmo has become more complicated.
Cosmo holds a special position among women's magazines, the first of them to shed their puritanical garb under the reign of Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmo can be infuriatingly modern and misguided within the same issue.
Cosmo's idealized gender relations leave quite a bit to be desired. Although refreshing for its un-dramatic discussion of sex, Cosmo still offers a starry-eyed, cat vs. dog eye on relationships. Like watching a poor romantic comedy, men are infantilized creatures and women must rely on their looks, game playing and neuroses to catch and keep one. And yes, it is always men and women.
The heterosexism in Cosmo is obtuse. I don't think I have ever read a mention of a lesbian relationship in an issue. The onus of the relationship in Cosmo always lies with the woman.
Even in their sex sections headlines always scream "100 ways to pleasure your man," "sex tips your man loves" and every once in a while an article of achieving a female orgasm.
Therefore, the responsibility for male and female pleasure within the bedroom still lies with the woman. The weight on the Cosmo woman is enormous. Between being sexy, coy, vivacious and sometimes vicious, she also always has to worry about the plethora of dangers lurking in their life section.
Even worse than the problematic depictions of gender, some of the heavier articles in Cosmo's life stories and health can be frightening. Such was the case when Cosmo coined the term "grey rape" to refer to non-consensual sexual encounters not necessarily violent.
I can understand the intentions, to give women who cannot bring themselves to describe their incidents as one of rape, a word to describe their experiences. Yet the article reeked of moralization and the salient notion that at the end of the day these women put themselves into risky situations. Instead of a calling a spade a spade, we live in a society that uses external factors (clothing, blood alcohol content) to deny women sovereignty over their bodies.
And don't get me started on the health section. Maybe it's my neuroses, but Cosmo has given me a never-ending list of paranoid health worries. Ovarian cancer, breast cancer at 21, menopause at 22, death from misdiagnosed brain tumors, skin cancer, meningitis and the list continues. Don't be mistaken, I'm all for open information about women's health, but this fear-mongering is a prescription for my hypochondria.
Yet, I still read it. I take pride in that I don't have a subscription nor do I buy it. But if it's lying around, I still take a peek, sometimes to giggle at the clumsy sex and relationship advice with friends. Sometimes to roll my eyes at the way women are still defined by internalized sexism. Sometimes just for the nostalgia.
For better or worse, Cosmo was an integral part of my coming of age and as a wise man-band once said, it's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.
3:41 a.m., April 14, 2011
joe from tampa said:
i think in many ways women perpetuate sexist attitudes. certainly males were primarily responsible in the past, infact for most of history, but you'd be hard pressed to deny that women still seem to expect all the priviledges which come with being a woman: door holding, they can hit a man but a man cant hit them, man buys the dinner/movie tickets on a date, etc. as a male, i think men have come a long way in respecting women compared to how it was even 50 years ago, and women should begin to cross the aisle to equality as well by giving up some of these ingrained priviledges which are the foundation of modern sexism in my view.