How many of you have tried to be the “fun fearless females” that Cosmopolitan claims it can train you to be?
I, too, once walked that path. However, behind the seemingly woman-positive rhetoric lies the dark secret of this magazine.
Cosmo does not usually teach you anything but how to maintain your appearance and your sexual prowess so that you can attract and keep men.
Is that hard to swallow? Do you need convincing?
Okay — let’s examine the cover of the October 2009 issue.
Megan Fox — an actress more famous for her sex appeal than her roles — overtakes the deceptively pro-woman pink cover in a short, somewhat low-cut pink dress posing as she might for Maxim.
The blurbs on the cover explain that the contents will teach us “Bad Girl Sex: These 12 Moves Will Show Him Your Really Naughty Side,” “One Question No Guy Can Resist,” “The Sexy Ass Workout: 2 Weeks to Tight Cheeks,” “’Hung:’ A Real Guy’s Story,” “What 81% of Men Expect on a First Date,” “Sex Panic: An ER Doc Reveals the Freakiest Down-There Emergencies Ever,” “The 26 Best Beauty Products,” and finally, way down in the lower corner, the socially conscious “True Crime: How She Outsmarted a Brutal Rapist.”
The blurbs Cosmo uses to entice us into reading reveal that this magazine has a male-centric view of women. This means that even though this magazine claims to be a women’s lifestyle magazine, it focuses its content and readers on men and men’s needs and desires rather than the needs and desires of women.
This issue only worsens once opened.
One-hundred thirty-three of the 244 pages are advertisements — mostly for cosmetics, diets or diet supplements, hair care or color. That’s about 54 percent of the magazine dedicated to sell products aimed mostly at helping women become the sort of women Cosmo claims men want.
Most of the other 46 percent explains explicitly how to set out bait for men and then keep them once they’ve been attracted.
“Get Naughty Tonight,” the article billed on the cover as “Bad Girl Sex,” is really about how to keep a man sexually interested in ways that do not necessarily promote any pleasure to the woman who chooses to use this advice. The focus is on how to surprise and please him. Any pleasure a woman gets is incidental.
“The Sexy Ass Workout” has nothing to do with getting in shape for health. It really is about how to get the perfect booty to land the perfect man.
It even comes with a guide to selecting jeans to better show off that sexy ass once it’s been achieved.
Interestingly, “What 81% of Men Expect on a First Date” actually has to do with how the economy has affected dating and romantic relationships entitled “Money & Love: The New Rules.” This could be an interesting article if it had appeared in a different magazine.
Unfortunately, many of the new rules are old ones — men still pay, wanting men that make money is OK and smart — as well as a guide on how to figure out what his finances are. Can you say gold-diggers?
So, ladies, to be Cosmogirls, we have to shift our attention from ourselves, our sexual pleasure, our health and our finances all onto his because, in the end, the man you want or have in your life is really all you need, right?
For those of you that are as repulsed by that idea as I am, spend your $4.29 on a less prescriptive magazine that focuses on women.
Karen Sisk is a Ph.D. student in creative writing, and she received her M.A. in English literature at Wright State.
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