Cosmocking: May '11! Part One!

The new Cosmo is here! Blue cover! Hayley Williams! She looks vaguely "alternative-y" and against my better judgement I'm kind of charmed! But what's with the blatantly Photoshopped-on titties, seriously, this is being sold to straight women anyway, can't women ever just have a chest! "Call Him or Text: The New Rules!" There are no "rules" but the ones between the two of you; there isn't some Central Relationship Administration issuing these things! "This Sex Position Increases Female Orgasm by 56%!" I want to see the margin of error and p-value if you're gonna be that specific, Cosmo! "Look Sexy! Makeup That Flirts For You!" No thanks, I prefer to do my own flirting, because sometimes I don't wanna flirt with some people and the makeup wouldn't seem to allow for that!

Next, dust cheeks with pale pink blush and swipe a rosy gloss onto lips; blot to take down the shine (a semimatte finish is less girlie-girl).
I usually don't do the makeup and fashion sections, for the same reason that I don't review sailing magazines--I have no idea whatsoever about the subject matter. But this jumped out at me. Because if you really don't want to be "girlie-girl," couldn't you just, I dunno, use your skin? My skin is semimatte! And it even comes with pink cheeks! (I guess they're a little blotchy? Any guy who can't handle very slightly blotchy cheeks won't be able to handle a lot of things about me.)

A new survey found 74 percent of people search for their exes online. Here's why you do it...
65%: "I'm just curious."
16%: "Oh, I only look him up to confirm that letting me slip through his fingers ruined his life."
11%: "I want to make sure he's not dating someone hotter than me."
8%: "I need visual confirmation that he's fat and bald right now."
What's with the normalization of ex-hatred? I understand it if you broke up because he cheated or abused you or otherwise acted like an asshole (although then my preference is to never hear of him again, not to dig for schadenfruede), but what about breakups where you were in the wrong or it was just a "this isn't working" deal? It seems like Cosmo expects you to bitterly hate him then too. I don't want most of my exes to be bald or have ruined lives or be dating someone ugly (unless he, like, likes her)--I want them to be going on with their lives.

And it seems like ~65% of women feel the same way, but the survey wasn't set up to expect that. Apparently everyone doesn't hate their exes, but Cosmo really wants us to. It's some weird combination of "love doesn't count unless he's The One and it's for Forever" fairy-tale thinking and plain old "I am the center of the world" thinking. And it's being projected onto us despite actually not being a majority opinion.

"I'd made plans to go out with two guys one weekend and, in a ballsy move, decided to meet them the same time at the same restaurant to save time. I met one at 7:00 for drinks, and he headed out at 8:40 as I pretended to go to the bathroom before leaving. Then at 9:00, the second guy came to meet me for dinner. While we waited for our table at the bar, I felt like a badass... until, to my horror, the first guy returned to get the credit card he'd accidentally left there. He saw me with the other dude, stormed over, and told him everything. They both left in a huff.
That's not a True Confession. That's a scene from "Mrs. Doubtfire."

But really, this sounds like they were both first dates, and who expects to be exclusive before the first date? It's probably sort of gauche to let them actually run into each other (I wouldn't know; I live in a world so far from this bullshit that it's considered polite to introduce the people you're fucking to each other) but it's not some kind of terrible betrayal. Does love have to be Forever with The One before you've even had drinks?

"I Exposed a Boyfriend Stealer"
Okay, this is a really disturbing story. Cliff's Notes: the author is friends with a girl named Ali who comes to her sorority parties, gets sloppy drunk, and has drunk party sex with tons of guys, including other girls' boyfriends. But then the sorority sisters realize that Ali isn't really drinking that much, but is playing drunk to "excuse" having sex. So they serve her a cup of O'Doul's, and when she starts acting drunk, call her out, and, as people do in Cosmo stories, instead of going "what the fuck is wrong with you people," she slinks away in defeat and is never heard from again.
Ali wasn't drunk; she was just a skank.
Apparently it's okay to have sex drunk, but if you're sober, you're a filthy slut. Or it's even okay to sleep with other people's boyfriends drunk, but if you're sober, that makes it worse because... I guess because you were in control of your actions. So the idea of a woman having sex while not in control of her actions doesn't bother them? Or is it just the general idea that casual sex is never okay if you do it on purpose?

Also, the whole concept of guys being sentient beings who have some goddamn control over who they sleep with doesn't get a look in. A boyfriend who can be "stolen" by any girl who acts drunk and flirty wasn't exactly firmly committed to monogamy in the first place. And a boyfriend who's most interested by a girl who acts like she's so drunk she's not in control of herself is... kind of a rapist. Wouldn't want to lose that catch!

Q: What's the It nail shape right now?
A: The squoval
Oh Cosmo. Sometimes I think you're glossing over the widespread acceptance of campus rape, and sometimes... I just want to ruffle your hair and buy you a lollipop.


HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS MY WORK IS IN COSMO. HOLY SHIT I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING. There's a still of Cory Monteith in a movie I worked on, and he's working on a painting that I FUCKING PAINTED! Holy shit, y'all. That makes me famous now, right?

(Yes, I know this makes my real identity fairly easy to suss out. Do me a favor and don't be weird about it? I'm not Clark Kent here, I'm just trying to not show up on the first page of a casual Googling of my real name.)


75 Sex Moves His Ex Didn't Do
This title is incomplete. The full title should read, "75 Sex Moves His Ex Didn't Do And He Didn't Ask For." They're all things like:
"She didn't play with my nipples. They're sensitive, and I like it when a woman flicks them with her tongue."
In the entire length of the relationship, did he mention this? In most of the cases, it sounds like he didn't. Which is:

A) Just weird to me, because after a few months I know my partners' sexual preferences the way I know what they do at work and what kind of beer they drink--it's just something that comes up in a relationship.

B) Part of Cosmo's eternal Romance of Silence thing. Apparently if you ask for a sex act, then it doesn't "count" or something, because it's only sex if it just magically happens? That's the closest I can get to making sense of this.

Also, there's this. You're eighteen, Esteban. The photo kinda hammers home that you're still a boy. Chill the fuck out and learn to enjoy the sex you're having. Or come up with your own goddamn positions! What's with this "I resent her for not doing things I couldn't even think of" bullshit? That's the sort of thing that's awesome when a partner does it, but it's not their job, and particularly not when said partner is a high-schooler, for fuck's sake.

It's really creepy to think that there's this kind of pressure on high school girls, not just to put out (putting out is awesome when you do it because you're horny and you want to, but that's not the kind of pressure I'm talking about here), but to put out like porno superstars when they've barely lost their baby teeth. Not only is it plain old creepy, but it gives them no room to develop their own sexuality--if you're being pushed to always be a Mega Hottie Porn-Star-Experience Fuck, you don't have a lot of freedom to find out how you actually like to fuck.




That's all I can take right now. But I always stick it out to the bitter end (and accompanying weird phone-psychic and herbal-breast-enlargement ads), don't I? More later.