A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you.
—Anna Wintour
Pick up almost any women’s magazine on the stands today and there’s at least one article about sex. In a magazine like Cosmo, nearly equivalent to Playgirl in content these days, it’s more like a half dozen.
Unfortunately, the chick slicks aren’t always in touch with what’s going down between our sheets when it comes to sex and relationships, but you wouldn’t know it from advice columns, expert sources, and “reader” anecdotes that purport to know otherwise. We are told what to wear, how to act, and what to say, not only in the bedroom but also outside of it. We’re schooled on how to find and keep a man, how to blow his mind in bed, how to act around his friends, and when to suggest everything from shacking up to marriage to kids. We are told how to get our way, win a fight, negotiate a truce, and when to give in. It’s a collective primer, rehashed each month, on how to conform to narrow ideals of female sexuality and gender roles.
But what if you don’t conform to gender stereotypes or want to dress provocatively or slather yourself in chocolate syrup or leave hints about the ring you desire? And what would you think if you knew your boyfriend or husband were taking men’s magazine advice on how to get his way, delay commitment, finagle a threesome or that chocolate syrup thing, or how to skimp on the ring but make you love it anyway? A bit sexist, eh? Now consider this alternative: What if you wanted to delay commitment, have a threesome, split the chores equally, be the breadwinner, or enjoy an egalitarian relationship with a man—or even another woman—without having to squelch your own desires, independence, and sexual identity? Pretty liberating. Unfortunately, these are not ideals that get much play in the glossy pages of our magazines. Instead, women’s magazines tend to limit female sexuality to traditional heterosexual stereotypes, right down to the sex-play tips that rarely stray beyond predictable boundaries.
Insider Input
“As an older woman and a spokesperson for ageless sexuality, I find that my age group is largely invisible in the women’s magazines’ treatment of sexuality. The only exception is when they notice the gorgeous sex appeal of an older celebrity, like Helen Mirren. But celebrate the sexuality of the rest of us older women, or offer us sexual self-help? No, that’s only for those without wrinkles—or life experience!”
—Joan Price, author of Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex and Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty
In her 2001 study of Cosmopolitan and Playboy magazines, Nicole Krassas, PhD, an assistant professor of political science and women’s studies at Eastern Connecticut State University, found that women’s magazines contain a single vision of female sexuality—that “women should primarily concern themselves with attracting and sexually satisfying men.”1
The study showed that both men and women received the same messages about sexuality in two very different magazines, one aimed at men, the other women. The message: women are sexual objects and men view women as sexual objects.
GLOSSY FACT
A 1998 study in the Journal of Sex Research found that Seventeen magazine doubled the number of sexual stories they ran from 1974 to 1994, including articles on a wide variety of sexual topics, such as recreational sex. Other research showed that stories simultaneously encouraged girls to be sexually alluring while reminding them to be chaste.2
When it comes to women’s magazines overall, however, the blame does not rest squarely on Cosmo’s provocative shoulders. Nearly every glossy covers some aspect of sex from behind this narrow lens, albeit some more responsibly than others. Whether it’s the subtleties of improving marital sex in magazines like Red-book, or the more blatant pieces in Women’s Health or Glamour, with titles like “How to Turn Him on Again” and “The Top 25 Moves to Blow His Mind in Minutes,” the content shares a common message: Learn How to Please Your Man Before It’s Too Late.
It doesn’t help that there is an abundance of mixed messages as well: be coy and flirtatious to win his affections, but once you do, be hyperfocused on keeping your sexual dynamics titillating to avoid losing him, even at the expense of your own sensibilities and pleasure.
Fortunately, while yes, content hews pretty tightly to the dynamics of traditional heterosexual relationships between young attractive people, a shared redeeming quality among them is that in spite of the dredge and the dreck, the sensational and ridiculous, women’s magazines have consistently included news, insight, stories, and information about women’s sexual health, reproductive rights, family planning, STDs, cancer prevention and care, and sensitive topics like rape, abuse, and sexual dysfunction. And occasionally, between the quick and dirty “sex surveys,” skewed facts, and trumped up “expert advice,” content appears that surprises with its progressive prowoman take on sexual freedom and empowerment. This is why we keep coming back to these magazines, despite their failings.
One problem with sex articles in the women’s magazines is that they seem to lose sight of the fact that it is the woman who should be the focus here. Unfortunately, much of the content still surrounds the lone conviction that women need to know how to get a man, keep a man happy, please a man in bed, and prevent the loss of the relationship with a man. And if you do lose the man, here’s how to do it all over again next time.
Here’s a prime example of an article that focuses on how you can satisfy your guy’s sexual proclivities: “Kinky Lite, Sex Moves Guys Love.” Since it appears in the January 2012 Cosmo, it’s naturally treated more provocatively. The feature covers a spectrum of “kinky” acts—from ordering him not to get an erection when you go down on him to tying his hands to the headboard with his tie, and it comes complete with two sidebar symbol boxes for how kinky he thinks it is, from mild to freaky; and how often he wants to do it, from never to all the time. Interestingly, the one “freaky” suggestion that is actually empowering to women—hand him your vibrator and tell him to use it on himself while you watch—is not surprisingly also one of the only tips that earns a “never “in the how often he wants to do it rating. What else is off-kilter in this piece? We women were not asked to rate each of these acts. It’s simply assumed we’ll accommodate our man’s preferences, regardless of where the act falls on our spectrum of “never to all the time.”
Insider Input
“These types of articles teach women that sex isn’t about us or for us. Instead, it’s all about satisfying (or failing to satisfy) other people’s agendas for our body. It’s almost impossible to avoid absorbing that idea to some extent, if you’re a woman. And the consequences are serious: not only do we feel alienated from our bodies, not only do we feel like we’re failing all the time as women (because not one of us can live up to all those contradictory ideals), not only do we miss out on the pleasure and satisfaction that can come from exploring our sexuality on our own terms, but when we’re systematically alienated from our own desires, needs, and boundaries. . . . It can also leave us very vulnerable to people who want to do harm to us, or to manipulate us to their own ends.”
—Jaclyn Friedman, author of What You Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety
As luck would have it, this same issue contains excellent info in the Gyno Health Report, a regular column that’s combo Q&A and FYI of small tidbits of sexual health info such as, “why is my vagina ultrasensitive after orgasm?” and “if my guys’ penis is red and flakey, could this be an STD?” If more of Cosmo’s content contained interesting or useful sexual health and wellness information for young women readers with legit sexual health or even sexual behavior or relationship answers—rather than the how-to-please-your-man staples—Cosmo could be of much more value to young women. Too often, however, the sex stories are followed by relationship articles in the same mancentric manner that play upon gender stereotypes and women’s insecurities, like why your man is a commitment-phobe and how you can slyly bring him around to marriage and kids.
Krassas’ research reveals that pieces like these tell us how we should look and how we should act in order to attain sexual satisfaction and satisfy our man. They tell us how important sex is to our lives, and they “promote the idea that women should primarily concern themselves with attracting and sexually satisfying men.”3
And in that same how to please your man vein, there’s the February 2012 Glamour piece titled “Guy Pretty vs. Girl Pretty,” which discusses the subjective difference between what guys think is attractive on women and what women think is attractive. For instance, guys like a natural lip whereas women like red lipstick, and guys like a little mascara whereas women like shadow, liner, and a done-up eye like the smoky eye treatment every women’s mag shows you how to pull off on a monthly basis. Women apparently like short hair, but guys love it long. All of this to imply that women should just dump the lipstick, the eye shadow, and the short hair in favor of what guys want, or in this case, some archaic version of what Glamour says guys want since they also include things about how guys are creeped out by eyelash curlers, all manners of hair removal and giant hair bows.4 (Who the hell wears giant hair bows anymore?)
Of course, occasionally, sex content empowers women readers by providing the kinds of story angles that help women redefine their sexuality and play into the types of prowoman topics we want more of. Sometimes, the magazines—even the worst offenders among them—get it right, even if the topics are a bit over the top or intentionally titillating.
The January 2011 issue of Cosmo, for example, includes a feature titled, “Meet Your Other G-Spot!” The article, which is all about the pleasure that comes from nipple stimulation, goes into great depth about the hows and whys of nipple-induced orgasms. It cites research showing that sensations from the nipples travel to the same part of the brain as sensations from the vagina, clitoris, and cervix do.
At three pages, it stands out as one of that month’s biggest features. Broken into three parts, from beginner to intermediate to advanced, it tackles “nip action,” as the writer likes to call it, and outlines just how your partner should stimulate your nipples to help you achieve orgasm.
In a sympathetic turn, the article reassures women that it’s okay if you’re not nipple-sensitive. Not all bodies are created equal. If a nipple-induced big-O isn’t possible for you, no biggie, but if it is, fantastic! It’s one of those rare pieces focusing exclusively on the woman’s pleasure, which is refreshing, even inspiring. Similarly, the October 2011 Women’s Health ran a feature titled “Your New To-Do-It List: Being a Bit More Brazen in Bed Can Be the Ultimate Way to Boost Your Satisfaction.” Yay to WH for actually caring about us getting ours! The article encourages women to slip out of their comfort zone and try some new sex stuff—solely for our enjoyment. On the sexual to-dos were items like sext someone, use food play, read the Kama Sutra, or have your partner dress up.
Not all magazine content is as overt as Cosmo’s in perpetuating the narrow, one-size-fits-all ideal of female sexuality as distinctly heterosexual and vanilla. Others appear to be prowoman, but they nonetheless perpetuate traditional stereotypes of sex and relationships. In the January 2012 issue of Redbook, for example, a piece titled “The Best Love Advice. Period” couches sex within a love/relationship article that presumes to know the “best” ways for women to keep their marriage enlivened, happy, and healthy, yet in the real world, the range of a woman’s sensual triggers, cultural tastes, and emotional needs is as varied as each woman. The article offers a “best of” list, including the best time of day for “amazing sex,” the best movies about relationships, the best lingerie, the best mattress, the best two things to keep in your bedside table—which of course is the standard lube and a vibrator—the best shade to paint your bedroom, and the best sexy playlist. By their standards your best chance of enlivening your marriage is to watch The Notebook wearing a short, sexy nightie with matching panties (nothing too confusing to remove), in a room painted a lovely shade of Neptune’s Home; then turn on Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” and have sex on a mattress where you both can choose how firm or soft your side should be, like with a Sleep Number mattress, at six in the morning. (Oh, and don’t forget the standard-size vibrator if you really want to spice things up!)
Readers Respond
“When I was single, I read the sex articles more closely and usually wound up feeling incompetent or unusual. Now that I’m happily married, I usually either skip them, or read them with a huge grain of salt.”
—Anne, marketing consultant
But what if you fall outside this incredibly tight stereotype of “normal” female sexual experience? What if you’re—gasp!—gay? The messaging is anything but empowering. It’s alienating.
Take Laura Laing, author of Math for Grownups. She explains that when she was a tween, she was obsessed with reading Teen and Seventeen magazines. “My mother wouldn’t let me buy them until I was an actual teenager, and so on my thirteenth birthday, I walked through a blizzard to purchase my first copy of Teen from the local IGA. At the time, I had no idea I was a lesbian. Growing up in a small town, I was blissfully assuming that I would marry a man and live happily ever after.”
By the time Laing graduated from college, her life looked a lot different. “I had come out and was in a relationship with my current partner. Unlike most twentysomethings, I simply didn’t consider picking up Cosmo or Marie Claire. Not only could I not relate to the stories—“Make Your Man Happy in Bed”—but the decidedly antifeminist bent to most of the content was off-putting. In short, I couldn’t see myself in the pages.”
Nor can any woman who doesn’t conform to the heterosexual ideal.
What about women who are bisexual, or who like to dominate or initiate sex? Again, they’re largely absent from these glossies. As are women who’ve shown a sexual fluidity in which their sexual preferences and desires shift with age. These women won’t find themselves on the pages of the glossies either.
Noted sexual researcher Alfred Kinsey, along with his colleagues, developed the “Kinsey Scale” back in 1948, which showed that people did not fit into rigid heterosexual or homosexual categories. In Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, Kinsey writes, “Sexual behavior is either normal or abnormal, socially acceptable or unacceptable, heterosexual or homosexual; and many persons do not want to believe that there are gradations in these matters from one to the other extreme.”5
In fact, a 2011 study by the Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law found that 4 percent of the American population (or around ten million people) identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender.6 Unfortunately these groups aren’t represented in the perfumed pages of the chick slicks either.
What’s more, a 2011 study from Boise State University published in the Journal of Sex Research found that 60 percent of women surveyed had bisexual feelings that increased with age. Forty-five percent had kissed a woman, and 50 percent of respondents had fantasized about it.7
And while it’s tempting to chalk up this blatant blind eye to the old adage “write what you know,” some editors are actually knowingly perpetuating the schism between the narrow ideals printed in the glossies and the reality that there’s a rich spectrum of female sexuality outside the pages. For example, I wrote a sexual health article for one of the women’s magazines and mentioned that woman-on-woman sex had a somewhat lowered risk of certain STDs. In the pitch, the health editor wanted to know all about this, but when the final copy was approved by the editor-in-chief, all mention of lesbian sex was removed with the comment that “we don’t have enough gay readers to include this.”
Readers Respond
“To this day, I have absolutely no interest in so-called women’s magazines. Aside from the occasional salacious cover headline, like ‘Girls on Girls: When Sororities Go Queer,’ my sexuality was never included. The assumption was that all readers are straight, or at the least only experimentally gay. I can’t quite understand why sexuality is so narrowly focused in these publications, except for perhaps the assumption that lesbians are not interested in fashion or beauty. I’ve often thought that it is downright silly to polarize women’s sexuality in this way. Why not expand readership with stories like ‘Please Your Partner in Bed?’”
—Laura, author
Perhaps if they started including more diverse content, they would.
Universal stories about sex are presented as journalism, bursting with conjecture and woman-on-the-street quotes, and they are taken at face value by many readers. From the surveys to the experts to the lack of fact-checking, skewed data, or manufactured quotes, sadly they’re a demoralizing cultural phenomenon, shaping and reinforcing what women believe about men, sexual practices, orgasms, and relationships. Women’s magazines run carefully reported and fact-checked articles on subjects such as heart disease and retirement planning, yet some writers, editors, and fact-checkers involved in sex articles admit the editorial standards for them are seriously lacking.
Laurie Abraham, executive editor of Elle at the time she spoke at a Mediabistro panel, “The Pink Ghetto? Why Women’s Magazines Get No Respect,” explained that working with composite characters enable editors to alter quotes to suit their stories. She told the panel about writing a relationship article for a women’s magazine and how a quote from one of her sources about the number of times she had sex was changed because it didn’t jive with the editor’s perception. “This happens to any magazine that deals in these relationship stories, which involve interviewing a lot of people. They always do composites; they always take out information that is disconcerting. And that’s the way it works.”8
Seems sex stories may not come with as scrupulous a journalistic bent as other articles. Within professional circles I move there have long been reports that names are changed much more frequently surrounding sex articles, ages are altered to fit within the magazine’s demographic, and writers and editors often interview friends and family for sexual anecdotes, which is taboo in most other types of journalism. And who’s to say sex stories aren’t wildly mad-libbed? Just as articles are fashioned and constructed to fit the ideal by the editors and writers, sex pieces are notorious for being shoehorned into a box—a one-size-fits-all heterosexual formula wherein each piece of the sexy puzzle is plastered into place to make up the whole story. Did Marta S. from Minnesota really get busy under the blanket on a redeye flight to France in a piece that asks women what their most unusual location for sex was, or did Chrissy T. think that her black swan costume from last Halloween spiced up her love life in an article about breaking out of a boring sex routine? These “sexadotes” (sexual anecdotes) are ripe for skepticism; they may or may not be complete fabrications to fit a storyline, depending on what the editors want to run in that issue.
Which brings us to the question of sex surveys in the women’s magazines. These are what are called quick-and-dirty surveys where the magazine emails or phones up a certain amount of people, say three hundred men, and compiles results and summarizes the research. While they suggest a scientific approach, they aren’t in-depth scientific surveys or studies in which other published data are looked at and taken into consideration. They often don’t tell you the questions asked, and ethical policies like making sure the questions are understandable or not misinterpreted aren’t even taken into consideration. The surveys are unscientific and often send mixed messages, skewed to fit the magazine’s needs.
Dr. Petra Boynton, a U.K. psychologist and sex and relationship expert, says, “A really good piece of sex research takes ages to put together because you go and look for existing research. In magazine surveys, they never look at existing research.”9 Boynton says that instead, a group of editors sit around an office and come up with the questions, always with their angle and headlines in mind. Another clue that something is amiss is that they don’t include the question(s) originally asked for the magazine surveys—only the results. She also says to beware of the mixed messaging magazine surveys may send. One Cosmo survey she reviewed found that a large number of women (70 percent) were insecure about what they looked like during sex, yet the same survey included that 60 percent of women thought they were good in bed. That’s sort of contradictory.
Boynton also explains that women’s mags walk a fine line between being naughty and nice in their sex content while trying to hang on to advertisers. “They focus on heterosexual sex, monogamy, straight couples having sex within fairly safe and predictable ways.” For instance, a threesome, if mentioned, would always include a guy and two girls (the latter doing the interacting), never two girls doing something to a guy, as that might be perceived as too risqué. The same with anal sex—if it’s written about at all—it’s a guy doing it to a woman, it’s never going to be two women or a woman doing it to a guy.10
In the February 2012 issue of Redbook, a tongue-in-cheek quiz asks readers, “What is your Real Age . . . In Bed?” The cutesy quiz, half joke, half reality for married working moms (Redbook’s demographic), focuses on how often you’re doing it or not, how long—or short—it lasts, the most unusual place you’ve had sex, and how your physical flexibility is holding up, assigning you, based on your answers, an age of 19, 39, or 69 in bed. This is yet another example of the insidious way in which content undermines a woman’s sense of sexual confidence. If you’re 30 and rate a 69 in bed, is that an empowering feeling? Likely not.
Insider Input
Laurie Abraham, at the time executive editor of Elle magazine, warns that the biggest problem with women’s magazines is how much fibbing surrounds sex content. “The fundamental issue is how we lie about sex and how we lie about how women live. I mean, I do feel we engage in a certain amount of lying.”11
When it comes to using “expert” sources in articles about sex, there’s also a level of credibility under question. For instance, in the January/February 2012 issue of Women’s Health, a male writer sets out to prove that women want “dirty talk” in a piece dubbed “The Art of Aural Sex: A Brave Male Writer Signs Up for a Serious Lesson in Dirty Talk.” The gist of the article is that essentially guys love women to talk dirty during sex, but though women crave it too, guys are afraid they’ll get it wrong so they often refrain. The piece comments that some great dirty talk could send a woman teetering on the brink of orgasm for twenty minutes if only they could learn the nasty language of love. Though it’s doubtful most women’s pleasure hinges on men’s erotic vocab, the brave writer sets out to learn how. Problem is, the expert in the piece gives advice that’s more awkward than arousing, suggesting this winning line: “I want to disrobe you and see your parts exposed and touch them . . .”
Really? That’s the advice from the sexpert? That’s the hot phrase that will get every woman on the planet fired up below the belt? In fairness to the writer, even he realizes the cheese factor and claims he has several exes that would run screaming from the bed if he ever delivered that one-liner. But the sex therapist expert (and author of a book on sex) just further educates him about what to do when and if the dirty talk backfires, saying, “Come here and give me a hug. I hope I didn’t offend you—are you okay?”
This problem stems more with the expert used, which readers rarely take into consideration. Boynton warns that an expert, say funded by a drug company that produces a sexual dysfunction medication, would not be the go-to source for a piece on a couple’s sexual problems, yet it’s this type of expert placement often seen.12 Beware, too, she says, of experts who want to sell you something, ones who tout only one treatment for an issue (such as surgery, medication, or a home remedy), or those who just give “lame” advice. Editors walk a tightrope of advertising placement and subtle source issues, especially within sex articles, but you never want your expert as the go-to source in a sex article selling you something.
Insider Input
“Frankly, I think the really good journalists get frustrated writing for women’s magazines. Why should they spend their life writing ‘Seven Tips for Greater Sex?’ It may be something you do sometimes to pay the bills or something, and it may have its certain payoffs—maybe you learn something, right? But I mean, come on, this cannot be the height of someone’s journalistic career.”13
—Chandra Czape, former deputy articles editor, Cosmopolitan
Yet for all that the magazines do wrong when it comes to sex, there is still a lot of good in some of the content. The chick slicks deliver important news and information about female sexual health, and occasionally, sex itself. Sometimes, the glossies succeed at presenting balanced, fact-based pieces on everything from reproductive choice, and the pros/cons of different types of birth control methods (a topic I’ve written about many times over the years for several different mags), but also of STDs, family planning, sexual dysfunction, sexual empowerment, illnesses unique to women (such as ovarian, cervical, uterine, and breast cancer; polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, PMS, and others). They have also educated countless women, young and old, on important issues unique to our vajayjays, minus an agenda other than awareness. Sexuality pieces even debunk myths from time to time and teach women not only that their sexual fulfillment matters, but also that they must seek the kind of sex and sexual partner that is right for them, a mantra magazines like Ms. began promoting from the beginning.
For instance, the June 2012 issue of Marie Claire ran small stories on what faking your orgasm might mean for your relationship, how online dating is getting safer (major sites recently agreed to do background checks to screen for sex offenders), and how the scent of your man greatly influences your relationship. The June 2012 Women’s Health included “The Secrets to Having a Stronger Finish,” a four-page spread on achieving bigger and better orgasms. And the June 2012 Self ran a playful but interesting piece on how each week of your menstrual cycle measures up with your sex drive, called “The Best Nights for Hot Sex.” While it was humorous and tongue-in-cheek, it was supported by medical research and studies that clearly show how physiological differences in mood and hormone levels can and do realistically affect a woman’s sex drive. Across the board on a good month, you’ll find similar topics when it comes to sex. Some miss the mark, yes, but others provide a wealth of sexual information for women who wouldn’t be the wiser without these glossy magazines.
There’s no question sex in the women’s magazines walks a fine line between the raunchier the better (Cosmo) and a straight and narrow streamlined idea of what’s normal and not too freakish (Redbook). While Cosmo historically exaggerates to the twelfth degree to make copy as scintillating and arousing as possible, pubs like Redbook wobble somewhere this side of prude, running nothing too deviant or disdainful. Mags like Self, Marie Claire, Women’s Health, and Glamour jump on the sex wagon each month, falling somewhere midstream of the two fringes, and deliver something between helpful, informational content and hyped up, provocative fluff. The majority of the Six Sisters refrain from blatant sex pieces, though they occasionally provide mild crossover content in articles about relationships, marriage, dating, or sexual health. Editors also must walk a fine advertorial line, since if content dials up the raunch factor, advertisers may bolt (although clearly, Cosmo’s advertisers have a higher threshold for lascivious content). For this reason, most articles are sexually vanilla in the women’s mags with regard to hetero sex, and monogamous relationships, though mileage may vary.
There’s no question sex sells, and the photos inside, often retouched and digitally remastered to perfection, continue to convey what the women’s magazines think is sexy. Again, this ideal is preset for you and is as difficult to live up to as the magazine’s unreal standard of beauty.
•••
Although women’s sexuality is no longer taboo in most of the women’s magazines, researchers continue to debate whether the shameless sexualization of women’s bodies within these magazines is liberating or further degrading. Plus, putting out a generation of women schooled only in the sex advice from the glossies may not only set feminism back sixty years but may just put these very same women at a huge disadvantage as they define their own sexual identities. Going forward, we can only hope that calling out women’s magazines on squeezing women readers into a one-size-fits-all sexual ideal via blog posts, Twitter storms, Facebook postings, and continued media scrutiny, will make magazines more accountable for the sexual content they publish.