Cosmocking: January '11!

It's that time again! Purple cover! Ashley Greene with one of the most genuinely sexy outfits I've ever seen on a Cosmo cover, but her face is so airbrushed I can barely tell if she has a face! "The Ballsy Way She Scored Twilight," which briefly led me to believe she was a composer and to be impressed Cosmo was featuring women in nontraditional roles in the film industry, but of course it's just an expression and she's an actress! Also: "Look Leaner Naked (The 14-Day Workout)"! I do not think you can lose more than 2 or 3 pounds of fat in 14 days but it only says "look" leaner so perhaps there is elven glamour involved!

The Second I Knew I Wanted to Get Serious
"I was dealing with a family emergency and was feeling really edgy. I'd snap at her for no reason, but she just kept rubbing my shoulders and stroking my hand, helping me calm down. She was so understanding, I realized I wanted her to stick around for good."
What a lucky girl. I wish I had a guy who would allow me to placate him after his random explosions. We could go on special dates where he'd yell but then I'd manage to stop his yelling! So romantic.

What Your Ex's Next Girlfriend Reveals About You
Oh no Cosmo no Cosmo no. Do not legitimize this kind of thing. What your ex's next girlfriend reveals is that he's still a person who likes to be in dating relationships. And what she reveals about you is that you creepily obsess about other people and then tries to relate it all to yourself.

The table below says that every type of new girlfriend (all four of them) reveals that your guy wasn't good enough for you. If he's dating "The Girl Next Door" he's boring and if he's dating "The Wild Card" he's immature. There is no type of girl he can date that reveals that he's a decent guy who just isn't in a relationship with you anymore, which is understandably upsetting but doesn't invalidate the times you had or the people you are.

Sweep your boobs over the back of his neck.
Once he figures out what you did (this may take a few), he'll be positively baffled with the eroticism!

He can insert his penis where the underside of your boob meets your ribs.
Cosmo isn't written for B-cups, is it? Or C-cups. Or most D-cups really.

Look at him as you run your chin from his chest to his crotch.
Oh yeah, baby, chin me. Chin me hard.

Put lube on your nipples, then trace circles on his bare back.
God damn it Cosmo, breasts just do not work like that. I mean, I could do this, but I don't think either of us would feel anything. It's a barely-noticeable backrub and rather harsh and imprecise stimulation for my breasts. I guess the general idea that "wow there are breasts and they're touching me" is supposed to drive the guy crazy, but I can think of so many better ways to do that.

Flutter your eyelashes against his boys for a sweet little tease.
I am now convinced that Cosmo is using a random number generator to make these things. "Okay, hit the 'body part' button twice. Eyelashes... and testicles. Sounds good, we'll roll with it."

Have him squeeze lube onto his penis, then swirl your body over his shaft to spread it.
I don't even know. I seriously don't even. I suppose if he has a flat and one-sided penis that's securely glued to his stomach, it's merely very awkward.

You already get that men and women don't process or present info the same way. But there's been new research investigating just how opposite our brains can be.
I want to take the raw data from this research, throw it all in a big pile, and divide the study subjects into two halves at total random. I bet with enough gold-mining and cherry-picking we could prove beyond statistical error that the resultant Star-Bellied and Plain-Bellied Sneetches were, like, total opposites.

Also, it's disingenuous to talk about "wiring" when you're dealing with study subjects who've spent the last 22 years (undergrads are a representative sample, right?) being taught to act like a boy or girl and being treated like one. I think I could take these methods and prove that people born in Mexico have brains naturally adapted to speak Spanish.

The whole article is made of things like this:
The corpus callosum, the area that connects the left and right sides of the brain and helps people recognize that there's a problem, is less active in men [...], which explains why they think everything's fine until we say otherwise.
Which isn't factually true, and even if it were true, would still not have shit-all to do with goofy "men are from Mars and like football" stereotypes.

This, by the way, is one of the things I refer to when I talk about feminism benefiting men. This article is raveningly sexist, but that doesn't mean it's pro-male, not when it's talking about how men are incapable of normal human communication because their brains are physically inferior.

Foreplay for women is everything that happens 24 hours before sex [...] For men, it's three minutes before insertion.
Shit, that time I spent two hours cleaning out the spider-infested backboard closet was foreplay? And that time Rowdy spent a good part of the evening rubbing against my body and whispering in my ear "you are so getting fucked when we get home" wasn't?

I suspect that Cosmo isn't actually advocating 24 hours of making out, with advancement to nipple stimulation by the 12 hour mark and hopeful vulva contact after 18, but just saying that women have to like you and have generally positive emotions about you before they fuck you. Which isn't exactly foreplay, and isn't exactly something men are exempt from. But putting it like that doesn't make the "women are impossible to please because we're all complicated and emotional and frigid and princessy" message nearly clear enough.

The Moment He's Most Likely to Cheat
Researchers found that a when a guy meets an attractive new woman[...]
Well, there's yer problem. The article goes on to sciencify everything by explaining that attractive women raise a guy's testosterone and this makes him like football more (or something), so you can stop your guy from cheating by raising his testosterone yourself by being more affectionate and sexual with him.

Which simplifies down to "it's good for your relationship to be affectionate and sexual," but that wouldn't be Science then.

When He Wants Vanilla Sex... and you don't.
No points for guessing that speaking honestly to him isn't the answer. No points for guessing that Cosmo's definition of "non-vanilla" is "sex that's, like, sexier," either.

For kinky action, wear something with zippers.
Guh. Wh. I... I... I. I. I uh. I don't... I don't. I uh. Uh.

Congratulations Cosmo, you have rendered me unable to speak.

Q: My man has known and hung out with my girlfriends for a while now, but recently he started becoming more buddy-buddy with my closest friend. They will text each other and G-chat all the time. I love that they're getting friendly, but I'm worried that they're getting along a little too well. Am I being silly, or are they crossing the line?
I know this letter is a fake because no one really uses G-chat.

Cosmo's answer is that they're probably not cheating because they're too open about it, but that you should still separate them because how dare people be friends in your presence. To separate them, it recommends you stop inviting the two of them to things together, and insult your boyfriend's masculinity ("G-chatting again? If you guys get any closer, you're going to have to start lending her tampons.") when you catch him chatting with her.

Apparently if someone isn't cheating on you, the best thing to do is help them realize how much better off they'd be if they did.

Q: I started talking to this dude at the bookstore, and we made plans to grab coffee. Then, a few minutes into our date, he mentioned his wife.[...]
A: [...] The problem here is that the guy is a dick. Married men are not supposed to make plans with strange women.
The hell they aren't! Married men are still human beings who are allowed to drink fucking coffee with whoever the hell they fucking want. I don't think anybody's marriage vows read "forsaking all others including fucking talking to them." I can understand that there might be hurt feelings when one person thinks something is a date and the other doesn't, but "married men must practice flawless Coffee Fidelity" is bugnuts.

There's an article on why you must have a baby between 25 and 35, and if you put it off you'll be sorry, and if you think you don't want kids at all you'll be super double sorry.

There's an article on a project that helps clear wrongfully convicted prisoners, which features glamor shots of the female interns for the project captioned "gorgeous and gutsy" and takes care to describe how they'd "easily fit in at a swanky cocktail party." Because that's what we care about--sure you do fascinating and difficult legal and social work, yeah yeah whateva, but are you fuckable?

If your boss makes sexual advances towards you, think about taking action. Whether it's the kind of action that happens in court or the kind that happens in a bedroom is up to you. It all depends on how far you'd like to climb up the ladder.
OH NO COSMO NO COSMO NO. NO NO NO NO NO. BAD COSMO. GO SIT IN THE CORNER AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE.