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Idiotic Statements about Men from Cosmo

Written by admin, Friday, July 23rd, 2010 in Dating Columns, Sex & Dating

Buried in the many news tabloid magazines at any given grocery store or department store is a little magazine called Cosmopolitan. A women’s interest magazine that makes Maxim look like The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan is the ultimate in trashy, low-brow reading, and its harebrained attempts at teaching women about sex and dating are so cringe-worthy that they make Double your Dating look academic. With no further ado, here are some direct quotes from Cosmopolitan (straight from their magazine, with links) that you wouldn’t believe women are believing.

The Horrors

Hand Symbols

Okay Sign – When a guy is happy with how things are going, he’ll often make this sign of approval without realizing it. For example, he may rest his hand on the table this way if he feels a date is going well.

Love Signal – Even if your guy hasn’t dropped those three little words yet, his fingers might have. When a man feels a strong connection, he’ll subconsciously create the love sign-language gesture while doing random things

For the former, he could just be picking his nails, or making the Japanese hand symbol for okane [money], as in “pay the bill yourself and stop looking at my hands”. For the latter, he could just be messing around, or trying to figure out if you’re into Star Trek. While there is some general validity to interpretations of the way someone physically behaves, no normal person runs around subconsciously making the “I love you” hand gesture (I had to look it up too) if they like someone. If applied logically, the “hands indicate the heart” supposition falls apart quickly. If he forms an “OK” sign with one hand and thrusts in the hole with the other hand, does that mean he wants to screw? If he forms a gun, does he want to kill you and/or rob a bank?

Guy Gallery: Decoding His Sleep and Sex Positions

Missionary – Men who prefer missionary tend to do things by the book, making them faithful, loving boyfriends who won’t let you down, says body-language expert Jan Hargrave. […]

From Behind – You’ll always feel looked after by this confident, take-charge stud. Still, he can be standoffish at times. “In this position, you can’t make eye contact, so he won’t feel like he’s exposing himself emotionally,” Hargrave explains.

… or he could just have a fetish. Or, in the case of cowgirl, he could just be lazy or tired. There is some general validity to interpreting emotions in sexual positions (men generally connect certain positions to certain types of sex), but in all honesty, inferring someone’s entire personality based upon their favorite sex position is ridiculous. This article also goes on to explain the details of his position afterward — something that means very little, because typically the guy is too tired to care what position he sleeps in, just so long as you don’t crush his arm.

7 Sex Toys That Are Already in Your Bedroom

Bobby Pins – These seemingly innocent hair tools can give some serious pleasure to his ultra-sensitive nipples (and they work on you, too). […] Then take his tingly sensations up a notch and use the bobby pins as mini-nipple clamps—since the area is already primed for action, the slight pinching will actually feel good and intensify his pleasure.

No. No. No. No. No.

Decode How He Handles His Drink

If he grips his long-neck loosely… Lightly encircling the top of his beer bottle with his thumb and index finger reveals that he’s confident. Not only does the relaxed gesture indicate he feels in control of the situation, but it’s also a bit of cocky posturing — it gives off the vibe that he’s too cool to be concerned with the risk of dropping his beer.

If he pushes the drink near you… Your guy will do this over dinner or at a bar when he’s feeling the urge to bond. Men subconsciously put their stuff in your space when they’re trying to get closer to you.

According to Cosmo, even the way men drink a beer matters. This comes as a surprise to me, as I have yet to determine what would be a normative way to drink a beer, except for possibly just chugging it immediately to avoid being analyzed by a Cosmopolitan-reading date. I’d need the buzz anyway.

First-Date Red Flags

“I never move this fast on the first date.” – Yeah, right! Truth be told: He can’t believe you’re letting him move that fast. “It’s the woman who dictates how far things go,” says Anthony, 23. “I’m always up for action, but I’ll play the prude card just so my date doesn’t think I’m a player.” Bottom line: If you hand a guy a piece of ass on a silver platter, he’s going to take it.

This was inevitable: a comment regarding men being basically sex fiends and taking anything they can get. This, of course, is complete and utter crap. Men turn down sex for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to actually taking a date seriously, not finding the date in question attractive, being hyper-careful about not being too assertive about sex, and simply not wanting sex. Reducing all men to a generalization like “they take sex when handed to them” is just as bad as saying something like “women belong in the kitchen”, and it belies an attempt on the author’s part to reduce men to a compartmentalized, controllable, and ultimately submissive role in male-female relations.

5 Annoying Things Guys Do on Facebook

They Hide Their Relationship Status – The beauty of Facebook is that we can instantly find out if a guy is available or off-limits. No 30-minute talk in a bar, trying to suss out if he has a girlfriend waiting for him at home. But if that info is kept a secret, we’re forced to look through and analyze his photos and wall posts to figure it out — which makes us feel like stalkers. Guys: If you’re single, do us both a favor and make that info public knowledge. And if you’re part of a twosome, own up to it. Especially when we’re one of the two.

They Block Their Photos – We can understand a guy wanting to keep certain people from viewing his pictures. But seeing as how we’re not his mom, boss, or pastor, it bugs us when we can’t see a dude’s photos. Here’s the thing: We always imagine the worst. So when we’re kept in the dark and can’t click through a guy’s albums, we imagine he’s blowing lines, hooking up with two girls at once, or running around naked at a party. Unfair, but true. He’s not saving his reputation by blocking his photos. In fact, not being able to click on them makes us think a little less of him.

I had to keep these in their full text to properly show how absolutely stupid these statements are. Spoiler: Facebook is a massive security risk, and a crappy social networking nightmare. There are very legitimate reasons other than hookers and blow to hide pictures and relationship information online — I personally hide information (or rather, simply do not post it) because I have absolutely no desire to have people I work with sift through images of my personal life. It’s much more efficient to ask anyway. If I or any other guy was doing blow and sleeping with lots of girls, do you really think we’d post pictures of it on Facebook?

What can we learn?

Here’s the moral story of bad Cosmo advice: much like men’s advice in books like Double your Dating and The Pickup Artist, women get bad advice too, and they act on it. The realm of sex columns and sex tabloids has been predominantly ruled by women, but this does not somehow grant them expertise in the field whatsoever. Veritable Carrie Bradshaw wannabe readers of Cosmopolitan are being taught a lot of really dumb, outright ridiculous ideas that give them wild misconceptions about the dating and sex world — and while some of the advice in Cosmopolitan seems perfectly innocuous and reasonable, a good portion of advice in Cosmo and similar magazines (not to mention similar blogs) is just pop psychology half-baked crap.

Thus, like I have always said, be careful what you read, advice-wise. It’s not hard to write articles giving wild advice about dating and sex — it’s a topic most people are interested in that few know enough about to really critique properly. Critique me. Critique other men’s interest magazines. Critique what girls read. Don’t ever just accept what you are told: critically evaluate it and challenge it before you adopt it as fact. Otherwise, you might do some equivalent of using a bobby pin to clip a guy’s nipples.

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6 Responses to Idiotic Statements about Men from Cosmo

  1. miriam says:

    ugh. I’ve never picked up one of those magazines and am glad.

  2. Orul..5c says:

    Nipple clamp bobby pins? Fuck, I wouldn’t even know what to do if a girl tried that on me. It’s not a deal breaker, but if she gets to clamp my nips I get to bust in her eye.

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  4. Roxanne says:

    I’m a girl and a Cosmo reader, and I find you are partially right..

    Most of the advice in Cosmo is not exact, and when they have articles like ‘Know your man by his sleep habits’ its as accurate as reading your daily horoscope!..

    Its just a fun read for most, and the sex tips are great.. Thats it..

    And come on.. I have read some men’s mags where even they give out some ridiculous statements sand generalisations..

    Like one said that a woman who likes to drink wine is just trying to be sophisticated.. And I’m a complete wine drinker, because my father is a wine connoisseur and I picked up a little from him.. So it was kinda a shock to see that some men would think I’m a wannabe Paris Hilton or something just cuz I drink wine..

    Anyways like I said earlier, these mags are just for entertainment and what works for one man will not work for 5 others and same with the women…

    Please excuse the spelling mistakes (if any) as I dont have spell check!

  5. Damion says:

    I personally believe that reading bullshit mags like that are stupid one if you want to know something find it out yourself and if you want to learn about a guy talk to them and test out your ideas and if you make a mistake big whoop learn from it but most of all i think finding this stuff out on your own is much funner than reading it in a magizine

  6. Maya says:

    I am ashamed to admit that I’m a member of the same sex as the idiotic bimbos who wrote such bad advice. I mean, half of that stuff goes against common sense! And frankly, ladies, if you’re stalking a guy’s Facebook and getting angry because he doesn’t have all his personal info out there on display…the problem’s not with him. It’s with you.

    @Roxanne: The author of this piece acknowledged that guys get and give bad advice too. Doesn’t change the fact that 95% of Cosmo’s advice is absolute horseshit.

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