Glossed Over

Cosmopolitan: Going Beyond a Bright Yellow Cover to Get Attention

Okay, we’ve spent a lot of time on Cosmopolitan recently, and we fully intend to take a few days away from the Cosmo crack (so bad! so good!) and read something slightly more substantive (you know, like Marie Claire), but we bought  the March issue last night, and we feel compelled to point out one thing about it—actually, just one measly word.

Va-jay-jay?

Following Up on February's Cosmopolitan

In our seemingly endless post about the seemingly endless February edition of Cosmopolitan, we threw some derision at an article entitled “I Suddenly Had Baby Panic” by Louise Sloan, which chronicled the author’s decision to become a single mother. We chided Cosmo for not even trying to present a well-rounded, thoughtful viewpoint on the issue. We may also have said something about sexually precocious twelve-year-olds, which, in hindsight, was a little weird.

Anyway! Our confusion about “I Suddenly Had Baby Panic” abated when Louise Sloan emailed us this evening. Here is what she had to say about the article, which we’re sharing here with her permission.

Actually, it was an adaptation of my book, Knock Yourself Up, written by the editors [of Cosmo], based on their reading of my book. Let's just say it’s a bit different from MY reading of my book! (For starters, I didn’t have “baby panic.”) I won’t go into the back story, but I’d ask people to read my book, or at least go to my book website, www.knockyourselfup.com, and form your impressions from that—not the Cosmo article!

And, if our experience reading Louise's website is any indicator, it'll be a far different impression than the one Cosmo gave. Excerpts from Knock Yourself Up can be found here and here.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: The Entire February Issue of Cosmopolitan

Okay, we’ve been away from the blog for a while. Now that we’re back, we feel a little penance is necessary—after all, you’re still here, aren’t you? So we read the ENTIRE ISSUE of Cosmopolitan this evening. Here are the highs, the lows, the points where we just couldn’t resist a smartass remark. Enjoy while we take a lengthy shower to decontaminate.

•    First, the cover, on which Katherine Heigl is wearing a truly appalling dusty pink Herve Leger bandage dress. Does anyone actually need horizontal lines encasing their entire body? Does this look good on anyone who doesn't weigh 110 pounds? Hell, it barely looks good on Heigl.  Anyway, our favorite cover lines:

10 Subliminal Tricks That Make People Adore You

Guess what? Reading Cosmo in public isn’t one of them!

John Mayer Shares Why All Guys Aren’t A**holes

Well, there’s an unlikely source for that story.

•    Best letter to the editor ever.

I want to give you a high five for featuring Beyonce on the cover of your December issue. Thank you so much for showing more diversity in your magazine and featuring our country as a whole!

Because, you know, Beyonce is really representative of “our country as a whole.”

•    Oh! What an honor! Katherine Heigl is Cosmo’s “Fun Fearless Female of the Year.” Apparently, she earned the title by going head-to-head with former costar Isaiah Washington:

Last year, after costar Isaiah Washington allegedly used an offensive word (faggot) to refer to T.R. Knight…Katherine spoke up against Isaiah at the Golden Globes. “You can’t give me too much credit for being brave,” she says now. “I was just a girl who had had a couple of drinks and was angry and got mouthy.”

But then she says this…

“As I was opening my mouth, I kept thinking, Shut up. But it’s an issue that I felt really passionately about.”

Well, which is it? Was she loose-lipped after drinking,l or did she feel strongly about defending Knight? Also, we LOVE how Cosmo put the f-word in italics, like it’s a foreign language or something.

Two other reasons Katherine’s so fun and fearless: She last cried watching an episode of Grey’s spin-off Private Practice, and she has her own line of hospital scrubs. Is that what passes for awesome at Cosmo HQ?

•    We’re skipping the confessions, because they make us feel old. Also because they’re completely fabricated. In any case, we can’t exactly relate to tales of women accidentally exposing themselves during a dormitory fire drill or puking in the boss’ potted plants, possibly because we’re at the advanced age of 31, or because the last time we were senselessly drunk, we cried about college football in the diner at the Palms hotel in Vegas at 4 in the morning. Hey, Cosmo, we’d be happy to write that up and submit it for an upcoming issue!

•    In “Man Manual,” Cosmo calls out mensfitness.com for proffering dumb advice that a woman wearing flats to a bar “certainly isn’t there to lure a mate.” And Cosmo certainly has the moral high ground here, since all of its advice is spot-on!

•    Here’s some ludicrous Hollywood trivia that’s supposed to be surprising insider information, from “Informer”:

In the movie Catch Me If You Can, Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo plays the hot stewardess who hooks up with Leo DiCaprio’s character. Jennifer Garner also appears in the flick as—get this—a high-class hooker!

Get this! It’s called acting! Also, her IMDB entry!

•    We are deeply amused by the anatomical euphemisms used in the lingerie feature “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Resolved: to start referring to our breasts as our “powerful pair,” just like Cosmo does.

•    John Mayer’s letter to us readers on page 101 gave us the creeps.

A guy who has to say he’s nothing like those other guys is usually exactly like those other guys. Also, “passion-filled endeavors”? Signing the note “I love you”? Think we’ll pass on that drink, John.

Here are Cosmo’s other “Fun Fearless Male” honorees:

Chris Brown, who has eight tattoos! Fun!

Dave Annable, who has “always been scared of sharks in a little-girl way.” Fearless!

Dane Cook, who tells a scintillating tale of eating bad shellfish on a date. “I went to the bathroom and knew it was going to be an all-night situation, so I told her we had to drive home…and that I’d have to stop a couple times on the way.” Suave!

James McAvoy, who…well…we have nothing bad to say about him.

Tony Romo, who says football is “not as glamorous as everyone thinks.” Revealing!

John Krasinski, who should have combed his hair and worn something other than an undershirt for the photo, but we lurve him anyway.

Dave Salmoni, who is apparently some kind of wild-animal daredevil. Uh, reckless?

Common, who enjoyed playing a police officer in the upcoming movie The Night Watchman because he “got to learn about the ghetto part of Los Angeles.” Seriously.

Peter Krause, who likes to speak in clichés! “There’s something very romantic about doing things that make you feel incredibly alive.” Original!

Tom Anderson, who we deleted from our Myspace friends.

And Zac Efron, who…God. Do we really have to explain why no grown woman should be interested in him?

•    Wait. Why are there twelve fun fearless males, but only one female?

•    “9 Big Secrets of Male Arousal”: One of those secrets is that a man’s nose is an erogenous zone. Well, they get credit for trotting out a sex tip we are absolutely certain we’ve never seen before.

•    “Get Him to Go There”: You know how Cosmo won’t use the word “hair” twice in the same article, instead subbing “tresses,” “locks,” “strands,” and “sun-catching silk”? Well, they do the same with female genitalia! In the one-page story “Get Him to Go There,” writer Elise Nersesian uses the following terms:

Ahem, bush

Down below

Between your legs

Privates

Southern regions

Below the belt

Your goods

•    Aah! There’s more! In “The Most Satisfying Sex Position,” Bethany Heitman uses the expression “hot button.” TWICE.

•    There may be only one fun fearless female, but there are stories of five women who were “Young and Murdered.” Ah, so that’s the other way young women can get media coverage!

•    Then there’s “I Suddenly Had Baby Panic,” which sums up the decision to be a single mother like this:

I’m a romantic. I wanted the partner, then the baby…before long, I was considering single motherhood. A baby was my priority, so I decided to make it happen despite the obstacles.

Single motherhood isn’t exactly a fresh topic for a women’s magazine, but they could have printed something slightly more thoughtful than this. Writer Louise Sloan talks about searching for a sperm donor and “shopping for eye color the way you select pumps in red or navy.” Oh, excellent comparison. We never would have understood otherwise. Either Cosmo thinks its readers are sexually precocious twelve-year-olds, or they think we’re stupid. We can’t decide which is a worse editorial philosophy.

•    “It’s A Wild, Wild Life,” a fashion spread with way too much khaki, uses the following caption:

She always wanted to use that line “I am woman, hear me roar.”

Using a feminist anthem to sell clothes? And we thought we were cynical.

•     “The Secrets of Being an ‘It Girl’”: Apparently it has something to do with being named Jessica, as both Alba and Biel are pictured in the opening spread. No need to read this one!

•    Oh no! Another way we could die! “Beware of This Scary Infection” tells us all about MRSA, which is one more disease whose transmission can be prevented by thorough hand-washing, but which we’re going to fret about anyway!

•    This is why we don’t normally spend any time on the “Red-Hot Read.”

He really does want to make me his own personal ice-cream sundae, she thought and gasped as the ice cream dripped from the spoon onto her belly, her hips, her thighs…

This “erotic” story really does want to trot out every tired cliché, she thought, and rolled her eyes as she realized it was possible to write graphically about sex and still be totally dull...

•    Ooh, our horoscope! “Uninhibited booty awaits!”

•    Finally, the last page of this issue, the “Cosmo Quiz.” Turns out we’re “flirt averse,” but we think that just translates to Cosmo-averse. Good night!

Cosmopolitan Proves Its Expertise with Bad Advice

From “Men This Minute” in the December issue of Cosmopolitan:

Dumb Advice He’s Getting

From the pages of GQ: “A ‘happy ending’ is considered outright cheating only if the guy plans on it.  ‘If you’re getting a massage, it could just end up happening…If she starts on you, you’re going to need a hell of a lot of willpower to turn that away.’”

Really?  What a charming lack of self-awareness Cosmo displays, calling out another magazine for dispensing terrible counsel!  (For the record,though, we do agree that GQ’s perspective on this issue is woefully skewed.)  Will GQ retaliate by printing, oh, 85% percent of Cosmo’s content in its next issue?   We humbly suggest they start with “The 22 Best Relationship Tips Ever,” an article which offers some real gems.  For instance:

Don't be BFFs. Being pals with your man is great in theory.  But that kind of connection actually can kill your sex life.

And:

If you want to maintain closeness with your man, get out of your head and into bed.  Guys feel more comfortable connecting with women on a physical level, not engaging in deep discussions.

Well, at least we learned something about men from this whole debacle.  A man on the massage table may require a preternatural amount of restraint, but  apparently, it would take a similar amount of temperance for Cosmo to avoid printing utter pap in every issue.  Good to know!

Cosmopolitan's Advice Fails the Test of Time

We figured out long ago that the love advice in Cosmopolitan sucks.  Seems the staffers at Cosmo finally figured that out, too.  In “7 Love Rules You Need to Break,” November, they single out four spectacularly misguided bits of counsel they doled out between 1966 and 1968. (“Tell your mom we’re sorry.”)  For instance:

Always be sure to invite some beautiful girls whom [your guy] will find amusing.  Don’t make the fatal mistake of including too many homosexuals.

Fatal?

We snickered at the outdated guidance, but much of the current advice isn’t too far removed from those suckers of yore—especially since much of it is contradicted by tips elsewhere in the same issue.    What advice will Cosmo be apologizing for in 2047?  Here are our nominees for the worst of the November issue.

1.  From “7 Love Rules You Need to Break”:

Let Him Be Your Superman

“Men are certainly attracted to independent women, but if you’re completely self-sufficient, they feel kind of useless,” says [psychologist Joseph] Rock…But give him the ego boost of letting him do the things he’s particularly good at, whether it’s making his killer mushroom risotto, lugging your groceries upstairs with that much-vaunted upper-body strength, or just driving in the snow.

Yep, wouldn’t want to be so good at, you know, living your own life that you make him feel marginalized!

2.  From “I Catch Cheaters for a Living”:

Participate in your guy’s personal passions (if he invites you to), and show him what makes you tick.  No real connection can exist if it’s a one-way street.

So a woman feigning interest in a man’s hobbies isn’t a one-way street?  They must have different traffic laws in Cosmo land!  Also, this is the polar opposite of the advice given in “7 Love Rules You Need to Break,” where women are advised to maintain their own hobbies and spend some time engaging in those hobbies solo.

3.  From “Cosmo Weekend”:

At a crowded party, grab a cute guy, tell him you can’t find your friend (no need to have one there with you), and ask if he has seen her.  When he says no, start chatting him up while you “wait” for her.

Always good to launch a relationship with a little deception!  Again, these Cosmo girls aren’t reading their own magazine.  In “100 Things You Need to Know About Guys,” we learn this:

Their favorite way for you to hit on them: just say hi or ask them a question about themselves.

Things really do move more quickly these days, don’t they?  Instead of forty years, Cosmo figured out it was peddling nonsense in the space of a few pages!

France's Cosmopolitan: Inexplicably Tackling the Unexplained

So!  We’re back!  It’s been a life-changing and thoroughly wonderful couple of weeks.  We got married.  We went to Paris for ten days.  And we learned some very important lessons:  always have safety pins on hand when wearing a strapless dress; real butter is pretty much the best thing ever; and never, ever take it for granted that your suitcases will arrive at the airport when you do!

Also?  We picked up a huge stack of French magazines and learned that—surprise!—in many ways, they’re as mindless as their stateside counterparts.  Reading the November issue of French Cosmopolitan was a struggle.  Sure, we haven’t had a French class in a decade, but the U.S. edition is written at about a ninth-grade level (both in language and maturity), so we hoped we’d manage despite our years of forgotten verb tenses.  (Not like we ever mastered le subjonctif anyway.)  Nope!  Worse, what we did understand still didn’t make any sense.

For instance:  the supplement bundled with the November issue.  Titled “La magie est en moi,” (“The Magic Is In Me”), we figured it would be some sort of boosterish self-confidence tract.  You know, believe in yourself!  Embrace your curves!  You don’t need that scoundrel of a man!  Etc.

Mais non!  Instead, there were articles that were...well...actually about magic.  It was a little beyond for us, frankly.  There was a piece about contacting guardian angels, because, the article claims, we all have one!  They even managed to photograph one in the wild!  Good thing they identified her as an angel, too, or we’d have just thought she was a teenager in a see-through dress who got lost on her way to a rave.  The article also features a chart of what angels govern which days and what color to wear to please them.  We guess that qualifies as a fashion suggestion?

Elsewhere in the supplement, there are confessions of “magical” rites conducted by Cosmo readers (almost as compelling as the sex confessions in the American edition, which is to say, not at all); and a profile of several young Wiccans, accompanied by a photo of young women with smoky eye makeup dressed in gauzy black dresses.  See, it ’s not just American magazines that illustrate their stories with unimaginative photos!

Most mind-boggingly, the supplement contains a perforated set of tarot cards featuring such, uh, non-traditional icons as “Madonna, La Superstar” and “Bjork, La Visionnaire.”  Apparently, Paris Hilton and Victoria Beckham can predict our future, which is pretty much the most appalling idea we’ve ever read in Cosmo.  Scarlett Johansson and Bill Gates augur positive events!  Better hope you don’t turn over the Jennifer Aniston card, though.  (See the complete set behind the jump.)

The whole thing closes with Cosmo’s list of recommended psychics, complete with phone numbers.  But we didn’t call.  After reading this supplement, it was patently clear what our next step should be.

Cosmopolitan's Creepy Guy Commentary

Continuing its unrelenting parade of sleaze, May’s issue of Cosmopolitan takes us on a rather disturbing journey:

Inside a Guy’s Naughty Mind

Of course, we really could have lived without such an uncensored record of the inner workings of Patrick, Cosmo Radio’s “hot evening host.”  (That’s his mug, below.)  We’re all for fostering better communication between the sexes, and it is train-wreck fascinating to read how even the most ordinary encounter can be stretched into something sex-related.  Still, Patrick’s “erotic musings” are, ultimately, nothing but a turn-off.  For instance:

10:05 A.M.

…I wonder if she’s looking to hook up again?...She was a freak and knew when to take control in bed.

So despite the fact that Cosmo promotes sexual confidence on, like, every other page of the magazine, men still reduce a forward woman to a “freak.”  Good to know!

11:40 A.M.

There’s this girl at the gym who always wears booty shorts and does an exercise where she works her legs while her butt is straight up in the air.  She’s in perfect doggie-style position, and in my dream world, I could totally hit that…

Oh, you sure know the way to a woman’s heart, Patrick.  Women love nothing more than to be objectified while going about their everyday activities!

1:17 P.M.

Okay, and now there’s some random dude in spandex blocking my view.  I think I’m going to be sick.

Sharp thinking, Patrick—by totally overreacting to the unavoidable situation of happening to glance at another man, you’ve sure sold us on the fact that you are 100% straight. This is a completely unsubstantiated guess on our part, but we’re guessing Patrick also loves football and red meat, and is just waiting for the right moment to tell you about the day he was elected social chair at Sig Ep.

5:10 P.M.

I love the elevator.  Me and my boys at work always stand in the back and check out the asses of the women getting on and off.  There’s a nice one!

The imminent sexual-harassment lawsuits ought to put a stop to this behavior rather quickly.

7:15 P.M.

On the show, we’re discussing whether you should have sex on a first date, and a girl just called in and said she’s done it and “loved it!”…Maybe she’s a dog in real life, but in my mind, she’s a hottie.

Oh, he’s sensitive, see, because he’s looking past the caller’s appearance...all the way to her propensity for removing her panties.  Deep.

11:50 P.M.

…But then I spot a girl coming out of the bar who’s a size 6, trying to squeeze into a size 2.  Nasty—that killed the mood.

Yeah, how dare that random woman wear ill-fitting clothes and therefore hamper his sex drive?  And she’s a size 6, too—the nerve!

11:55 P.M.

…What makes it even sexier is that I haven’t hooked up with her yet…

Yet?  Presumptuous much?

We haven’t heard Patrick’s radio show (despite the offer of a free trial), but we’re guessing it, too, is chock-full of off-base insights like the ones in this article.  But then, it just wouldn’t be true to the Cosmo spirit if it didn’t portray women as sex objects, would it?  The whole article sounds more like the journal of an eleventh-grader than the musings of a grown man.  Maybe he isn’t quite as lecherous in person as seems in print, but why run the risk?  If we worked with Patrick, we’d be taking the stairs from now on.

The Week: Vogue Goes Bold, Features Actual Models

• First, a look at next month’s Vogue and W covers.  Shocker!  Those are models, not movie stars, on the cover of Vogue.  Though if there absolutely must be a celeb on the cover, it’s hard to argue with America Ferrera.

• Jane’s newsstand sales may be flagging, but that hasn’t stopped the development of a TV show.

• Ooh, juicy.  Editors from Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and Bazaar live it up in New Orleans, while low-level staffers at the magazines have their raises delayed.  We expect this incident to spawn at least one more thinly veiled novel about a magazine assistant.

• Is Good Housekeeping going hip?  As part of a makeover, the magazine hires editors from Jane and Lucky.

• Is Ashlee Simpson the face of June’s Cosmopolitan?  If so, why?

• And Jane Pratt blah blah blah another interview blah blah blah.  Yep, even we’re bored with her by now.

Lowest Common Denominator: Cosmopolitan, April

99: Number of “sex facts you’ve never heard before” promised on the cover

4: Secrets spilled by readers in Kate White’s “From the Editor”

1: Number of those secrets actually worth keeping quiet (Checking your pores in a mirror?  No one cares.  Logging into your boyfriend’s MySpace?  Yeah, don’t announce that to the world.)

5: Number of “Things You Didn’t Know About Eva (Longoria)…Until Now”

10: Number of “Life Lessons We’ve Learned from Gabrielle” (Longoria’s Desperate Housewives character)

4: Number of “Compliments She’ll Love” recommended to men

0: Amount a woman will be impressed when she realizes that sweet compliment came straight from the pages of Cosmo

3: Number of celebrities pictured in “What Hollywood Is Wearing,” featuring stylist Rachel Zoe

3: Number of celebrities on that page who are Zoe’s clients (Mischa Barton, Jennifer Garner, and Cameron Diaz)

2: Number of factors that determine whether a man will be violent, according to “The Dangerous Mistake Gutsy Women Make” (“It’s all about reputation and reproduction,” says the article.)

15: Number of ideas touted as “fresh (and genius)” uses for a camera phone

13.5: Number of ideas actually printed (Where’s the remainder of #12?  And the entirety of #15?)

1: Number of “Why Don’t You…” ideas that constitutes common sense (“Why don’t you…be nice to your waiter,” says Cosmo.  Yes, it’s a good idea to be kind to anyone handling your food.  Are there really so many brutish readers who need to be told otherwise?)

75: Approximate percent of the confessions in “What He Does When You’re Not Around” we wish we hadn’t read.  A loofah to scrub the tub? Photocopying a diary for later reference?  And those are the tamer admissions!  We hereby retract our complaint that Glamour’s compendium of male revelations was far too mild.

Bonus: We’d like to point out a veritable milestone: the most laughable phrase ever to be printed in Cosmopolitan (which is saying a lot) occurs on page 260.  Ready?  It’s “ta-ta swelter.”  Oof!  It’s so groaningly awful that it’s almost poetic. 

Cosmopolitan: How to Date Men From the Past

Ooh.  Cosmopolitan’s “Hot Sheet,” March, is letting us into the shadowy world of men.

Secret Language of Guys

Tramp stamp:  Male slang for a lower-back tattoo on a woman.  According to dude legend, it signifies an easy target for guys on the prowl.

And to us, this whole bit signifies that Cosmo is recycling material from 1998, though we’re guessing there must be one or two teenage readers out there who haven’t yet heard this term.  Anyway, we’re looking forward to next month, when Cosmo further lifts the veil on the male gender by finally explaining the mysterious phenomenon of beer goggles.

Cosmopolitan Reconsiders Cleavage, Clings to Dumb Puns

Though you’d never have guessed it by looking at the cover or any other photo in the magazine, Cosmopolitan’s “Hollywood AA-Listers,” February, explains that having tremendous cleavage simply isn’t necessary. Which, coming from a leading purveyor of the big-hair-and-big-breasts brand of sex appeal, is a bold statement.

Of course, we’d be more enthusiastic about their change of heart if the page didn’t read like a high school freshman wrote it. Turns out practically no pun is too juvenile to include. Ashley Olsen has “twins,” Kate Moss wins a “booby prize,” Angie Harmon is “flat-out stunning,” and Kate Hudson is “racking up style.” Ha! Clever!

No worries, though—Cosmo hasn’t totally changed its aesthetic. For instance:

If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you don’t, flaunt it anyway. 

Apparently, flaunting “it” requires wearing a dress slit to the navel, like all but one of the women on the page.

But our least favorite thing on the whole page was this, accompanying a photo of Keri Russell in a low-cut, form-fitting gown:

We always thought Keri was perky; now we know she is.

That makes perfect sense, obviously, because her breasts completely define her as a person.

Still, Cosmo managed to follow its own advice that “less is sometimes more.” It must have taken a tremendous amount of effort to refrain from using the words melons, jugs, or headlights for an entire page.

Glamour Takes the Wrong Cues From Its Competitors

Looks like someone at Glamour has been reading the competition!  The evidence?  Check out the title of this fashion spread in February’s issue.

Clothes a Girl (and a Guy!) Can Love

A woman’s clothes should be man-approved?  That’s InStyle’s schtick.

Leave it to the women in your life to appreciate your trendy, complicated clothes; guys are always drawn to the simpler stuff.

Hey, it’s one of those overly simplified stereotype-reinforcing statements, the likes of which we’ve come to expect from Cosmopolitan.

Who’d have guessed that your standard jeans-y combos could look so irresistible?

And “jeans-y”?  Lifted straight out of the pages of Lucky.

Still, we have to give Glamour credit for improving our efficiency.   Instead of finding the things we dislike scattered across three different magazines, we only had to read one page.

Cosmopolitan Designates 2007 Role Model, New Low Standards

In the February issue, Cosmopolitan awards its coveted “Fun Fearless Female of the Year” award to actress Eva Mendes.  Which is quite an honor, considering the year has just begun.

But it seems Eva actually deserves this premature accolade.  Just read the informative interview (oddly dubbed “News” by Cosmo) and we think you’ll agree that no one deserves the award more than she does.

First, she’s goal-oriented:

I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, so I look for the sharpest tool.

She knows what she wants in a man:

I tend to like a mysterious guy, the quiet type who stares at you and has you thinking, Does he want to kill me or take me home?

She’s accomplished:

…I’m the world’s best spooner.  I lock in and won’t let go…like spoon lockdown.

Finally, she recognizes her weaknesses:

My friends always make fun of me for…not making sense, going in the wrong direction, mispronouncing (sp?) words!

(And yes, that “(sp?)” is hers.)

Sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool Cosmo girl to us.  Clearly, this is the kind of woman we should all strive to emulate.   

Happy New Year! Cosmopolitan Rings in 1958

Just in time to ring in 2007, Cosmopolitan’s “Guy Spy,” January, proffers some truly outdated advice.  Sure, we’ve all heard that business about women and men using different parts of their brains for conversation (and some of us even had to write essays on that very topic in college), but we think it’s time for a new spin on the subject.  Cosmo’s take?

When you're trying to make conversation, your guy’s eternal wordless stretches can feel like cause for alarm.  But dudes naturally clam up until they have some burning comment to share.

Or until they’re marginally interested in the conversation. 

Nonetheless, we don’t think it’s too much to ask for magazines like Cosmo to stop twisting studies like this:

“Women process language on both sides of their brains, while guys only use one side,” says brain-imaging specialist Daniel G. Amen, MD, author of Sex on the Brain.

into stereotype-reinforcing nonsense like this alleged nugget of wisdom.

To get him chatting, tune into topics he’s into, like work, TV, or his accomplishments.

Ah, so instead of finding common ground (or finding a guy who can actually manage to converse about things other than himself), just talk about him!  This sounds like advice from a dating handbook straight out of Leave It to Beaver.  Forget any idealistic notions of open communication—turns out men are only interested in discussing work (just their own, we’re guessing), television (but only sports and shows with frequent explosions), and their accomplishments (because they wouldn’t want to date women whose accomplishments might outshine their own). 

We’re surprised Cosmo didn’t take the next logical step by suggesting other suitably masculine subjects sure to spark conversation—you know, power tools, domestic beer, and that mega-hot chick on the cover of Maxim.  Never mind the radical idea of free-flowing conversation between men and women—Cosmo probably won’t get around to promoting that until at least 2046.

The Week: Special Almost-All-Vogue Edition

•    A documentary crew will go behind the scenes at Vogue as Anna Wintour and her minions put together the massive September issue over the next eight months. 

•    In a series of apparently unrelated observations, James Brady queries Glamour’s Cindi Leive about her rumored rivalry with Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Kate White, compares her clothing to Lord Byron’s, and describes her as “tallish.”  Thanks for the insight, Jim.

•    PETA activists picketed Vogue’s holiday party, while straight men boycotted Allure’s event.

•    And Angelina Jolie reportedly clashed with Vogue over the writer hired to profile her for the January issue.  Angelina vs. Anna?  We hope they got that on film.

Cosmopolitan: Hate Kids? Have 'Em Anyway

Post-Helen Gurley Brown (that’s her, right), Cosmopolitan is not exactly on the forefront of groundbreaking ideas about women, unless you consider endless pages of true confessions about romantic encounters in illicit places to be at all trail-blazing.  For a magazine predicated on women having significant agency in their own lives (you know, freedom to buy $700 stilettos and wear them to the office), the ideas presented in Cosmo are often surprisingly traditional.  Seriously, men want to know why women have large bags of cotton balls and decorate in pink?  (That tidbit is courtesy of the amazingly clichéd “What He Thinks When He Walks Through Your Door.”)

But when we spied one particular sidebar in  “Why Everyone's So Obsessed with Babies,” January, we dared hope.  Could it be something truly thoughtful?

Baby Backlash

Sure, there’s also a sidebar about “babymoons.” But exploring such a backlash would be an appropriate and surprisingly even-handed counterpoint to the rest of the article, which is typical “babies are the hot new accessory” hysteria. 

Do you glare at bawling babies in restaurants?  Are you panic-stricken when a friend asks if you want to hold her newborn?  If you are, you're perfectly normal—

What? We grew even more hopeful. An article that acknowledges that some women may have misgivings or doubts about motherhood?  A potentially unique take on the trend?  Tell us more, Cosmo.

—it's not unusual to dislike kids but still want them.

Oh. Never mind.

Cosmo: Apparently, the Real World Is Just Like High School

May we direct your attention to the lower left-hand side of Cosmopolitan’s December cover?  Specifically, the part which reads

Below-His-Belt Bloopers!

Hilarious Tales of Inconvenient Excitement 

Hilarious?  Come on, that sort of thing hasn’t been funny since high school.  We even read the article to make sure. 

If a guy holding a book in his lap is supposed to induce laughter, then we fear for the future of comedy. Is this what passes for funny? Two buddies on a road trip, simultaneously turned on by an attractive woman at a gas station.  Golden!  Totally wacky! Is Johnny Knoxville available to star in the movie version?  And can you believe the hijinks that ensue when a 30-year-old becomes excited while dancing with his girlfriend's sister?  Ha!  Involuntary bodily functions are uproarious! 

Still, the very existence of this story was does bolster our heretofore unrevealed theory that Cosmo is written for, and possibly even written by, ninth-graders. This article is pretty much tailor-made for passing around in geometry class.

Cosmo: Get a Boyfriend, Lose Yourself

Does Cosmopolitan truly believe its readers are worthless without a man in their lives, or does it just write as if they are? Case in point, from “The Best Places to Meet a Guy,” November:

Hot Spot: A Fortune 500 or Tech Company

…If you’re searching for a new position, consider working for either a Fortune 500 company (75 percent of incoming full-time associates at top banks, many of which are in the Fortune 500, are guys) or a tech company (men make up 75 percent of the technology workforce, according to the National Science Foundation). Hint: Once you’re in, join the office Super Bowl pool.

It’s one thing to suggest, as Cosmo does elsewhere in this article, to meet guys by hitting the weight room instead of the treadmill at the gym. It’s entirely another to propose working at a company where, traditionally, the majority of employees are men. The implication is that women would never seek employment at a bank or tech firm without the added bonus of a mostly male work force. And the not-quite-explicit suggestion that women should dramatically alter—or worse, subjugate—their own career plans in order to increase the chances of snagging a guy is nothing short of appalling.

We realize the magazine is predicated on breathless love and dating advice, and this issue—with its special “Cosmo men” section—is particularly sex-obsessed. But we’d be thrilled to see all those modern, liberated ideas about relationships paired with modern, liberated ideas about everything else.

Cosmo Desperately Seeking "Good Taste"

Cosmopolitan is looking for a new fashion editor.  According to their MediaBistro job listing:

The most important quality is good taste and an enthusiastic demeanor.

Grammar issues with that sentence aside, we’re wondering whether they mean “good taste” as in “keen eye for fashion” or as in, well, good taste. Having read the magazine, we have to assume it’s the former.

Cosmo: Turns Out There Is a Substitute for Substance

From Cosmpolitan’s November issue:

Find the Hair That Expresses You

Think you need to be blond to be a bombshell? Or a brunette to mean business? Au contraire. Today there’s a fresh set of rules: Any color can make the statement you want.

Oh, great. We’ve been looking for something to take the place of having an actual personality.

Cosmo: To Thine Own Self Be True

See that blue button on the upper right-hand corner? It reads

Sexy vs. Skanky

Check out our new column!

And we say: Why bother? It’s not like Cosmo knows the difference. Have they looked at their own magazine lately? Have they even read the rest of the October cover? Promoting articles with headlines like

30 Sex Boosters: Amazing Little Extras That Make Sex Even Sexier

and

Discover the Sex Fantasy 68% of Men Have

doesn’t exactly speak to their ability to distinguish understated sex appeal from, well, the overstated kind.  Actually, cover lines like these don’t even attest to the ability to differentiate between articles that are fresh and interesting and those that we’ve seen a hundred times already.

Would someone please remind us why we buy this magazine?

Cosmo: What? Men and Women Talk?

It’s settled.  Those letters asking for advice and insight from experts cannot possibly be real.

Our proof?  Page 88 of September’s Cosmopolitan. The piece, “Paging the Love Doctor,” promises much.

Answers to your most probing questions about celeb relationships from Beverly Hillspsychotherapist Bella Dishell.

As if the concept of people writing to a magazine to ask “probing questions”about the relationships of people they don’t even know isn’t mind-boggling enough, we should clarify here that readers aren’t asking remotely factual questions like, “Assuming they are engaged, what kind of ring did Vince Vaughn buy for Jennifer Aniston?”  Nope, they’re asking speculative nonsense like this about the two.

After her divorce, Jennifer Aniston said that Vince Vaughn made her laugh and feel safe.  Why do women like funny guys?

Does the letter-writer hail from a bizarro backwards planet where a sense of humor is actually a detriment on the singles scene? Does such a place even exist? We find it hard to believe that anyone anywhere would need to question the desire for a funny partner.

Sure, Cosmo often almost exclusively emphasizes the physical aspects of relationships over those pesky talking parts of a partnership. But this letter is over-the-top evidence that these supposed reader-submitted questions are probably just generated by interns with nothing better to do.  That, or Cosmo readers really are as single-minded about sex as the magazine’s content indicates. 

Keeping It Zipped (For Once) at Cosmo

From Cosmopolitan’s “Style Checklist,” August:

Buttons are still a big trend, but the chicest closure is the zipper.  Look for them everywhere!

P.S.  It’s okay if they’re just for fun and not functional.

But now we’re forced to wonder if functional but not fun zippers are acceptable in Cosmo’s fashion hierarchy.  Because being stylish is crucial, but keeping our pants fastened is purely optional.

This Week: It's All Anna Wintour's Fault

While we were slacking off this week, here’s what else was going on:

Did Elle make up Hilary Duff’s attestation of virginity?  Did anyone believe it in the first place?  Does anyone over the age of fourteen even care?

Jane wants readers to contact editors with story ideas.  Remember when Sassy did its annual reader-produced issue?  This is like that, only lazier and not as innovative.

This week’s most bizarre internet mashup features legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown lecturing how to have an affair over salacious news footage dissecting the breakup of Peter Cook and Christie Brinkley.  If only Cook had followed HGB’s helpful and totally outdated advice.

And this is old, but too good to pass up.  Apparently, Anna Wintour is considered so powerful that she gets blamed for everything—including the economic performance of companies she isn’t even affiliated with. 

The Week: Banish Celebs from Covers, Make Life Easier

Elsewhere this week:

Kirsten Dunst’s shoot for Vogue goes terribly wrong, proving yet again why models should reclaim magazine covers.

Interning—or, in this case, is it “interning”?— at Teen Vogue will get you nowhere.  However, if your mother edits the grown-up version, all sorts of opportunities present themselves.

Continually managing to be ever more insipid, Cosmo announces its sixth annual “Media Man” contest.  You know, because there just isn’t enough space in the magazine for all the objectifying that needs to be done.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: Cosmo Aims for Funny, Manages Only Insipid

Today marks the debut of a new feature here at Glossed Over: We Read It So You Don’t Have To. Self-explanatory, right?

The initial recipient of the WRISYDHT treatment is “Hilarious ‘I Work at Cosmo’ Tales,” from August’s issue of—yes—Cosmopolitan. As you might have divined from the over-reaching title, the tales aren’t remotely close to funny. To save you both the trouble of reading the measly one-page piece and the subsequent brain cell death you’ll experience,  here’s what the article boils down to:

When staffers reveal to strangers that they work at Cosmo, their new acquaintances incorrectly assume:

1. they’re oversexed and fascinated by other people’s personal lives.

2. they work in an office straight out of a teenage boy’s fantasy, complete with lingerie-clad editors having giggly pillow fights.

or

3. they’re surrounded by, like, totally hot girls all the time! Yowza! Can you believe the luck of some people?  Models are, like, totally awesome!

Thrilling, we know.

Why was this less-than-insightful article even published in the magazine? Perhaps an actual article—and by “actual,” we mean one that doesn’t focus solely on Cosmo staffers—was canceled, and this was the quickest and cheapest way to fill page 185. Twenty-four hours before the issue heads to the printers? Quick, send out an email to everyone in the office!

It’s not like most readers have any actual experience working at Cosmo and can therefore identify with—or refute—the oh-so-wacky stories recounted. We’re fairly certain the staff doesn’t make editorial decisions in their underwear (if they did, we’d expect the team at Cosmo to be the stars of their own reality show), but it’s still self-important bad form to publish inside jokes and expect the rest of us to be amused. Next time Cosmo promises hilarity, they ought to write about something other than themselves.

Cosmo: Where Common Sense Masquerades as Actual Advice

A few weeks ago, we wondered who reads Cosmopolitan, a query that—we admit it—missed the point. We should have questioned who the magazine’s target audience is. Fortunately, perusing the July issue has given us an answer: the magazine is directed squarely at the unwillingly lobotomized.

We’ve come to this perhaps-insensitive conclusion after reading “Cures for Summer Beauty Bummers.”  Here’s the passage that crystallized the matter for us:

You’re rapidly blowing through your summer beauty booty…watch your product serving sizes…Also, pick up economy size bottles.

Wait, wait, wait. Let’s repeat this to make sure we’ve fully absorbed this utterly mind-blowing suggestion. If we’re going through our shampoo too quickly, we should use less? And buy a bigger bottle of it next time we’re at the drugstore? Did we get that right?

We don’t want to be too cruel here—we’re considering the feelings of those recently lobotomized Cosmo readers—but isn’t this just common sense? How could this possibly be passed off as the “pro tip” the piece’s intro promised? It’s exactly the kind of practical wisdom that anyone who can actually read the words in Cosmo without having to sound them out should have already discovered for themselves.

Still, even if the magazine is written like only morons will read it, Cosmo’s staff is far cagier than we give them credit for. After all, we’re the ones who just paid $4.29 at the newsstand to read pointers we’ve already figured out on our own.

Innately Female Equals Insipid, Says Cosmo

Cosmopolitan’s “You, You, You,” July, offers us some “feel-good girlie moves.”  What might those moves be, exactly?  Here’s their explanation:

Looking for a fast happiness boost? It’s easier than you may think—just tap into your feminine instincts.

According to the magazine, our feminine instincts should prompt us to cheer ourselves in ways straig