Why is Glamour magazine trying to kill me?

So I was casually leafing through my June issue of Glamour magazine, and I see in small print on the bottom of page 51 "Are diamonds the new penises?" I kid you not. I was going to make it the title to this post, but I didn't want to be responsible for some poor person snorting coffee through his nose or hacking up a furball of disbelief on her monitor or whatever. Needless to say, I was taken aback.

I've never been a fan of the "Men, are they the new woman?" or "Pink is the new black" trend in magazine writing, but at least there are some analogous relationships one can make between pink and black or men and women, but diamonds and penises? Did the writer (unfortunately a non credited staff writer) miss the analogy section of the SATS? Has he or she never seen the "one of these things is not like the other" segment of Sesame Street?

I should have stopped there, but I continued and ended up leafing through a very unfortunate article (p.219-221), written by Laurie Sandell. I suppose, considering the content of the article, I should feel comfortable enough to call the author by her first name. Laurie was writing about how to get out of embarrassing sexual situations. She begins her "advice" with the confession:

At 33, I've got 12 years of practice of sexual experience under my belt

you do the math

,so to speak.

What does she mean by "so to speak"? She heard about sex from other people? She was in the room at some point when other people were having sex? Is she trying to be coy?

With all that practice you'd think I could get through the act without embarrassing myself, but frankly when you put together two sets of expectations, eight flailing limbs, and one, I admit, a tambourine, there's infinite potential for awkwardness.

Ok Laurie, if a tambourine was involved, you had sex with a gay man or Sandra Bernhard (don't ask, obscure reference). Or maybe you got a bit frisky with one of those wanna be minstrels who play the medieval fairs. You know the really scary ones that actually have codpieces in their closets. The line kind of reminds me of a line from one of the worst films ever made Return of the Killer Tomatoes ( starring, I kid you not, George Clooney and John Astin-yes the original Gomez Adams-I guess his appearances on Night Court as Judge Stone's father just weren't enough) "So she does this thing with two lawn chairs and an empty milk carton..." Such lines make me feel like to put a condom on my face.

Laurie indulges in some very predictable humor:

You Fart in Bed: Make sure your passport is valid...

And some predictable advice:

...he's "prematurely" done...just reassure the guy with a hug or a smile so he understand that it's no big deal...

Having been with two, yes count them two, impotent men, I have to Laurie is very very wrong here. I was with a guy who was totally impotent for four months. FOUR MONTHS. And he kept saying "I have to see a doctor about this," but he never did. I have to think that my "everything is ok" attitude helped facilitate his denial of the problem WHICH WAS REALLY OUR PROBLEM AS I WASN'T GETTING ANY KIND OF SATISFACTION AT ALL. And that IS, I'm afraid Laurie, a VERY BIG DEAL. Ahem. In fact, it was such a big deal that I'm still a little bitter about it. (All I'm sayin' is that if I travel four hours round trip every weekend while I am in grad school to see your ass, you BETTER give me some sweet lovin'. If I take Amtrak, I want some quality ravishing. Just so we are all clear on that.) The point is when a man becomes impotent it impacts on the woman's ego as well. I know it's upsetting to the guy, we hear about that all the time, but what none of these magazines talk about is the impact it can have on a woman's ego as well. If a guy suddenly goes limp, or can't get erect at all, I wonder what I have done wrong, if I'm not attractive, or whatever. The thing is it's a difficult thing for BOTH people to deal with, and acknowledgement of that might be a refreshing, but instead it's the same recycled "Normalize the situation" tag.

I don't know how you all talk to each other during sex, but Laurie uses some strangely formal language for the communication in between couples:

You're lying in bed after sex. He says, 'I love you.' You don't feel the same....If you're just starting to feel the same: Reassure him by saying, "I may not be ready to say 'I love you' but that doesn't mean things aren't growing between us."

Not since I saw the last made for lifetime film have I ever heard such ludicrous couplespeak. I'm not going to make my predictable cheap "what are the odds of a man saying he loves you and you NOT returning the sentiment" shot. Mainly I am abstaining because I have had men tell me they loved me and not returned the sentiment. True most of them were clinically insane and/or on some seriously mind altering substances, but it has, even to me, happened. I wouldn't, if presented with situation again, try and channel Winston Churchill.

He wants you to talk dirty..you could try to be vocal when it does feel natural. "That feels good" can go a long way.

Right, right because any guy who wants to hear "I am your nasty little cum slut" is going to settle for "Oh yeah, that feels good." I don't know who Laurie has been with, but I'm fairly sure none of them have been nicknamed Superfreak.

Now certainly this article and the penis and diamond analogy are not enough to throw into a suicidal fit, but Glamour had one more secret weapon: an article on the sexiest things a woman can wear.

Now the entries were again predictable: a woman in a man's shirt and nothing else, a woman without a bra, and, of course, "dangerously high heels."

On page 251, Joseph Weisberg sings the praises of heels so high the chick can't walk in them.

Thanks Joe, because we don't have enough issues as it is we need to invite a small avalanche of health problems, including osteoarthritis, bunions, hammer toes, trapped nerves, shortened Achilles tendons, upon ourselves in the name of "being hot." Not to mention it makes all of us chicks who CAN'T wear high heels feel awful, which getting back to my original thesis, seems to be the point anyway.


At this point, I'm reminded of one of the exchanges from the film Heathers:

Dad lights up cigarette and inhales.

Dad: Will someone please tell me why I smoke these things?

Veronica: Because you're an idiot.

Dad: Oh yeah, that's it.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't why I continue to read glamour, I suppose it's because I'm an idiot.