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Cosmarxpolitan: Sex advice from Karl Marx

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:55:00 +0000

Rife with double entendres and political wordplay, here is your new favorite dishy Tumblr, Cosmarxpolitan, in which Karl Marx rations out sex advice for your average proletarian gal.

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Baudelaire makes a comeback

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:15:00 +0000

IN HIS 1863 ESSAY “The Painter of Modern Life,” Charles Baudelaire introduces his audience to Monsieur Constantin Guys, the “perfect stroller (flâneur).” This cosmopolitan gentleman is driven by curiosity, joy, and a desire for new experiences. A “passionate spectator,” he strolls about urban spaces, observing the crowd. Even though the flâneur is alone, he is at ease. His wandering gives him inspiration. He is “away from home” yet feels “everywhere at home.” He is at once an artist, a man of the world, and a “spiritual citizen of the universe.” Baudelaire’s perfect flâneur is gifted with the ability to both understand and penetrate the world: “Few men are gifted with the capacity of seeing; there are fewer still who possess the power of expression.” Not only does the flâneur capture our world, his art transforms it. “The external world is reborn upon his paper,” Baudelaire writes, “natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful, strange and endowed with an impulsive life like the soul of its creator.”

Lady mags are empowering?

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:45:00 +0000

When thinking about things that sexually empower women, Cosmopolitan is one of the very last to come to mind. The magazine is infamous for selling ways to please your man and spice things up in the bedroom -- neither of which are awful aims, there’s just something terribly superficial, and misguiding, about the never-ending flow of need-to-know tips and tricks.

However, a counterintuitive study suggests that raunchy women’s magazines like Cosmo actually cause women to prioritize their own sexual desire. On a more ambiguous note, the research also found that women who read such rags see sex as less risky.

The study, titled “Striving for Pleasure Without Fear,” took a bunch of undergraduate women and had them read sex articles in lady mags (the control group read Entertainment Weekly). As the study reports, “Participants briefly exposed to Cosmopolitan more strongly endorsed a view that female sexual assertiveness is for a woman's own pleasure,” as opposed to a man’s pleasure. That's just about the opposite of what Cosmo's drive-your-man-wild headlines would suggest. They were also less likely “to view premarital sexual intercourse as risky," which could be good or bad, depending on your perspective -- "and were more supportive of sexually assertive women who prioritized their own pleasure.”

Riding in elevators with Helen Gurley Brown

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:22:00 +0000

Six years ago, I was waiting for an elevator when Helen Gurley Brown walked up next to me. This wasn’t terribly unusual; I worked for an offshoot of Cosmopolitan at the time, and our offices were housed in the same building. What was unusual was that she was alone, and that I was dressed well.

I’d only begun dressing well a few months prior to our elevator run-in; depression had kept me in baggy hoodies and ill-fitting jeans between the ages of 24 and 29. As my 30th birthday neared, I realized I was hitting the age where I just might be putting patterns into place that would stick with me forever. I broke up with my boyfriend, chopped my sloppy bob in favor of a pixie cut, lost 30 pounds—and much to my surprise, found that sometimes I enjoyed being looked at. On this particular morning, I was wearing my favorite of my array of dresses and had matched it with heels that, for me, were wildly impractical. Perhaps most importantly, I’d just had the pleasure of a certain variety of overnight guest, so my bronzer wasn’t the only thing lending me a glow.

Helen Gurley Brown: A life in links

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Helen Gurley Brown, a writer, editor and champion for sexual freedom and empowerment, died today at age 90. In a statement, the Hearst Corporation, where she worked as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, said, "Life here will somehow not seem the same without her near-daily arrival at 300 West 57th Street." Brown came to New York from Green Forest, Ark. She wrote the groundbreaking bestseller "Sex and the Single Girl" in 1962, and by 1965 she had become editor of Cosmopolitan.

Twitter was abuzz in response to the news of her death. Restaurant critic Gael Greene, who worked for Brown at Cosmo, tweeted,

Helen Gurley Brown dead at 90. Instinctively brilliant.Some pieces she assigned were so silly I used fake bylines.Loved her thankyou notes.

— Gael Greene (@GaelGreene) August 13, 2012

On Brown's 90th birthday this past February, The Huffington Post rounded up several of her most memorable quotes, including:

Helen Gurley Brown, 1922–2012

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 20:07:00 +0000

Up through the 1950s, women’s magazine articles spoke of fixing lunch and darning socks. But in 1965, Helen Gurley Brown took the helm of Cosmopolitan and spiced up forever the Woman in Print. Her magazine prattled about the joys of women doing and having it all: excelling at work, splurging on luxuries, beguiling men. Decades before, ad execs had targeted women as leading consumers; now, Brown was urging her reader to snag a man (or men) to satiate her physical, emotional and material appetites.

Helen Gurley was born poor in rural Arkansas in 1922. She began to work at 18, fresh out of her first year of college, and held down a string of secretarial jobs until one boss, delighted at her sprightly, straightforward writing, hired her to write copy for his ad agency. In 1958, she joined the Los Angeles firm of Kenyan & Eckhardt as an account executive and became the West Coast’s highest-paid woman in the field.