10 Ways to Achieve the Perfect Orgasm

Like the blog title? It works for Cosmopolitan. I’ve taken up reading women’s magazines again.

This is a big deal for me. I decided to stop reading women's magazines, quitting cold turkey, dropping the sauce, so to speak. (All these pre-Thanksgiving-dinner allusions. I must be hungry.) I decided that I had to read things that were substantial. Business Week, The Times, the long political features in The New Yorker.

You could say I was denying my heritage, abandoning the first type of literature (OK, the second, if you count the V.C. Andrews series) that got me reading outside of the classroom—the first un-forced instance of spontaneous browsing. I'd forgotten where I'd learned the basics of being a woman. I'd taken their advice on shaping my brows and deep conditioning once a month and then took off for college without even saying goodbye.

During this haughty, carpet-bagging, Glamour-less period, I fell out of the mainstream of collective female knowledge, wearing square-toed boots amidst the pointy-toed women walking to work Downtown, my fingernails rough and uneven, while I stewed on other magazines that typically appealed to the more analytical half of the brain.

I suppose I miss appealing to my more spontaneous side. I was at a girlfriend's house. She loves shopping and owns as many pairs of shoes as my boyfriend owns tool gadgets. While we chatted over merlot I picked up her latest copy of Women's Magazine X, thick as a catalogue and teeming with stilettos; shiny, powdery cheeks; and practical beauty tidbits that you hardly take in consciously. They slip so naturally and easily into a women's memory bank.

"Hey," she yelled over to me. "Have you even heard a thing I've said?" She'd caught me, the real me, the women's magazine reader.

That weekend I parked myself at Barnes & Noble with the intention of browing all of the magazines that I browsed when I had afternoons to fill as a teenager. I had some catching up to do.

Browsing through this magazine, let’s call it Femme, I found some very useful things—how to line a pie plate with dough; what micro abrasion products are out on the market today that will save me an $80 trip to the facialist; how to use an elliptical “O” position to increase my orgasms during sex.

As a writer I felt I wasn't a natural for women's magazines. I mean, who knows all of this stuff? And, well, who would be willing to go find out? A friend of mine, a publicist, used to send out queries for her client, a women’s magazine. I’d receive mass-emailed requests from her to agree to be interviewed for a feature, short one-liners like, “Needed: Women of leisure. If you would be fine meeting a rich man and never working another day in your life, call me…” I never replied.

There is a guilty pleasure in reading about other people who are conducting dating experiments and offering up their sex lives as coachable fodder. But to actually take part?

I’m always amazed by the people willing to put their lives in print or on camera—and for free! We owe them a great deal for giving us something to talk about and to learn from; certainly women who endured abuse and talk about it on Oprah are likely helping other victimized women, but what about the ones on Jenny Jones who need to tell their parents and the studio audience that they got through college selling tricks?

At night I sometimes catch Dr. Phil while eating dinner. He’s got one of the classier shows and actually provides a service, not just entertainment. Yet I’m always amazed by the guests, who know they are going to hear it from the Man when they get on the show.

I can hear Dr. Phil now, winding up for the pitch:

“So, let me get this straight, you actually beat your children every day?”

At this point, just hearing Dr. Phil’s tone of voice would set me off in utter retreat. I would wonder what made me agree to be on the show in the first place. If I were the guest, I would deny everything.

“What? Is that what the producers told you? I’m sorry I thought I was here to talk about happy marriages…or my perfection complex”

But these guests, when confronted with their behavior nod and say, “Yes Dr. Phil, that’s correct.” Or, they half understand they are about to be humiliated and lessen the charge, “That would be every other day, Dr. Phil.”

If you worked with one of these people, what would you do? Pretend you weren’t watching them on TV talk about their inadequate sex life? I wonder if all of the TVshow guests and women’s magazine case-study subjects all work at the same place? They wouldn’t have to feel so self-conscious after spilling their guts to a national audience.

“Hey Larry, how you doing this morning?”

“Good Bob, how bout you?

“Good, good. Those anger management classes working for you?”

“Going OK. Going OK. How’s

“Better. Ever since we stopped relying on the rhythm method things have gotten a lot more spontaneous.”

“Hey, when you get some time today maybe you can show me some of those moves I read about, especially that one from the second night of the Better Sex Challenge.”

“Yeah, sure; anytime…See you in the staff meeting.”

I suppose that in addition to feeling guilty about being privy to such private information I also rebel a bit against publications that tell me how to be. Some of the information is downright useful, but oftentimes I come away from a women’s magazine more insecure than grateful. I never seem to have the right lip gloss in the right season. I could be one of those women with the X’s over my face, the unwitting victim of unforgivable “Fashion Don’ts”. These articles about better sex are always illustrated with women who are barely legal. These women look better in lingerie than me. They don’t have little pock marks or moles that their lovers can point to and say, “Jeeezus! What’s that?” They don’t have to find time for sex; they lie around in bed all day and frolic with their lovers.

I get drawn in, demoralized, and then I let the whipping continue until the back cover.

I have no gripe about the images in women’s magazines, really. Hell, they are women’s magazines, not men’s. We’re buying millions of them because of their intimate, sister-to-sister, quietly airbrushed quality. We don’t want our imperfections reflected back to us on pages—not in pictures anyway. We can talk about sexual dysfunction, overeating, or our victimization, so long as there is a lithe 19-year-old nymph shown pondering the seriousness of our problems. Yes, even she deals with bloating.

I’m seeing magazines move away from appealing to one demographic with a much younger one. Magazines like O and More feature more real women. And all women’s magazines have a formula that pertains to a specific piece of the magazine buying pie (God, I’m really dying for dinner, can you tell?) But every piece seems to want some of the same things: beauty tips, quick workout exercises, diet facts and sex advice. At least their advertisers want their readers to want these things.

As a women's magazine reader I have no alternative formula; but I want alternatives. I offer this with a renewed spirit: Don’t tell me what to buy, or how many repetitions to do, tell me why my life ain’t so bad as it is.

Comments

[genevieve]

Jory, I only read them in doctor's clinics or supermarkets. There is one really interesting Marie Claire published here in Australia ( under the general Marie CLaire umbrella, I'm sure), which always features a feminist article with a real punch, basically the needs of Third World women etc. I think it's a terrific way to reach women who are completely blase about feminism. They make an effort sometimes to do real women stories as well but they are usually about sex - I agree, do these people all inhabit a separate universe?
The editor is the daughter of a society hairdresser here in Melbourne and does a great job delivering the feminist content surreptitiously to a much wider audience than it might otherwise get.

[Ally]

If you start a magazine that shows/tells/reminds us "why your/our life ain’t so bad as it is." I want a subscription.

fuck you

[chickeedee]

i had this problem for.. well, let's just say more than a few months. I didn't want to go to the store to buy toys or have them delivered to my apartment. And i'm pretty sure my bf would have been too shy to use them during sex anyway. But i found a guide online that really helped ~ http://www.climaxhelp.com/Intercourse.html