I remember when I stopped reading Cosmopolitan in my first year of university. It was one of the best things I ever did. The endless fashion, diets and super-skinny models always left me feeling bad about myself so I decided that it would be best if I just disengaged from that aspect of “women’s culture.”
It’s 20 years on and Cosmo hasn’t changed. Still, it’s a hugely popular magazine that many women do enjoy and when they come up with a sex survey, I can’t help but be a little curious. If you can get past the very first question which reveals that absolutely none of the respondents identified as gay, there’s some interesting titbits in there.
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Naturally I leapt on this statistic:
Have you ever watched porn?
37% said yes, I love it
23% said yes, but only with a boyfriend
15% said yes, once – but I didn’t like it
14% said no, but I’d be open to it
8% said no, I hate the idea.
3% said no, because it’s exploitative
That’s statistically larger than a lot of other surveys suggest. The average figure seems to be 30% (a la Nielsen Netratings) but UK Cosmo women are keener on their porn – whether enjoying it by themselves or using it as a tool within their sexual relationship. That’s 60% right there. Add the other 14% who didn’t have a problem with the idea and you’re pretty much saying that 75% of Cosmo readers are OK with porn. Quite the impressive statistic.
Also, I think I’ll gloat a bit that not a lot of Cosmo chicks are into Dworkinesque anti-porn feminism – a measly 3%. Seems the Stop Porn Coalition have a long way to go to win over your average woman into their “all porn is bad” campaign.
OK, so this was an online self-selected survey done by a commercial women’s magazine. The page doesn’t say exactly how many women did the survey (beyond “thousands”) or what the demographics were, so it’s not the most scientific bit of research out there. Nonetheless, if we consider the sheer numbers of women who do read Cosmopolitan, it certainly suggests that more and more women are openly enjoying porn.
Just to give an idea of some of the other trends, based on what was most popular:
Your average Cosmo woman has sex 2-3 times a week in the missionary position, doesn’t have an orgasm as often as she would like and rarely has an orgasm from penetrative sex alone (oral sex or manual stimulation is better). She will still fake orgasms occasionally, will rarely have sex on the first date and prefers men who make her laugh.
Bet you anything this doesn’t change their content even an inch. I remember once they did a survey about their reader’s sexual desires and fantasies–great results. 50% of them had non-con fantasies, 30% fantasized about sex with another woman, 25% wanted to be spanked, on and on.
Given this information, what was the followup in the pages of the magazine? None. None whatsoever. Cosmo would rather throw out their own data than so much as poke their tiny heteronormative french-vanilla paradigm, even when they know that paradigm to be wrong. That level of willful ignorance, of deliberate wrongness, is what we’re up against.
Of course they won’t change anything. Their formula sells and has kept selling for decades. As I said, I’m not seeing anything different to the magazine that I rejected 20 years ago. The evil capitalist in me understands this; there’s a big market out there of women who happily and unquestioningly buy this stuff, so they don’t want to mess with the golden goose.
At the same time, yes, they should certainly be better reflecting the tastes of modern women rather than doing the same old tired “Why he won’t commit” articles.
Just a small niggle, Brad. Speaking as a hetero French Vanilla kind of girl, I don’t consider my sexuality to be a “wrong paradigm”.
I apologize, I meant no offense. When I said “wrong” I didn’t mean that as any kind of moral judgment, I just meant inaccurate. The model of sexuality they present doesn’t include the experiences and desires of many, even most of their readers, and that’s according to their own data. That doesn’t make it morally wrong, but it would appear to be dreadfully bad marketing, no?
No offense taken Brad 🙂 I admit I’ve become a little touchy about this kind of thing. I remember I once went to the Gay Mardi Gras to support them and was called a “breeder”. I keep seeing that kind of snark on the web here and there, the vibe that straight vanilla types are always the enemy because others are being marginalised. It creates an us-verus-them dichotomy that isn’t helpful. So… that’s a bit off topic, just wanted to explain myself.
If Cosmo were to head down that diverse path, it would probably be a much more readable and interesting magazine. But when you think about the fact that the real reason it exists is to sell advertising for cosmetics companies and fashion houses, any change will be monumentally slow. You could probably say the same about Playgirl mag: the editors were pushing for it to properly cater to straight women but the bosses were only interested in what they saw as a more lucrative gay market. The money talks.
But still, it’s ultimately OK because it means there’s now space for other mags like yours and websites like mine to cater to the women they’re ignoring.