Monday, January 10, 2011

Cosmocking: February '11!

Pink cover! Mila Kunis! Whoever that is! "The Attitude that Makes Her Effortlessly Sexy!" Yes, with only years of diet and exercise and acting training, professionally applied makeup, a custom-tailored designer dress, studio lighting and photography, and a butt-ton of Photoshop, she's effortlessly sexy! "Bad Girl Sex!" "Flatten Your Belly!" Because breaking the rules is totally sexy, as long as you don't break, you know, those rules! We have rules about how to break rules, here!

There's a guy I used to know in this issue. That was a "holy crap" moment. One of the guys profiled in the "Fun Fearless Males 2011" section is Cory Monteith. Who I worked on a film project with, back in the day. We weren't really friends or anything, but it's still bizarre to see someone I knew as a regular person being presented as a Famous Person. And in fuckin' Cosmo! Holy crap.

In a man's brain, the bridge that communicates between the two hemispheres is smaller than in a woman's. Since it's smaller, it can't handle as much thought traffic--which explains why dudes are more single-minded and have a harder time multi-tasking.
Okay, I already covered in the last Cosmocking that this isn't factually true. Also if it were true that wouldn't account for the existence of people who have no corpus callosum and are cognitively functional. Also I doubt that the conventional meaning of "multi-tasking" is reflected literally in brain function.

So this time, I just want to point out that this is hate speech. Making a false claim that a group of people are mentally inferior because of the way they were born is not a tee-hee matter. "Men are lesser beings" may carry less historical and societal baggage than "women are lesser beings," but that doesn't make it okay. That's not something to toss out as a casual little "check out this nifty factoid, it totally explains so much, lol!" It's fighting words.

You just met a cutie at a party and would love to see him again. Send these body-language symbols to guarantee he'll ask for your number and follow through by actually dialing your digits.
Oooh, I know this one! Use your body--specifically, your larynx and tongue--to say "You're a cutie and I would love to see you again. Can I get your number?"

Of course not. Cosmo advises that you should smile at him, gesture with your palms up, and look at his lips while he talks. The idea is that he'll feel compelled to ask you for your number and not even know why. I can understand being tempted to do this out of sheer cowardice, because it's easier to put the burden of making an unambiguous advance on someone else, but I don't think that's Cosmo's reasoning. I think it has more to do with the idea that a woman can't appear to be using anything other than her beauty to attract men. If a woman can't spur a man to action through her sheer gorgeousness alone, she must not be gorgeous, and therefore she's a failure at life.

In a weird way, the Cosmo method actually sets you up for much harsher rejection, because when a man fails to spontaneously hit on you, he's not just rejecting but actively insulting you. And he doesn't even have to know it! The Cosmo method enables a man to deliver a devastating, ice-cold rejection while honestly believing he's making pleasant small talk.

Grab binoculars and set your sights on Jupiter (besides the moon, it's the brightest thing this time of the year). Face southwest, and gaze a third of the way up the sky. Jupiter is the peach-colored disk with four bright spots next to it in a line (those are its moons.)
I just don't know how to break to Cosmo that planets, er, move. Now I know how Copernicus felt.

25 Fun Things To Do With Your Guy
-Pretend you're not in a fight when you are

This is a novel definition of "fun."

Do this dirty flirting technique: Hold his gaze for 15 seconds, and imagine stripping his clothes off. As you become turned on, your body will send out sexual signals that his brain will pick up on, and as a result, his libido will leap to attention.
Okay, but what if I'm not dating Professor X? Then I'm just staring, and wow, you'd be surprised how long 15 seconds really is.

One of the important revelations of adulthood is that other people can't read your mind. You can't expect people to apologize because you feel angry, or to comfort you because you feel sad, unless you actually express your emotions. You may feel like you're radiating giant fumes of anger and look exactly the same on the outside. And likewise horniness. Feeling horny at a guy is not a way of communicating with him.

... and thank God, really, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in a world where you can automatically tell who's thinking sexy about you.

Men are hardwired to notice big breasts (shocker), but it's not for the reason you think. Back in caveman days, men needed a way to tell a woman's age. "They had to look at physical signs," says Satoshi Kanazawa, [noted sexist blowhard]. The giveaway: her mammary glands. "Larger breasts sag over time, so it was an indicator that a woman was older."
Oh, of course! Nothing else about a person's appearance changes with age! The average forty-year-old and twenty-year-old look exactly the same with shirts on!

Or at least they did in caveman times. I think it's gotten to the point where you can say absolutely anything about cavemen and it just goes. In caveman times, everyone ate through their butt and pooped through their mouth! Hush now, don't argue with Science.

Apples and pears are about to go out of season, so enjoy them while you still can by sipping a wintry cider this Sunday evening.
This may be the smallest nit I've ever picked in a Cosmocking, but... the apple and pear season ended in October, Cosmo.

27 comments:

  1. OMG YOU KNOW CORY MONTEITH WHAT IS HE LIKE.

    ...Sorry. Glee fangirl. Moving on.

    I mean, it's not like it's a bad idea to smile, gesture with palms up and look at his lips. It's just... not likely to be sufficient to get a date.

    Well, your pupils do dilate when you're thinking Sexxxy Thoughts. Or suddenly transfer from a dark room to a light room, but that's neither here nor there. And people do tend to find people with dilated pupils more attractive. But I think you should tell your boyfriend what to look for so he doesn't get confused about why you're staring at him.

    I propose the theory that men are not hardwired to like large breasts, because men are individuals who have different preferences! Shocking, I know.

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  2. Oh wow, he's that famous? Now I feel even weirder. Honestly I don't remember that much about him. He was... professional. On a set that was kind of choked with "I am a delicate snowflake of an Artiste" behavior, he was laid-back and low-maintenance; he showed up on time and knew his lines. I hope this very bland look into his character thrills you?

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  3. Well, it's Glee. Among theater geeks he is amazingly famous, mostly for being over-Autotuned and still unable to sing. I am unaware of how famous he is among normal people.

    Perhaps being laid-back and low maintenance is how he keeps his job despite the problems of "not being able to sing in a show that is all about singing".

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  4. I did a bit of cosmocking myself while waiting in line at the grocery store. Somewhere in the first few articles, they mention "plateful" used as "a plate full" instead of "having the aspects of a plate" as 'plateful' implies. Seriously. I know it's technically just a grammar error, but I don't think the readers of cosmo need any more bad advice...

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  5. I just don't know how to break to Cosmo that planets, er, move. Now I know how Copernicus felt.

    HAHAHAHAHAhAH!!!!!!!!

    The most disturbing thing about mass media swill like Cosmo is that it so relentlessly embodies the lie that everyfuckenthinge in the entire world is just some made up wishful-thinking bullshitte, that it actually leads people to think that even real shitte like the motions of celestial bodies is also just some made up wishful-thinking bullshitte. After years and years of saturating themselves with that kind of gibberish, people lose the conviction that there even *exists* some objective physical reality that is not up for discussion and is not just a "matter of opinion".

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  6. The Cosmo method enables a man to deliver a devastating, ice-cold rejection while honestly believing he's making pleasant small talk.

    Given the type who would would be wounded by such a thing, I consider that a prominent feature, not a bug.

    And if it helps, I have no idea who or what a Cory Monteith is, nor any burning desire to find out.

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  7. Mishi: Oh, now you've engaged my grammar-picky gear, and it's making me want to argue that 'plateful' is in fact entirely grammatical. The '-ful' suffix, at least in American English, has two meanings: firstly, the adjectival 'full of or suffused with' -- a joyful noise, a forceful statement; secondly, as a noun, something like 'a sufficient quantity to fill the named container' -- a handful of coins, a mouthful of water.

    Since both senses mean pretty much the same thing and simply shift the subject of the clause between what's full and what's doing the filling (a plate full of food/a plateful of food), I tend to suspect that one sense is a back-formation from the other; that said, there are enough attested modern uses of both senses -- and enough attested modern uses of 'plateful' itself, for that matter, including Merriam-Webster's -- that I don't think it's accurate to contend that the word, or the usage, is ungrammatical or even particularly irregular. (And in no sense of which I'm aware does '-ful' denote 'having the aspect of'; for that, try '-like' or maybe '-ish'.)

    Citoyen PhysioProf: Not to defend Cosmo, but I wonder whether they're more interested in destroying the idea of objective reality, or just completely and utterly ignorant of the fact that celestial bodies don't appear to be in the same part of the sky from one hour to the next. I mean, if nothing else, you've got to figure they are living somewhere in New York City, and if I correctly recall what that godawful place is like at night, I wouldn't be surprised if whoever wrote the piece has never actually seen Jupiter with her own two eyes.

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  8. Aaron Em:

    Weird. Is that a Commonwealth vs. American thing, or what? I have NEVER seen the -ful suffix, with its one l, used that way. I have seen full, two ls, used as an affix.

    Cosmo:
    Wow, thanks for yet another bit of genius evopsych! Without you, I would never have known that life in caveman times was exactly like life in a normatively idealized 20th century patriarchy!

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  9. Not to defend Cosmo, but I wonder whether they're more interested in destroying the idea of objective reality, or just completely and utterly ignorant of the fact that celestial bodies don't appear to be in the same part of the sky from one hour to the next.

    The massive multinational corporations whose propaganda budgets pay for Cosmo to exist are definitely interested in destroying the idea of objective reality. Whether the people who write the gibberish that attracts and maintains Cosmo's readership are explicitly on board with that plan--or are just flat-out fucken useful idiots--is not really important. Either way, the gibberish they write serves the corporatist end of destroying people's appreciation of objective reality.

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  10. I am very aware of Corey Monteith, even though I don't watch Glee, because I follow Tom & Lorenzo:
    http://tomandlorenzo2.blogspot.com/2011/01/2011-peoples-choice-awards-part-2.html

    And that boobs thing, just when I think I've heard the dumbest possible thing that popular evo-psych has to offer...

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  11. "... and thank God, really, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in a world where you can automatically tell who's thinking sexy about you."

    Wow, no kidding!

    I loved this post (Copernicus for the win!) but now also the caveman thing leads me to wonder if you've read "Sex At Dawn" and if so, what you thought of it.

    flightless

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  12. Was there a time component in the rest of the astronomy article? This month, Jupiter is indeed setting in the west during the early evening when people would be likely to be looking for it.

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  13. Copernicus bit was a spit-take moment for me. There's a long-running and bitter rivalry between Cosmo and Cosmos magazines which they usually manage to keep out of the public eye - looks like the former have decided to go nuclear. Time to stock up on tinned food, people.

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  14. Oh, and Mila Kunis is an actress - she voiced Meg on Family Guy (truly a feminist icon) and some other things I don't remember offhand.

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  15. My best guess would be that it is a dialect thing, but I'm an unlettered schlemiel and have no real way of knowing. As far as I know US English, we may have some compound words ending in '-full' (even if I can't think of any at the moment which aren't proper names), but we have no words in which '-full' takes the meaning of '-ful'. (Of course plenty of people spell it that way regardless, but as far as I know no dictionaries do.)

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  16. Thank you and agreed with the casual un-factual hate-speech toward men analysis. That we excuse that attitude and don't call it out for what it is is so un-okay it makes me sad. And being sad over Cosmo is silly.

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  17. "Plateful" looks weird to me; I think "platefull" would be more clear?

    Comrade PhysioProf - I think it's less a sinister brain-breaker plot, and more just a writing staff too dumb and apathetic to do any research.

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  18. Holly, did you happen to notice a lot of light spanking, biting, and denial-play (sorry, I don't know the exact word for that, but I think you get what I mean) in the 75 hottest sex tips article? I couldn't help but wondering if you would be pleased that they're opening your world up to a more vanilla audience, albeit in small doses, or if you would be pissed at the continuation of their "KINKY SEX IS SEX ONLY SEXIER" theme and lack of discussion of consent issues.
    Just something I was surprised you didn't talk about.

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  19. C - It's silly, but I have trouble snarking the sex-tips columns that are written as "I did this" then credited to some generic female first name and an age invariably under 30, because who am I to deny this fictitious woman her personal experience, right? It's only when they're written in the imperative "try this" voice that I feel really comfortable ripping them up.

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  20. sometimes, some people actually are sensitive and receptive enough to pick up on or take que from completely unexpressed feelings other than feeling them (even when the person may be playing the part of a person experiencing completely different feelings, even if said person is a very adept actor/actress)

    it's rare, but it does occur

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  21. No. People may pick up on subtly expressed feelings. Or they may guess feelings from context--if they know your dog just died, they may guess you're probably sad. But no one can pick up on completely unexpressed feelings.

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  22. Have you seen Jezebel's article on Cosmo's fake cover? http://jezebel.com/5725507/cosmos-fake-cover-hides-orgasms-from-advertisers
    I thought of you immediately. I love your blog!

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  23. Mila Kunis was first famous from That 70's Show as a main character, Jackie (notable as her first kiss was with Ashton Kutcher when she was like 14 and he was 19 - though she lied about her age to get the part), and she was also in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Black Swan. I like her.

    Everything else said in today's Cosmocking just made me groan in embarrassment. I used to READ these?!

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  24. Just discovered 'Cosmocking', think it's brilliant.

    Regarding multi-tasking, I've noticed this trend where every new female co-worker tells me within a week that I am incapable of multitasking. Strangely, I never make the same sort of generalisation about them based on their gender, so I'm have no idea why they feel the need to initiate some kind of gender superiority war.

    Usually the evidence is pretty flimsy - in one case it was because I couldn't hear her talking while I was facing my computer, so I had to stop what I was doing and turn away. I'm quite sure this is more about the quality of my hearing than the quality of my gender.

    The ironic thing is that the only time I really need to multi-task is when they are not present. I have been simultaneously taking a phone call while serving a customer while looking things up on the comuputer while looking for files in the cabinet, but since my co-workers aren't present to see me, this display of multi-tasking is much like a tree falling in the forest. When my co-workers are with me, no one person has to do all of those things at once.

    Regarding breasts, I find it weird that so many tops are designed to draw the eyes, but then it is seen as a failing of men when their eyes inevitably get drawn. I have almost no interest in breasts, but when someone is wearing a low-cut top with enhanced cleavage and some kind of pendant around their neck pointing downwards like a big arrow, the volume of the message getting sent to my brain can be hard to ignore. I am well aware that if my eyes get drawn, it will be seen as my fault, not the fault of the clothes that are blatantly drawing my gaze.

    Sometimes if I see very large breasts I wonder how much they must hurt their owners back, but if you saw me looking at them and were familiar with feminist 'science' this is probably not what you would think I was thinking.

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  25. Wanted to make sure you saw this http://imgur.com/zsAKg

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  26. The stuff about "look at his mouth to make him want to call you" makes me especially cringe, because I ate that stuff up as a socially awkward teenager who was horrible at social cues (I'm still pretty shitty at them now) and way too insecure to come out and say things. And Cosmo seems to specialize in a bizarre sequence of body-language tricks that are almost certain to look awkward anyway.

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  27. "In a man's brain, the bridge that communicates between the two hemispheres is smaller than in a woman's. Since it's smaller, it can't handle as much thought traffic--which explains why dudes are more single-minded and have a harder time multi-tasking.
    Okay, I already covered in the last Cosmocking that this isn't factually true. Also if it were true that wouldn't account for the existence of people who have no corpus callosum and are cognitively functional. Also I doubt that the conventional meaning of "multi-tasking" is reflected literally in brain function."

    Funnily enough, it's factually *opposite.* Testosterone tends to increase the physical size of the brain (note: this doesn't make men smarter) so if anything men would tend to have a BIGGER bridge between the two hemispheres. Weird, eh?

    Also I have a friend who's brain has been cut in half. I dunno the details but half of her brain just didn't work right so it had to be removed when she was a child. She multitasks fine. PROBABLY BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN AMIRITE?!

    Of course I suppose one could say that the bridge between here right brain (whichever medical landfill it lies in) and her left brain is absurdly large, so that would explain it... right?

    " In caveman times, everyone ate through their butt and pooped through their mouth! Hush now, don't argue with Science."

    One might argue this has never changed considering the amount of shit that come's out of cosmo's mouth...

    "This may be the smallest nit I've ever picked in a Cosmocking, but... the apple and pear season ended in October, Cosmo."

    And besides, making cider is a process that takes at LEAST 3 months and more often 2 to 3 years. I don't think cider has a "season."

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