Rachel Kramer Bussel, writing at The Huffington Post says
Sex is a topic that people are always interested in, and always will be, yet instead of addressing it in a straightforward way, all too many media outlets choose to try to make sex “sexier” rather than giving readers enough credit to think logically and critically about the topic.
Boy did she say a mouth full! Sex is already pretty interesting so why feel obliged to tart it up with words like “outrageoous” or “daring” or “shocking?” Because, c’mon, past age eighteen, anyway, the only thing actually shocking about sex isn’t what people do but, at best, who you discover has been doing it. For instance the only person who should be surprised that your parents had, and still have, sex is you and even if you’re a media publisher that’s little tidbit of news isn’t going to shock many other people.
Two personal gripes: Magazine covers that promise “10 Sex Secrets.” Cosmopolitan alone (let alone Esquire or even Reader’s Digest) has offered between 15 and 50 such “secrets” on every cover of all roughly 516 issues since the Gurly-Brown era began in 1965, and, sorry, there just ain’t 12,900 secret things about sex. There just aren’t! Multiply that by all the other magazines, newspapers, websites, and cable programs that followed that lead and… there just aren’t any possible secrets that don’t, again, involve not what people do but who’s doing it together. And that’s obviously not what the blurbs intend when they say “10 Sex Secrets Revealed.” My other big gripe is that weird mechanical, disbelieving scowls of “outrageousness” that porn stars throw, usually over their shoulders, when they’re doing stuff that — frantic pace and lack of credible foreplay notwithstanding — is pretty much exactly the same thing their parents, or neighbors, or sometimes parents and neighbors have been doing for generations.
Anyway, by all means let’s do keep talking about sex, but let’s encourage our friends in the media and in porn to quit acting as if a) they just discovered it for us and b) they’re not sure we’re going to like it c) any more than they do unless d) they hype the crap out of it.
Submitted by 1897 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-01-26 11:14.
I agree with what you said about magazines but I also learn things from your blog that I did not know. For example the advertisement for the book on the right mentions menstruation porn. Really? I had no idea that there was such a thing. I am probably the only adult left on the planet who did not know about that.
[Oh I think there are still *surprises* in sex, Mag. I just don't think there are many *secrets.* It's like... you can discover a restaurant *for yourself* and that can be a surprise. But chances are very, very slim that the restaurant is anybody's *secret.* And, by the way, there *are* kinds of sex that are both secret *and* outrageous (see my rants about "Lolita!") But that's almost never what's intended by magazine covers -- except, as in the case Rachel talks about -- there's a deliberate attempt to manufacture it. --fl]
Submitted by 1897 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-01-26 17:43.
The funny thing is, if you read all the articles with the ten sex secrets or fifty ways to rev his engines or whatever-they all just repeat themselves. Different words, different people in the pictures, but the same themes over and over.
But the brightly colored article titles sure do sell the copies. ;o)
[Exactly, norby! And as others have pointed out repeatedly, most of them are veritable models of conventionality. And it's not like there's *anything wrong with that!* Most of those things are wonderful. But why not call them ideas, or suggestions, or, more often, *reminders!* Because they can be all that and that's wonderful. But secrets? Please! --fl]