Annals of Bad Sex Advice

You might have guessed it, but I do not make a habit of reading Cosmo or Men’s Health. I have my limits.

Happily, I just found out that I was right to ignore both of them. Confirmation of my good judgment appeared in Ben Reininga’s column on Nerve. Link here.

Obviously, I consider Nerve to be superior to both Cosmo and Men’s Health. In truth, I do not read Nerve very often. Otherwise I would have known about Reininga’s column earlier and would have shared it sooner.

Anyway, Reininga has a great and high concept. He reads through the sex advice columns in Cosmo and Men’s Health, among other magazines, and saves the rest of us the trouble. Then he tells us what we have missed, and this provokes instant and profound feelings of gratitude.

In his column Reininga extracts the most ridiculous pieces of advice and highlights them. If the term “redeeming social value“ means something, his column embodies that meaning.

As you know, I am all for shaming, but only when it is used judiciously against targets that really need it. The sex advice columns in these magazines certainly qualify. So much so that I am not going to repeat their ridiculous advice, for fear of compromising this blog’s high standards.

If you open the link to Reininga’s column you will witness the sorry spectacle of mass market magazines preying on the sexual insecurities of the young.

Those of us who can no longer pretend to be young like to assume that young people today are more sexually sophisticated than we were at their age. And yet, if today's youth are lapping up the advice offered by Cosmo and Men’s Health, our hopes have clearly been misplaced.