Cosmopolitan magazine has been around since I was a pre teen. Every month there’s a different beautiful celebrity on the cover, and pasted in large bold is always a sex tip on “How to please your man!”. Before I get into my opinion on this bullshit, let me say this. I am in no way, shape or form a feminist. I just believe in women being strong, assertive and self empowered. I’m very old fashioned when it comes to “gender roles”, i.e. I believe that men should be chivalrous and open our doors for us, get out of the car and pump the gas, and when I’m dying from cramps and I want to punch you in the face, go to Walgreens and grab tampons for me. The plastic ones, NOT the cardboard. Ouch. (Just hide them under a bag of chips. Gluten free, please.) If you happen to be a guy reading this and you’re thinking “HA. There’s no way in hell I would get tampons for you, that’s emasculating.” 1. You probably don’t know what ’emasculating’ means and 2. I would’ve swept left on you on a dating app, anyways. (Is it left? Or right? I don’t know. Whichever the way that gives you the satisfaction of denying someone.)

Why is it that a magazine, every single month, is focusing on women pleasing their man? How about you turn the narrative around, and give a slow and (relatively) easy step by step instruction on how men can please us? I’m pretty sure I’m not alone when I say that there are enough “Jack of all trades, master of none” guys in the world. I’m simply stating that there’s enough men out there in the world that think they’re the masters at what they’re doing. In the bedroom. When really, in actual fact, they’ve been spending too much time watching porn and not enough time focused on what the woman that they’re with actually wants. Why does a magazine direct the pressure of our sexual experience onto us, the women? Making it seem like the entire act is pressured on us and us alone and our performance. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that a woman has to be either mentally, emotionally or physically stimulated before anything sexual can happen. This means that leading up to the act, it’s about what both people have collectively brought to the table, not just what us, women, are bringing forth. If in fact I am right, (which in this case I believe I am) why does society put the weight of our intimate experiences on us and the skills we bring to the table? Why does a magazine, that is written for women, by women and about women, make us focus month after month on how we can make our men happy? Instead of making young women believe that they need to do reverse cowgirl while doggystyle-ing (just added the ing in there. lol) and 69ing while also making a sandwich, (all at the same time in order to be a real woman), shouldn’t we be sending a different message?

Reverting back to the beginning of my post, I want to reiterate that there’s nothing wrong with writing a “how to” for women, because I’m sure we all at some point or another have wanted to expand our minds when it comes to sex. I’m saying that the dialogue this magazine (and I’m sure many others) is pushing is insinuating that if you don’t do A. B. & C., your man is going to leave you. If you’re not comfortable doing a certain thing in the bedroom, guess what? You don’t have to do it. We all have a different comfort level, we all have different inhibitions. If a man really leaves you because you aren’t doing something that he wants you to be doing (sexually), then screw him. I mean, don’t screw him. If I was a writer at Cosmo my column would be called ‘How to Show Men the Door When They Suck”, and I know that it would be dialogue that all woman can relate to. (Including myself. Obviously.)

Regardless if this magazine is intended for adults, Cosmopolitan gets in the hand of every pre teen girl and her group of friends. I understand that women out there want to know a man’s opinion on what to do and what not to do, seemingly so that we can bring our best self (aka set of skills) to the bedroom. But the point of my post is that a magazine that is supposedly meant for “women and uplifting women” shouldn’t be influencing us to believe that if you’re not doing the 113 positions as listed in article, that you’re not enough of a woman. Of course we want to get in the mind of our partners, in order to understand what they want and how to please them. That’s just a part of human nature. But I think the articles that are being published year after year pointing directly at what woman can do so their man doesn’t leave them, is sending the wrong message to our society.

Men aren’t the only ones that have standards when it comes to performance in the bedroom. (Breaking news.) Articles that are consistently based around showing women how to be “up to par” is creating an image that men are the only ones that have the power of opinion in the sex department. I’m personally waiting for ‘Mens Health’ magazine to come out with a “How to Please Your Woman” column, because there’s enough guys out there that need a step by step guide on what to do, (and more importantly what NOT to do). (Not that I know any personally or anything..)

It takes two to tango. Whether you’re straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, it doesn’t matter. Sex is such a broad spectrum, it’s a topic that we all want to read about. The articles that are put out into the world are being absorbed and influencing young women, so the dialogue that is being printed should be asserting both sides of the pendulum. Life isn’t just about what we, as women can do differently to keep a man around. We all want a great sex life. Cosmopolitan magazine should be writing about how two individuals can come together and please each other, without one person’s role being more influential then another. It’s just as much up to the man to assert himself as it is the woman.

My Mom enrolled me into a Catholic high school my freshman year. She thought it would be a better experience for me because the public schools I had gone to were doing nothing for me. (If I showed up to class there probably could have been a different outcome, but I guess we will never know, will we.) Moving on. The summer before my Sophomore year, I went to go live with my Dad in Wisconsin. To a little town called Beaver Dam, population 13. Give or take a thousand. Why the hell did my Dad have to move to this place in the middle of nowhere? Why couldn’t he move somewhere cool so when I left my Mom’s in Minnesota and gave her the big F YOU, (more like she actually kicked me out but whatever) I could have made it seem like I was moving on to bigger and better things?

My Dad had a townhouse right across the street from the school, which is geographically undesirable for someone like me, considering I wouldn’t be able to have any excuse to be late. My first day of school I went to the principles office to get my class schedule and figure out where I was supposed to go, since I hadn’t had the chance to go to orientation or check out the school beforehand. (Orientation is for amateurs.) My first friend that I made was this guy with blue eyes and dark hair. (I’m only describing him because I can’t remember his name. No I was not attracted to him. In case you were wondering.) He came up to me at my locker and asked me if I was new, and wanted to help show me where my classes were. I’m sure he wanted to show me something else too, but back then I didn’t even know what a penis was so that’s irrelevant. Some time not long after that, I met this guy named Edgar. He always came to my locker and wanted to walk me to my classes. He was the first guy I liked there, and I know he wanted to be the only guy that was taking me on long romantic walks to sharpen my pencils. He had asked me if I was friends with said-guy-with-blue-eyes and I said yea, he’s the first person that talked to me in school and he’s just really nice. Well, Edgar let me know that this guy had stuck his dick in a vacuum and got it stuck. So, naturally, I had to go to the source and ask him if it was true. Thinking Edgar told me this just so that I would stop being friends with him, I expected it to be untrue. I can’t remember his exact reaction, but I’m pretty sure his answer was somewhere along the lines of “It was a dare!.” As you can imagine, our friendship kind of fizzled after that. Just couldn’t get the “dick in vacuum” image out of my head.

Not too long after starting school, there were rumors swirling around about me. I remember leaving class one day to go to the bathroom, and someone had written my name in the stall along with “IS A SLUT!”. I just stared at it thinking, “WTF!. Who would hate me so much and write this about me?” One of my girlfriends pulled me aside and had told me that everyone in school was talking about me and Edgar, and how I had already had sex with him.  I couldn’t believe it. I was still the new girl in school, I had only been there for maybe a month, and people were going around saying I was a slut? I didn’t even know what sex was, i.e. what is a virgin? My parents were so strict I didn’t have a cable tv channel until I was 15 years old, so I grew up extremely sheltered. (Things got wild, let me tell you.)

Eventually I connected the dots and figured out that it was Edgar himself who had spread the rumor. I remember I went to the movies with a group of my friends, and he kept calling me. I reluctantly answered, with probably a “What do you want?” and he admitted to spreading the rumor. He apologized profusely, saying it was a dick move and he was just trying to sound cool. I remember thinking at that time how horrible it was for people to hear something about someone they know nothing about, and to pass the information along trying to defame me. I’ve never been one to conform to what everyone else is doing, or to chime in and talk badly about someone just because others are doing it. Being a female, I can say that women are the worst when it comes to friendships. Of course this experience happened at the hands of a guy, but so many times in my life I’ve seen women bash their own friends, only to hang out with them right afterwards.

So, my sophomore year of high school I was a virgin, aka a hoebag. I went to a new high school in a different state not knowing a single person in that town. I was just an innocent 15 year old trying to figure things out. I remember telling myself that I would never be a person that takes part in trying to put other people down. I was always friends with different groups of people, I never wanted to try to ‘fit in’ or be a part of anyone’s clique. I remember going to sit next to this girl named Caroline at lunch, because she would sit by herself and it seemed like she didn’t have any friends. People would say she lived in a trailer park, and I always felt bad for her because you can’t control the environment you grow up in. We don’t get to choose our parents. Or the income level that we are raised on. I’m grateful that I didn’t grow up with social media, especially with it being as prolific as it is now in our day and age. So many people jump on the bandwagon of talking badly about other people, or focusing their energy on bringing other people down.

You have to get to know people before you form opinions about them. You have to ignore negativity and gossip. People are always going to have something to say about you. Whether its good, bad, true or not true. Just because you hear something about someone, it doesn’t make it true. Especially in high school, all everyone did was spread rumors about everyone. Where are those people now? Don’t answer that, because no one cares where they are. (At least I don’t.) The most important thing you can do is to just stay true to yourself. You don’t have to follow what everyone else is doing. You don’t have to hate someone or talk badly about someone just because people around you do. I can’t be friends with people that base their conversations around other peoples’ lives’. (Did I put the apostrophes in the right places? FML. OCD. Anyways.)

I learned that people will try to bring you down just for being a big hoe bag in high school (aka a virgin) and you don’t have to let it affect you.

You know why? Because you’re not a hoe. And if you are, that’s your story to tell. Not anyone else’s.

Yesterday I was on the phone with my sister and she was telling me about her ex boyfriend. They have been on and off for awhile, and I guess he went from texting her being nice to threatening to kill himself. As I was on the phone just listening to her, all of a sudden it brought back all of these memories. Something that I didn’t remember for years until yesterday, was that my sister was suicidal when I was younger.  Growing up I was really into sports and a complete tomboy, I hated makeup and girlie things. My sister was either out with her older friends or in her room (that she had painted completely black) either reading or drawing. The one thing we had in common was that we both did everything we could to avoid having to be home. I remember always being at odds with her because she never wanted to hangout with me, and she was always really sad and lethargic. At that time I didn’t know what ‘depression’ was, and I thought she was just being lazy and feeling sorry for herself. I remember countless times her telling me and our family that she wanted to kill herself, she didn’t want to live anymore. And then she would disappear. Runaway. One time my Mom came home and told me she had gone for a drive looking for her (this is after she had been missing for probably weeks), and she said she saw her downtown just sitting next to the side of a building, but she wouldn’t get in the car with her. I would go to school so many days not knowing if I was going to come home and the cops were going to say my sister was found dead or not. I became so hurt and numb to it, I told her she should just do it because I was sick of everyday not knowing if my sister was going to be alive or dead. How horrible and insensitive is that of me? Thinking back, that memory just puts a sick feeling inside of me. Growing up I looked at her as being selfish for always telling me she wanted to die, without thinking about how that would affect her little sister, and more importantly our little brother. Even writing this pains me for the simple fact that I didn’t remember any of this until my phone call with her yesterday.

I know what it feels like to have someone that you love tell you that if you leave them, they will kill themselves. I know what it is like to get a text message saying that my ex boyfriend had just died, (my first love), after he had been trying to get back with me and I had told him no. Death is such a scary, real thing to me. Seeing someone you love in a casket that hasn’t even made it to their 21st birthday is no joke. Hearing that someone my sister loves is threatening to end his life, makes me want to do everything in my power to help, but you learn as you grow up that you can’t help people that don’t want to help themselves. If you really love someone, you don’t put the weight of your life in their hands.

I take everything in life as a valuable lesson. So many people preach that you should treat others the way they treat you, but I don’t believe in that at all. I always want to be nice to people, because you never know what they are going through behind closed doors. You never know if just being kind, or holding the door open for someone could make their day. It’s easy to judge people by the way they look, the pictures they post, the way they dress. As depressing as this post may seem, I wanted to write about it because the most valuable lessons I’ve learned have come from situations that at one time were painful. Your character gets built through the storms you make it through. Some people let the negative things they’ve been through define them, and use it as an excuse to treat others poorly. Regardless of what I’ve encountered in my life, I know that it made me the strong person I am today. I know that the things that I’ve gone through have served their purpose because they’re a reminder of where I’ve come from, and why I am the person I am today.

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always.”