Never mind cosmology, cosmetology is a hard science

Friend David Mills muses, in The Cosmopolitan Life (Jan 3, 2011), on Cosmopolitan, relentless marketer of impossible expectations to women (in this case, um, horizontal, not vertical expectations ...):

On the surface, Cosmopolitan portrays in bright zingy prose the exciting adventurous uninhibited life of the sexually-free single woman. This is what their readers must think of themselves, or what they want to think of themselves. That is bad enough.


But below the surface, and not too far below it at that, the magazine deals with their target reader’s anxieties and fears, and her surprising need for male approval. The main impression the magazine gives of its readers is that although they may be liberated from societal expectations for female chastity and from any need to find fulfillment in marriage and family, they are not strong, independent women. They are women out of a fifties television show. That is worse.


In Cosmo girl’s world, a woman needs a man like a fish needs water.

Of course, that puts guys in charge of giving or withholding her happiness. And she is a captive audience for a vast variety of products aimed at helping her make him do that.

In my view, happiness starts with accepting oneself enough to just be alone, spend nothing, and feel good anyway. Then, if someone comes along and wants to join you, you can decide whether that leaves you happy.

Anyway, I replied as follows (slight edits):

It all come of being a brand and seeing life as a market.

Cosmopolitan exists to market goods, and lonely urban singles are lush markets for high-margin products.

The irony is that Cosmo Girl's life (assuming she really exists) features far more constraints than traditional* religions usually impose.

Her hunk, when she hands him, is only confirmation that the huge sacrifice has all been worthwhile. She really has met the expectations of her consumer religion when she consumes a guy.

Talk about a "relationship" is mere social noise.

For most guys, the first requirement for a relationship is that she stop sleeping around. So a relationship probably won't happen, which is just as well.

She doesn't appear to have much practice with that kind of thing, and practice tells.

- cheers, Denyse

* I don't consider Islamic fascism a traditional religion. - d.

Are men really from Mars? Women really from Venus?

Deborah Cameron, writing in the Times of London, thinks not. In “Talking tosh on Mars and Venus”, we are told, she argues that it’s a myth:

The bones of Cameron’s argument, set out in The Myth of Mars and Venus, are that Gray et al have no scientific basis for their claims. Great sheaves of academic papers, says Cameron, show that the language skills of men and women are almost identical. Indeed, the central tenets of the Mars and Venus culture – that women talk more than men, that men are more direct, that women are more verbally skilled – can all be debunked by scientific research. A recent study in the American journal Science, for instance, found men and women speak almost exactly the same number of words a day: 16,000.
“The main thing about the book is that I wanted to offer people more than the evidence-free rubbish they get every day,” says Cameron. “My pitch was basically the CSI pitch: let the evidence tell the story.”

Hmmm. I’m not sure. I’ve met many men and women who conformed to the Mars-Venus stereotype and many that didn’t. But I never did the numbers thing .... Her book, The Myth of Mars and Venus, is surely worth a read.