WHAT WOMEN REALLY WANT
Michael Lewis is shocked
by the aggressive approach of women's magazines to sexual activity
ABOUT a year ago I had a call from an editor at Glamour Magazine, who was con- ducting an unscientific poll of the sexual. tastes of American men. 'What is it about a woman that makes you want to go to bed with her?' she asked. Until then I had nev- er considered the question. 'The ability to touch her nose with her tongue,' I said, as a, guess. But the lady was serious, and refused to accept a flip answer. She became aggressive. She wanted the Truth.
After a moment I said that I was sorry, but that there was no Truth. These were mysterious matters that couldn't be settled so simply. 'Pleeeeeaser she said. 'OK,' I said, recognising the distress of a fellow journalist on deadline, 'just put, "I am attracted to anyone with the good sense not to want to go to bed with me." ' Two months later I appeared along with nine other men in a special issue of Glamour devoted to 'What men really want in bed'. To the horror of my mother-in-law I was quoted saying that 'nothing turns me on as
much as the unobtainable woman who refuses to go to bed with me'.
My mother-in-law and I had nearly over- come the trauma of my first exposure to the bizarre world of women's magazines, when there came a second. While research- ing an article for The Spectator, I visited a London accountancy firm. At first it seemed like any other firm of accountants. Clean-cut men in dark suits bustled boring- ly in and out of the reception area, wonder- ing how much more they could bill their clients without being sued for fraud. The worried clients soon arrived to fill the seats around me. Not long after the house was full, the seemingly innocuous receptionist raised to her eyes a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine. 'THE NEW RULES OF ORAL SEX' it shouted in print bold enough to be read from a moving taxi. We men — who knew nothing of rules — shrivelled in our chairs and tried not to notice, but it was hard.
One recovered. One very nearly returned to a happy, well-adjusted sexual life. Until last week. This time the women's magazine industry struck at my wife's firm on Fenchurch Street, in the heart of the City. Sometime onThursday yet another seeming- ly harmless British receptionist made her way to the office photocopy machine with a copy of Company, yet another women's magazine. It contains an article called `Rogues' Gallery: The full frontal picture guide that proves they're not all the same!' The point is illustrated by photographs of 36 different penises, each inscribed in red ink with nicknames: String Bean, Chopper, Love Truncheon, Donger, Blue Veined Piccolo, Joy Stick, Weapon, and so on. The magazine's editors shrunk the hapless organs to fit into 1.5 x 1.5 inch boxes, then laid the boxes neatly in a 6 x 6 grid.
Alas, the photocopied 'joy sticks' came out slightly blurred. Angry and frustrated, the receptionist tossed the blurry copies face up in the dustbin. There they remained, staring forlornly at the ceiling, waiting for the Chairman to spot them. How would he react? wondered some of my wife's colleagues; in a single stroke the receptionist had subverted the office hierarchy. Most likely, he would merely blush and flee to his office until the photo- copied penises disappeared on their own accord. Fortunately, he never looked down.
What is it with women's magazines? Is it something in the water? The impression that they cater to a new sexual aggression in their readers is reinforced by a selection of coverlines from the issues currently on British news-stands. SEX AND EXERCISE: IF YOU WANT MORE OF ONE YOU'D BETTER DO MORE OF THE OTHER! (She magazine) Why men STILL can't get it right in bed (Options magazine). CAN'T GET ENOUGH: CONFES- SIONS OF A SEX ADDICT (New Woman maga- zine). The Smart Girl's Guide to Sex. (More! magazine, motto: Smart Girls Get More!). His SEXUAL FANTASIES: how you fit in; MEATY, BEEFY, BIG AND BOUNCY: why every man wishes he was. YES YOU CAN MAKE GOOD SEX BETTER: your hands-on guide to his body, top to bottom (Company magazine). Even the putatively high-brow Marie Claire carries one piece called SEX IN EUROPE, and another, perhaps even more revealing, called THE WOMAN WHO MUR- DERED MEN.
With one or two exceptions these maga- zines make no pretence of being anything but fodder for female sexual fantasies; their male equivalents are Playboy and Penthouse. This much is clear from the way their editors speak of them. 'Women's magazines are extremely raunchy at the moment,' the editor of New Woman recent- ly told the Independent, 'we are getting away with stuff we would never have even dared run in the past.' The advice columns, the horoscopes, the features — all are intended for the dedicated man-user. Even the ads for women's clothing tend to depict the pouting model in a come-hither pose, with her clothing falling off.
Of course the obsession with sex is noth- ing new, even if it has previously tended to manifest itself in women as an obsession with avoiding it rather than with having as much as possible. It is the nature of the sexual obsession found in women's maga- zines that is so strange. It is almost entirely lacking in old-fashioned romance. One searches the current issues in vain for love- struck men playing lutes on white horses. The magazines assume that their readers reduce matters of the heart to a political science problem: how to manipulate men so they do the things you need. 'Re-organ- ise your priorities so sex is much, much higher on your mental list of things to do,' reads one magazine advice column; anoth- er is titled 'Getting your teeth into oral sex'. The troubadour's songs have given way to impersonal tools from jelly- flavoured condoms to Dyna Bands, a miraculous piece of rubber that promises a `fabulous figure in only ten minutes a day'.
Like many politico-technical advisers (the Foreign Office springs to mind) the women's magazines tend to become so involved in the process that the problem becomes secondary. They contain an aston- ishing volume of weird, irrelevant informa- tion, much of it as dubiously sourced such as Glamour's 'What Men Really Want in Bed'. Sixty-eight per cent of Company's readers say they feel more like having sex on holiday; 61 per cent sunbathe topless. From Marie Claire we learn 50 per cent of British women have never performed oral sex, and that 25 per cent of British men have never been on the receiving end; 90 per cent of New Woman's readers say that they 'would try anything once'. Glamour offers readers data on the changing annual frequency of men's orgasms over time:
Age 20: 104 per year (49 solo) Age 30: 121 per year (10 solo) Age 40: 84 per year ( 8 solo) Age 50: 52 per year ( 2 solo) Asking why anyone needs to know any of this is like asking why the new maths stu- dent carries ten different colour pens in his shirt pocket. Or why the skier snowplough- ing down the beginner's slope has such expensive, long skies and elegant clothing. The newly aggressive woman is what is known in mechanical circles as a gear freak.
Perhaps that explains why the British receptionist reads so unselfconsciously about oral sex. Sex to her is not so much a matter of love, or even secret pleasure, but an urgent quest for self-realisation. The women's magazines are ultimately not about sex so much as the politics of the bedroom. If one didn't know better one might think that the magazines were dreamed up by feminists. But, of course, the conventional feminists are appalled by the importance the magazines attach to men. The British receptionist doesn't mean to terrorise men with her sexual indepen- dence. That is why her magazines are so frightening.
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