Sex

New feline predator on the loose!

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:30:00 PST

Hey there, urban hipster columnists! Stuck for a way to meet your word count today and fresh out of lorem ipsum? Time to trot out the old "sexual taxonomy of women" satire you first took a crack at for your college humor magazine. You can fart it out before your first latte has kicked in, and the thing will pay for itself in outraged comments and blog links. And before you insist it's too dumb/obvious to work, I refer you to Spencer Morgan, whose withering New York Observer takedown of "cheetahs" has been setting forehead veins reflexively a-throbbing this week.

Dudes: Porn is harmless!

Tracy Clark-Flory — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:01:00 PST

It's official: Pornography doesn't affect men's view of women. This breaking news comes by way of 20 young men who ... just say so, OK? Stop asking so many questions, gosh!

What's wrong with female desire?

Tracy Clark-Flory — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:35:00 PST

Scientists have scanned women's brains and wired their genitals to measure arousal. They have meticulously cataloged the most intimate of feminine experiences and yearnings -- and yet these detectives in lab coats haven't been able to map the fingerprint of female desire. It's an unsolved mystery. Still, there is plenty intriguing evidence to sift through and competing theories to consider. Case in point: The New York Times Magazine feature on ladies who "want to want" -- or, put in technical terms, women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

Your vagina is ugly

Kate Harding — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:12:00 PST

British researchers, having reviewed the existing literature on cosmetic labioplasty (surgery to reduce the size of a woman's labia), have concluded that it risks "impairing sexual sensitivity and satisfaction," much as female circumcision does; that not enough long-term research has been done on it; and that "counseling and support" might be more appropriate alternatives for women who seek surgery because they believe their vulvas aren't pretty enough. Moreover, says the report's author Lih-Mei Liao, aggressively marketing the surgery exacerbates one of the problems it's meant to correct. "Advertisements promote labial surgery as easy answers to women's insecurities about their genital appearances -- insecurities that are fuelled by the very advertisements that prescribe a homogenised, pre-pubescent genital appearance standard for all women." (I'm envisioning the ladyparts version of a Latisse commercial here: "For inadequate or more than enough labia.")

The celebrity sex tape jumps the shark

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:45:00 PST

The once-scandalous celebrity sex tape took its fatal jump over the shark this week, after gay-marriage-opposing, famously breast-implanted author and Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean confirmed the existence of a naughty tape of herself.

Sex toys arouse outrage at Duke

Tracy Clark-Flory — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:01:00 PST

Duke University researchers are looking for female students to attend a sex toy party, "engage in sexually explicit conversation" with other young ladies and, if they so desire, buy some titillating playthings at a great discount-- all in the name of science. Wait a sec, no, make that "were looking," past tense -- all of the participant spots have filled up rather quickly. Fancy that.

"Gossip Girl": Threesome's a crowd?

Judy Berman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:05:00 PST

Get ready for a brand new scandal, from the folks who brought us Nipplegate. This time, conservative watchdog group the Parents Television Council is all atwitter about "Gossip Girl." Of course, the show has been raising parental eyebrows ever since its debut: It does, after all, feature a gaggle of rich, largely amoral teenagers who don't think twice about downing martinis and jumping into bed together. And the series has been on PTC's shit list for a while, with the organization claiming it "conveys the message that sex is a tool used to manipulate people."

High-tech hookups? The horror!

Tracy Clark-Flory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:01:00 PST

Oh, David Brooks. Once again, the cantankerous columnist has pulled out a relic from a bygone era -- back when women stayed at home and first ladies covered their biceps -- to show young people today how it used to be in the good old days. The au courant subjects of his scorn this week: Cellphones, text messages and (insert heavy air quotes) "hooking up." The trigger for this rant: New York magazine's recent analysis of 141 week-long sex diaries posted over the last couple years on its blog Daily Intel.

Teen sex: a weighty issue

Judy Berman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:03:00 PST

Lately, at Broadsheet, we've been writing a lot about the fashion industry, glossy women's magazines, plus-size models and Photoshop disasters. It's difficult to quantify the effects of Christian Louboutin's howling about Barbie dolls' cankles, on one hand, and Glamour's newfound (and likely temporary) commitment to showcasing models with a variety of body types on the other. But a new study hints at the impact such a weight-obsessed culture may be having on a particularly vulnerable demographic -- teenage girls.

How not to make love like a porn star

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:29:00 PST

He'd been jackhammering away for what felt like hours. "You like that, baby? You like that?" he asked, though he didn't notice I wasn't answering. And then, somewhere around the 18th time he said it, it hit me -- I wasn't just having bad sex. I was having bad porn sex.

Sex without nipples

Ann Bauer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:28:00 PDT

What came between Jessie and her boyfriend of seven years was nipples. Or rather, the lack thereof.

School prohibits dirty dancing

Kate Harding — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:27:00 PDT

In a recent episode of the new TV series "Glee," the high school glee club at the heart of the show put on, as Heather Havrilesky described it, "a hilariously lewd and dorky rendition of Salt 'n' Pepa's 'Push It'" during an assembly. (The show's writers have yet to produce a better line than ever-indignant cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester''s response: "That was the most offensive thing I've seen in 20 years of teaching. And that includes an elementary school production of 'Hair.'") The performance is cooked up by the kids behind their advisor's back as an alternative to his song pick, Chic's "Le Freak" -- which has become old-fashioned, unsexy guaranteed humiliation for the modern teen -- to give their fellow students "what they want: Sex."

Sixty lashes for ... what, exactly?

Judy Berman — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:27:00 PDT

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one surprising element of this weekend's story about a female Saudi journalist who was sentenced to 60 lashes. It isn't that the country's Wahhabi clerics decided to pursue legal action against not only Mazen Abdul-Awad, a Saudi man who aired his dirty sexual laundry on a program for Lebanese TV (he, by the way, has already been sentenced to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes for his indiscretion), but also LBC, the station that aired the show. And in one of the world's most misogynist nations, it isn't hard to believe that a court tried and convicted 22-year-old Rozanna al-Yami in connection with the scandal, "on grounds that the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. she worked for did not have proper authorization to operate in the Islamic kingdom." (Never mind that, as the Associated Press reports, "The charges included involvement in preparing the program and advertising it on the Internet. Ms. Yami said she had worked as a coordinator for the program but had not worked on the episode in question.") Despite the many layers of injustice involved in al-Yami's conviction and sentence, it wasn't even a shock to learn that she wouldn't fight her punishment. "I was not aware (that LBC was unlicensed), but in the end this is the verdict and I accept it," Reuters quotes al-Yami as saying. "I don't want to appeal."

Do the dishes, woman! (And get more sex?)

Tracy Clark-Flory — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:59:00 PDT

Doing more housework gets married men more sex. Such is the wisdom to be gleaned from recent studies on such domestic dynamics -- as well as, you know, unscientific offerings like the picture book "Porn for Women," which features a vacuuming hunk on the cover. Until now, though, researchers and the world of pop culture kitsch alike have ignored the other side of the equation: The relationship between the amount of housework a woman does and how often she takes a roll in the sheets. Well, whaddaya know, a new study says the positive sex-housework relationship also holds true for wives.

Sharia law meets "Girls Gone Wild"

Tracy Clark-Flory — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:44:00 PDT

The Somali extremist group al Shabaab is publicly whipping women for wearing bras, which it says are an anti-Islamic "deception." That's the least surprising part of this news story from Reuters. More shocking is the punishment following the whippings: Forcing women to remove their brassieres and shake their breasts.

Save money and the world: Bike to the brothel

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:51:00 PDT

Sex, climate change, the global economic crisis and bicycles: Some stories I would pay to write, such as this Agence France Press article on a German brothel that is offering discounts to eco-conscious customers. (Found via Grist.)

The surprise Spanx make-out

Sarah Hepola — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:07:00 PDT

On Saturday afternoon, I bought a darling bra-and-panty set, the kind with sweet, swirly black lace and pale-pink bows. It's the sort of coquettish ensemble you always hope you'll be wearing when a gentleman caller happens to separate you from your polka-dot swing dress -- not the raggedy underwear from Target, the elastic spazzing out the hems, not the cheap bra with one clasp missing and a mysterious rip around the areola, but proper vixen attire, clean and comely.

Scandal: Why did a "Mad Men" scribe get axed?

Kate Harding — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:05:00 PDT

On Sunday, Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke reported that "Mad Men" writer Kater Gordon has been fired -- three weeks after winning an Emmy for outstanding writing. Gordon began her "Mad Men" career as show creator Matthew Weiner's personal assistant, giving the whole thing Peggy Olson undertones ("There's not one thing that you've done here that I couldn't live without, Kater!") -- not to mention the inevitable David Letterman comparisons -- that make speculation about what really happened darn near irresistible, despite the lack of confirmed information, or even much trustworthy gossip.

The real lives of child sex slaves

Judy Berman — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:13:00 PDT

It's always a nice surprise, while paging through a mainstream ladymag, to find a story that goes deeper than skin-care tips, fashion trends and "How to Please Your Man, Part 837." But a new Marie Claire article profiling a former sex slave goes far beyond "pretty decent for a women's glossy" to the realm of first-rate journalism. In a piece that is well worth reading from start to finish, Abigail Pesta travels to Cambodia to tell the story of Sreypov Chan, a 20-year-old woman whose widowed mother sold her into sex slavery at age 7. Until she escaped, at 10, her captors forced her to have sex with as many as 20 men a day. And when they weren't satisfied with her performance, they would torture her.

Single black female seeking ... a response!

Alexis Fitts — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:55:00 PDT

With Obama in office, Nobel Peace Prize in hand, America is said to be "post-racial" -- but apparently no one's told that to single men. In an undeniably ballsy move, the dating website OkCupid just released statistics breaking down the racial makeup of matches on the site. There's a lot of information to sift through, but luckily OkCupid breaks it down for you by issuing a handy take home point -- black women are screwed. "Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should," reports the site's blog. "Essentially every race -- including other blacks -- singles them out for the cold shoulder."