Wal-Mart announced last week that due to customer complaints over racy cover lines and sexy pictures, Redbook, Glamour, and Marie Claire, the formerly classy women's service magazines, will now be fitted with special protective plastic shields so shoppers and kids won't be offended by their bootiliciousness. Civilization is in real trouble when Redbook is so racy it can only be sold inside a prophylactic.
Apparently eye-catching fantasy chick headlines like these (all verbatim from this month's women's mags) are turning real women off:
99 Sexy Ways to Touch Him! If they really want to increase their soccer mom readership, they might want to try something like: "99 Sexy Ways To Touch Him While Doing Something Else Like Deep Conditioning Your Hair, Exfoliating or Dustbusting Your Window Wells."
What Your Sex Dreams Are Really Telling You: They're telling you, "Hope you're enjoying this, because you're going to be way too tired when you wake up at six to walk the dog, brew the coffee, get the kids dressed for the bus...."
Yummy Naked Bartenders! I guess if you stay at the bar long enough...
Yes, we all know minivan-driving suburban moms are just champing at the bit to get our sex tips from Redbook. The new Redbook is out! The new Redbook is out!
Hubba Hubba!
On line at the supermarket, my six-year-old, who reads very well, will often be eye to breast with a women's magazine offering up The Hottest Things to do to a Man! Not necessarily a concept you need to be explaining to your kid when all you're really trying to do is buy fruit.
Secret Sex Turn-Ons! Some secret. Thanks to you, now my six-year-old kid knows about it.
76 Sex Tips! That's an awful lot of sex tips, isn't it?
Your Best Orgasm! No more bad ones!
3 Amazing Sex Moves! Only three? Somebody must have missed a deadline and knocked this one out at the last minute! Where's Jayson Blair when you need him?
Why not be creative and leave a little something-something for the reader to find on the inside. That way, you won't have to frantically turn over your copy of Glamour on the coffee table before the Con Ed guy comes in to read the meter.
Some of the checkout headlines transcend the mere embarrassing and enter the realm of the truly mortifying:
Why my Big Butt Rules! (What exactly are the big butt rules? How about rule #1 — don't tell me anything about your butt.)
Do You Always Have to Pee? Go away. What is wrong with you?
Look, we love our Glamour "Don'ts" and the "Indispensable Guide to Swimsuits That Flatter Every Figure," and, of course, we can't get enough of "Lose 10 Pounds in Ten Days."
But something's way off here when teenaged boys are hanging out outside the local Wal-Mart, nervously trying to con an adult into buying them the new issue of Marie Claire.
— Susan Konig, author of the book Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road and other lies I tell my children, is an NRO contributor.
