If pornography is to be believed, there are several sexual El Doradoes amongst straight men: gals who have an, ahhh, consuming passion for oral sex, those who'll invite their girlfriends home to play doctor with their boyfriend and the woman with a love of all things "Greek".
Up there in the Top 5 would also be the "firecracker" - a girl who can seemingly orgasm with ease, thus making the man feel like a swashbuckling conquistador without having to anchor the galleon.
Female orgasm is a broad church encompassing many experiences from women who have never attained said state, to others who need all the circumstances to be just right and the above mentioned firerackers who make it seem as simple as kicking off a high-heeled shoe after a long day at work.
Having experienced the gamut, I write to you this week to sound a note of caution about women coming: be careful what you wish for ...
It's interesting we have so many articles and talk-fests dedicated to the 'problem' of the male premature ejaculator, but have you ever heard anyone so much as mention the premature female orgasmer?
-- SAM de BRITO
Not all of my female friends drink like Kate, but most of them do drink—and not just in a glass-of-wine-with-dinner way. Drinking is our go-to activity. Meeting a friend
implies going to a bar. Having a meal implies a round of cocktails beforehand. A party implies a serious hangover. Drinking feels like our prerogative—if we want to get blasted at the company Christmas party or nurse a bottle of scotch through the holidays, no one should, or can, stop us.
So while Kate might be an extreme case, she is emblematic of something researchers are noticing: That more women are drinking, yes—more than 48 percent acknowledge having had at least one drink in the past month (up from 42 percent in 1992). But beyond that, the women who drink are drinking more. The number of women who identify as moderate-to-heavy drinkers has risen in the last ten years, while the number of women who say they are light drinkers has declined. At the same time, men are reining in their drinking, meaning that the gender gap of alcohol consumption is narrowing all the time.
-- ALEX MORRIS
Eight months ago, I thought I saw a silver lining in this recession. Now it's looking more like scar tissue.
The silver lining, I thought, was that cosmetic surgery was taking a financial hit.
. . . That was then. This is now:
"Johnson & Johnson said it would buy Mentor, a maker of cosmetic products and breast implants, for $1.07 billion, a move that would help the drug maker become a major player in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery."
In other words, the increasing power of insurance gatekeepers and cost controls, driven by the recession, might drive some companies out of health-oriented medicine and into cosmetic procedures. The inability of middle-class people to pay for boob jobs doesn't mean providers have to shift their focus to real medicine for the middle class. Maybe they'll shift their focus instead to boob jobs for the rich.
"The one good thing about this jacked-up economy," a friend wryly noted, "is I think
they're going to cancel the office holiday party.."
Talk about your silver linings!
It doesn't matter whether you're treated to a five-course dinner at a spiffy restaurant or Cheez Whiz on Ritz crackers—what happens at the office holiday party can affect your professional life well into the next year. To keep yourself out of the minefield that's packaged as holiday merriment, remember: The important word in the phrase "office holiday party" is office. In other words, it's still work, just in dressier clothes and with liquor.
The real Jessica Alba is on the left, the airbrushed one is on the right. Alba on the left is gorgeous–it’s hard to imagine that she would need a touch up.
I've wondered why there’s this push away from womanly curves and towards excessive thinness and straight/flat bodies. Men certainly like women who are in good shape, but men like womanly curves, too. My wife says that a lot of it is driven by fashion designers–it’s easier to make and fit clothes for thin/straight/flat bodies than curvy ones.
I'm not looking forward to my 10-year-old daughter spending the next God knows how many years comparing herself to these images and then feeling inferior. That's false, of course–she already is comparing herself to those images, but I'm in denial about it, kidding myself that she's still "a baby" and not influenced by these things.
-- GLENN SACKS
The nine-year-old who self-published, then actually published, a 46-page book about
how to talk to girls (he compared us to cars that need lots of oil, and we hope he isn't talking about what we think he is) just sold the movie rights to Fox, who thought it would make a fine movie. Maybe starring Robin Williams as the nine-year-old? Then there's the twelve-year-old, who was mouthing baby food only a few years earlier, who fancies himself a food critic ("Softish jazz music. Seem to enjoy kids but not overly") whose film rights were aquired by SNL's Loren Michaels. Well, goody for them! Brats. Trend alert: only precocious kids need apply for book-to-movie success for the next few months. And yes, we would be happy to show you an excerpt!
-- SHEILA
First up, I have no babies. I have a dog named Pete. But the subject here today is hip baby names. And why one hip name multiplies into a nation of Rubys, Jacks, Dakotas, and Jaydens seemingly overnight. One researcher says we need look no further than the Pei Wei next to the CVS.
Psychology Today reports that Cleveland Kent Evans, a professor of psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska and past president of the American Name Society, has this theory:
"Evans believes that our homogeneous strip-mall culture fosters the desire to nominally distinguish our children.
"He cites a boom in unique names dating to the late 1980s but says the taste for obscure monikers developed in the 1960s, when parents felt less obligated to keep certain names in the family."
I must confess I like some hipster names. (My sweet, adorable niece is Emma, which was No. 1 on the baby names list in 2006.) But , nothing scrapes the chalkboard of my soul more than pretentious names like (sorry parents) Atticus and Emerson. They have the same effect on me as MacKenzie and Madison, both of which I loathe and are everywhere.
-- PAIGE PHELPS
I wonder why, if sex and intimacy are so tangled up, anyone thinks you can avoid the first and still find the other? Sex isn't just the ends; it's also the means. I'm not suggesting it's the only way to get to know a person (although it's a hell of an icebreaker), but I do believe it's pretty damn tough to make a connection with anybody when one is physically cut off.
I'd be less skeptical of . . . writers' claims about their respect for sex if they had indicated an understanding of it in the context of a fully sensual life. And the thing that makes me despair in all of this public discourse is the nagging suspicion that for so many women, the great refusal isn't just to intercourse, it's to all that other great stuff that might lead one there -- to touch and scent and taste and everything messy and complicated and physical that we so deeply crave.
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