Studies in Crap: Only old Cosmopolitans hate ladies more than ladies hate themselves

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

​

Cosmopolitan magazine

Date: April, 1960

Discovered at: River Market Antique Mall

The Cover Promises: Woman troubles might be out of style, but floral scrubs are perennial.

Representative Quote:

• “When menstrual pain is so clearly a mental problem, the reasons are usually closely associated with a woman’s fear or resentment of being female.” (page 34)

Bad news, America! It turns out that Cosmo is not infallible.

There’s that time in ’88 when it claimed than the missionary position prevented the transmission of HIV.

More recently, in June 2009, the cover promised “Gutsy New Tips Are Guaranteed To Give Him The Most Badass Orgasm Imaginable.” That’s impossible, as this world has already been shaken by the most badass orgasm imaginable, the one that conceived Evel Knievel.

And then one time, way back before Helen Gurley Brown began sharpening the one-time lit rag into the man-pleasing, hoo-ha judging destroyer of self-esteem we enjoy today, Cosmo insisted that menstrual cramps were an “imaginary ailment.” Their only sufferers: hopeless neurotics and sneaky wives. From Evelyn Archer Adams’ April, 1960 article “Are Woman Troubles Out of Style?”

“Men now make it easy to perpetuate the menstrual-cramp myth. One wife and mother illustrated this quite graphically, saying ‘If you think I’m going to give up menstrual cramps, you’re out of your mind. That one day a month is the only time my husband feeds the kids, does the dishes, and sees that Mommy gets her rest!'”