Read This Naked


Do you read Cosmo magazine? I don’t and never have. Not even when I shit.

Despite Cosmopolitan’s strong beginnings and best intentions, in today’s media it shows its age. The front cover screams its antiquity and the old girl has become downright quaint when trying to be “risqué.” I feel like even Cosmo’s target demographic (blondes in US colleges and desperate housewives) must now be hip to the fact that everything between its covers is all pretty much nonsense. 

It does say something though that this lurching pink dinosaur still exists. Somehow a slideshow link from their site wormed its way into my eye-line during my recent Internet travels: 30 Things You Absolutely Must Do Naked. Yes, taking swipes at Gurley Brown’s legacy now is the proverbial blogger shooting fish in a barrel. But what if I shoot naked? BUCKSHOT EVERYWHERE.

Here are some choice cuts from the Cosmo list and my humble retorts. Which I wrote completely dressed – high Elizabethan collar and all.

Catch up on your emails
There’s a lot of power in responding to your boss’s requests while naked and resplendent.

So, not only do I have to deal with the lazy blogger food crumbs embedded in my keyboard, now I have lazy blogger nipple hairs to hunt down between the G & H keys. Perfect.

Dance
The best way to dance like nobody’s watching is to dance when no one is actually watching and to do it naked. 

Acceptable only if I create a sensory deprivation room in my home with no reflective surfaces, because I’m pretty sure seeing my half A-cups smacking into my leftover birth stomach during the rousing chorus of Summer Nights would crush my entire soul.

Organize your closet
Now you can try things on without taking other clothes off first. #convenient 

Nobody I know cleans their closet unless they are moving or lost a bet. If you make this shitty task clothing-optional, you’re just asking to get a deep wire hanger contusion across one nipple and henceforth forever more be searching for a one-boobed pirate bra.  Purpose = #defeated. 

Hand-write letters to friends
“To Whom it May Concern, I am nude.” 

I do belong to a tough girl gang who actually write and mail letters to each other every month. I guess this could save me some time if I delicately dab the envelopes closed with vaginal lip moisture versus pesky old spit.

Cook/bake
Just be very careful around open flames. 

100% proof that Cosmo writers are on METH. Who, ever ever ever, would sacrifice their unprotected soft bits to the wondrous flying sparks of fat and meat that pop out of boiling pots and frying pans? Also – 110% chance of pubic hairs in food. Even if you’re crap at math, know this – that’s a shitty percentage. 

Reading
What’s better than mental stimulation? Mental stimulation without your clothes on. 

People sleep naked and often read before they crash out. This is like suggesting people shower naked. Come on Cosmo. You can’t veer wildly from insane to ho-hum.

Croquet
High fences or hedges around your yard are mandatory. 

Oh, and they’re back! I have always wondered what it would be like to have a hard wooden mallet accidentally embedded deep in my box. With my lack of athleticism and grace, that would be the end result. Even if I win, I lose.

Go camping
Maybe stick with glamping. Sliding into a sleeping bag nude in the dark woods isn’t the same as sliding into your 1,000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets. You don’t want to venture off into tall brush without your clothes on.

I hate camping. So much. Here bugs – here’s MORE SQUARE FEET of me to just gorge yourself on. At least I’d come back from camping down a few pounds due to tremendous blood loss – something Cosmo has GUARANTEED suggested as a weight loss “trick.”

Order and Eat a pizza
Because ordering it just isn’t enough. 

Is it called “New York-style” when you dribble a screaming hot string of molten lava cheese onto your soft inner thighs and scream every swear word you have ever heard in a Scorsese movie?

Night swimming
Yeah, it’s just skinny-dipping at night. 

Swimming naked is fun for teenagers and women who don’t have nightmares about vagina piranhas. I fall outside of those two camps, so no thanks.

Think about your life-choices
Ruminate on everything that got you to this point in your life. Take your pants off first. 

Like, masturbate about the Trader Joe’s cashier who brushed your hand when he handed back your debit card and deeply cared about your coconut oil choice? Maybe.

Paint
Express yourself. Feel free to fingerpaint. Or, you know, improvise with other body parts. 

Somewhere women are already painting with their menstrual fluid. Let’s not encourage this any fucking further.

Binge-watch a show on Netflix
You’re going to be on the couch for a while. You might as well get comfortable. 

Sure. But when your husband comes in as you are languidly scratching your vagina while watching a Holocaust documentary, the ensuing conversation is going to suck. 

Clean out your garage
If you do it naked, your neighbors won’t wander over and bother you.

OKAY. CRAZYTOWN, POP: COSMO. Dirt and screws and tools and metal crumbs and bugs and spider webs do NOT mix with exposed genitalia. Gross. Stop it. I’m leaving.

Exercise
Don’t do any cardio or aerobics without proper support, but yoga works fine. You’re going to get sweaty anyway. Why wear clothes? 

See Dancing Nude suggestion above but with more high kicks. Equally and terribly wrong.

Solve a jigsaw puzzle
No one actually likes jigsaw puzzles, but if you’re naked they become slightly more tolerable. 

Me: “Ugh, out of 400 pieces, we are missing one piece. ONE.”

Grandma: “Oh dear, here we are,” shakily fishes out the missing piece from her 100 year-old grey gaping maw of a vagina.

Me: Flips puzzle and runs away. Forever.

Crochet
It’s a valuable life-skill. Why not knit your family matching scarves while you’re in the nude. 

NOTHING will get you scratched off the will quicker than “Happy Birthday Grandpa! It’s an experimental piece I did – it looks like a regular jaunty scarf but I intertwined my own leg hair!”

Learn an instrument
Practicing “Chopsticks” or “Hot Cross Buns” can be a lot more fun when you’re letting it all hang out. 

How 88% of flutes-in-the-vag accidents happen. Don’t be a statistic.

Play video games
There’s nothing wrong with being a nerd. Especially a naked one.

You’re thinking about the video game nerds you know playing naked, right? Fuck you Cosmo. Fuck you forever for that imagined hell.

Eat grapes
Ideally, have someone feed them to you like you’re Dionysus. 

90% of Cosmo readers have NO IDEA who Dionysus is. I have no idea who that is. Why wouldn’t they have subbed in a cute boy that their readers know? Come on Cosmo. Grapes and Gosling are the delicious duo here.

After making it this far (thanks and congratulations), you must be on the same page as I am: it’s time to carefully carry this stale and sad publication out back for an Old Yeller-style merciful finish. Just mind the stray buckshot.