All posts by Em Taylor

Do It Tonight! What to Say Next If Your Pick-up Line Actually Works
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retro_cocktail_barphoto by hmk

If your pick-up line — whether it’s “Hi my name is Pat” or “How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice!” — actually turns into a conversation, don’t assume you’re on the home stretch. Nope, you could still screw things up royally. Like talking about the weather, for example, or the heat of the room. We’d also avoid the topics of astrology, college majors, exes, reproductive rights legislation, shopping, infidelity, and children. Safe topics include: the bar (et cetera) that you are in, if he or she lives in the neighborhood, what he or she does for a living, some inane law your mayor recently passed, the movie you just saw, his or her darts skills, the flossing-before-OR-after-brushing conundrum, HBO, mullet websites, and how much a polar bear does, actually, weigh.

Celebrities Do It Too! (01-16-09)
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kate_winslet_globesphoto by Alan Myers

Love Hurts? There Might Just Be a Drug for That.
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pillsphoto by Caleb

Have you ever wished that you could turn off that aspect of your brain that gets unreasonably and irrationally attached to someone completely inappropriate after a night of sex and/or spooning? Well, it turns out that a solution — call it the anti-love drug — just might be on the horizon. It’s all thanks to Dr. Larry Young, a neuroscientist who is famous (at least, he’s famous in our world!) for his research into monogamy in prairie voles. These little cuties are among the less than 5 percent of mammals who share our fondness for monogamy. Dr. Young figured out that some prairie voles, due to a hormone deficiency, are less likely to bond and nest than others. He also found a way to block the similar hormone in lady voles — and this process made them less likely to fall in vole-love.

It’s not a giant leap to say that similar hormones (and hormone deficiencies) may have the same results in humans. So, the theory goes, if you wanted to fall in love all over again with your spouse of 30 years, you could get a hormone booster shoot — and if you wanted to booty call to your heart’s content without the fear of becoming a leg-clinger, you could take hormone blockers. (We suppose this would also mean that “It’s not you, it’s my hormones” could soon be considered a pathetic attempt at an excuse.)

All of which is excellent news for couples in a rut or women with a weakness for cowboys or bad boys. But it’s not such good news for two advice ladies who make a living by helping people figure out sex with and without love — and love with and without sex. But hey, until the FDA approves the love drug and the anti-love drug, we’ll be here for you.

Confession: In Praise of the MILF
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feet_sandals1photo by Foot Dude

Our contributor Antonio Reis, a first year at Wesleyan, has a confession to make:

I love older women. All through high school, my friends would raise their eyebrows when they learned I was spending an evening with my friends Phoebe*, Michaela, and Eileen. Phoebe is 44, Michaela is 43, and Eileen is 36.

On the occasional weekend when I would decline my high school peers’ offers to make merry with cheap, plastic-bottle vodka, my friend Caitlin (age 18) would exclaim, “You’re so fucking weird. You can hang out with people like that after your hip replacement surgery.”

To acquaintances of my own age bracket, these seeming geriatrics appear dull — but to me they look fantastic. In my mind, my matron-friends have aged to perfection, like a fine wine.

I think women reach the height of their sexiness around 40 years old. And no, I don’t mean those housewives who Botox monthly or hire a surgeon to vacuum out their corpulent appendages with liposuction. Sure, cosmetic intervention is their prerogative and more power to them. But I find plastic surgery to be a cop-out when used purely to “combat” age. This of course just covers the ridiculous amount of fillers and botox people get these days, and I’m not even talking about middle aged women here, youngtsers in their 20s and even younger feel the need to involve themselves in this when their skin is flawless and youthful. Beats me. The only thing I do understand about cosmetic surgery is dental work, an that is because your teeth can fail on you at any point in your life. Sometimes it might be your fault if you don’t eat the right foods or you don’t look after them properly, but with confidence I can say that a twinkling smile tranforms someone’s whole appearance. There are many of these dentists around, perhaps one of the most famous is this top Beverly Hills veneers dentist Arthur Glosman who has been used multiple times for multiple big names. I’m pretty sure if I had the money, I’d have a bright white perfectly straight smile. But anyway, let’s move off this and head back to the point of our middle aged women, our MILFs who are just bossing life, without the need for cosmetic intervention.

That’s right, I’m talking about those middle-aged women who know what’s up. Those women who embrace their curves. Those femmes fatales who can take care of themselves as well as their offspring, and can do it all while sashaying down the aisles of the local grocery store like it was Bryant Park or the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Like my aforementioned love and HBIC/MILF Madonna, these women have got their acts together and can complete daily tasks with tact and seeming ease, lending them an air of sophisticated sensuality and power.

(more…)

We're Not Worthy!
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new_yorker

Like many New Yorker subscribers, our weekly issues pile up like an ivory tower, but alas, there are dishes to be done, Lost episodes to watch and sex tips to write! Some weeks we barely get to the cartoon caption contest on the back page. Which is why a friend had to inform us of the highlight of our career, the ultimate honor which will surely make any future accomplishments pale in comparison: In the January 5th issue (“The End Is Near Sale”), Ariel Levy — author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, one of our faves, natch — reviewed the new edition of The Joy of Sex in an article titled “Doing It,” and mentioned (on page 2) our latest sex manual (holy crap!):

If you are young and sassy…you might enjoy Sex: How to Do Everything, by two women who call themselves Em & Lo and have a penchant for frisky wordplay.

Sure, Levy says there are endless alternatives, but of the endless alternatives, she only mentions three — count ’em — three! Of which we’re one! Combine that with what she says about the new “Joy of Sex” — “What was revolutionary in 1972 seems obvious now, and to present the material otherwise feels silly and square” — and it sounds like Sex: How to Do Everything just got an official (albeit oblique) recommendation from the New Freaking Yorker! We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!

Okay, false modesty aside: We’d like to think that as a feminist writer, Levy appreciates the way we approach sex, in our book, as an egalitarian act between equals both deserving of pleasure and respect, the way we take intercourse off its pedestal as the be-all-end-all of sexual acts, and the way we have a bit of fun doing it. Yes, we’d like to think Ariel Levy likes us, she really likes us.

Even if she doesn’t, that shit is up on the fridge and staying there.

Do It Tonight! Mix Up the Pick Up
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bar_scenephoto by Andre Natta

A note to straight men: We’re constantly hearing you guys complain that you have to do all the pick-up leg-work. But then when a woman does attempt to hit on you in a bar, you turn around and call her “desperate.” (Er, who made off with your self-esteem, anyway?) Admittedly, you don’t get hit on nearly as often as straight gals do, so you don’t have nearly as much practice at (politely) rejecting an unwelcome advance. Which means that when a brave lady does attempt to buy you a drink or engage you in conversation, you have a tendency to be awkward and weird about it. But what’s so “desperate” about knowing what you want and going for it? She shouldn’t be made to feel like she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down just because she asked you to dance. It’s not like she’s asking you to bear her children. You never know, she may actually just want to use you for sex. So be nice to the women trying to even the playing field!

Oh, and ladies? Keep asking! And try not to take it personally if a guy is a douche when you ask him how he likes his eggs in the morning. He’s just had less practice than you.

Rejoice, Sex Toy Sales Are Recession Proof!
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vibrator_plastic_manphoto by Guido Alvarez

We couldn’t be happier to learn that the recession is apparently not impacting sex toy sales. Turns out women would rather wear last year’s jeans and use this year’s vibrator to get to their happy place. Sanity, at last! For years we’ve been telling women that it’s toad-licking crazy to spend more than $100 on a pair of designer jeans and then shaft your genitals (as it were) with a cheap knock-off sex toy.

We don’t mean that you have to get a 24K gold vibrator like Kate Moss did. And you certainly shouldn’t spend $1.8 million on a diamond-encrusted sex toy like David Beckham did for his wife Victoria. (We guess some people just need to spend that much to convince themselves that using sex toys isn’t sleazy or dirty. Newsflash: It’s not. Now go treat yourself to a Nea and donate the rest to world hunger, please.)

But you do need to spend a little bit of money to ensure that the toy you’re using is actually intended for pleasure (and not for “novelty purposes only,” like so many cheap plastic gimmicky sex toys). We have grand plans to tell you all about our favorite sex toys, both new and old, on this site, but for now we’ll just say this: Shopping at a clean, well-lighted sex toy shop, especially one designed to make women at home, is a great start. We heart GoodVibes, and so should you — because they don’t want you shafting your genitals either.