I was in New York City no more than a couple hours before getting a text from my best friend, Jamie, saying, “Come with me to Cosmo’s 50 Hottest Bachelors Party.” When a girl like Jamie invites you somewhere, you go, no questions asked, but it didn’t hurt that she followed up that text with this one: “There’s an open bar.” Sold.
I met Jamie at the bar just as the bachelors were being called out on stage, beauty-pageant style. Each of them had a couple seconds to show the crowd of cheering, cat-calling women, why they were voted the sexiest man boy from their state. Most of them did so by taking off their shirts. I looked around at the audience, expecting women to be laughing. Abs, really? That can’t possibly be garnering sincere applause. I like a rippled abdomen as much as the next girl, but I kinda thought women outgrew phrases like “eye-candy” and “hunk” around the same time they stopped hanging posters of Jonathan Taylor Thomas in their lockers.
Jamie yelled into my ear: “This is awkward. I feel like I’m at a cross between a Chippendales show and a bat mitzvah.”
She couldn’t have been more right on. Isn’t that kind of what Cosmopolitan does best: provide tantalizing content (supposedly for women but really for teens) that paints a fantasy of what it’s like to be a sexy, urban twenty-something? It makes every girl think that if they just get past those awkward middle-school years, life will be all crystal chandeliers, martini glasses, and boys who really do respond to “23 Tricks to Make Him Fall in Love.” Really, the last time Cosmo was at all relevant was probably when I was thirteen. Actually, it was probably open on my bed as I applied another layer of glitter in preparation for a classmate’s bat mitzvah.
I grew up, but Cosmo, of course, has stayed the same. And even though the Cosmo bachelors are my age (I even went to college with Mr. Massachusetts), I guarantee the only ones voting for these guys are thirteen-year-old girls, casting their ballots after they get home from the bar mitzvah, where none of Cosmo’s tips for turning a crush into a boyfriend worked.
And yet, the women at the party seemed to be having a blast, vying for a dance and a picture with the bachelors, marveling at the abs as if they had never seen the product of crunches before, drinking the radioactive-colored drinks. All without a hint of irony. And I won’t pretend I was above doing the same. I grabbed my sugar-coated martini glass and hit the dance floor, realizing I was living the Cosmo-created dream of my early teens. For a couple hours, I fulfilled a forgotten fantasy. For a couple hours, I was the “Cosmo Girl” I once naively aspired to. We all were.
And guess what? It’s a fun role to play … but not as fun as leaving with your best friend to go get pizza and laugh about how ridiculous the event was. And, oh, how there were no eligible guys there.
