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Monday May 08, 2006
Sex advice with your Sunday morning croissants
In January, Sunday newspaper The Observer launched a new column in its glossy supplement covering sex. The two columnists, Marion McBride and Sebastian Horsley immediately dived in with advice to readers covering oral sex, Brazilian waxes, vibrators, penis size and bondage.
In the first week's column, McBride advised a woman who was finding her sex life stagnating to look at:
"gently massaging whatever kink is closest to your man's heart - dust down the fringed bra, the nurse's outfit, the accidental omission of underwear."
Hardly triple-x stuff, but quite racy for a Sunday supplement. By April, the conversation had turned even more explicit. A female reader wanted advice on how to communicate to her partners that she liked anal sex. This, was, it seems, the proverbial final straw.
On Sunday, The Observer readers' editor announced that the sex column had been dropped. They had received a number of complaints, mainly focusing on the inappropriateness of the content for younger eyes.
One reader complained:
"My 11-year old daughter knows where to find the horoscopes in the magazine. Then I find my peaceful Sunday morning reading has to be abandoned for a rather unwelcome series of questions ... and all this appears under a running head of 'love'"
And another, in the best tradition of liberal complaints:
"This is the kind of "journalism" best left to the lads' mags and no, this isn't middle-aged, middle England talking but a 36-year-old Londoner. It's a sad fact that whereas once your magazine could grace coffee table, it now heads straight for the recycling bin."
You can picture the reader's fury as the magazine was carefully thrown in the paper (not cardboard) section of the recycling bin.
The complaints are fair in only one sense: that some content isn't appropriate for all age groups. But for a magazine like the Observer, it's a tricky balancing act. Provide a magazine which is 'appropriate' for 11 year olds and the rest of us miss out on more adult content?
As for leaving sex advice to the lads' mags, this makes me despair. This just reiterates the view that sex is all about photocopied pictures of bums and saucy snaps of Abi Titmus in a bikini.
Sound, honest advice on sex shouldn't only be available to the purveyors of soft-porn. I really admire The Observer for taking sex seriously and encouraging a more open conversation. The answers from McBride and Horsely provided the right combination of humour, information, empathy and practical advice. This is, of course, the approach we also try to take on TheSite.org.
The Observer column's intention was to provide "everything you ever wanted to know about sex but were too squeamish to ask'. Well you need to ask somewhere else now.
Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 11:05 AM ) Link to this post Comments[1]
The discussion rumbles on...
Posted by 127.0.0.1 on May 18, 2006 at 10:45 AM GMT+00:00 #