Cosmopolitan: (adj) free from provincial ideas or attachments; at home all over the world

As he sat down, he stared at me.

It was a very small waiting room in a dentist’s office, so what I was doing was noticeable. It was also quite obvious that he found my activity
humorous.

I was reading Cosmopolitan Magazine.

There were three choices: Popular Mechanics, Highlights for Kids, and Cosmopolitan.

I suppose if I were trying to confirm my masculinity, I should have thumbed through Popular Mechanics, though mechanical things have never been particularly popular with me.

I decided to comment since he continued to stare at my magazine. “I’m reading Cosmopolitan because it was here—and I was curious.”

He nodded his head in disdain.

I ventured one more sentence of explanation. “Don’t you ever wonder what women are thinking about us?”

He didn’t even look up for this question—just shook his head.

While I was waiting my turn to be drilled, I learned three things about women of this day and age, from perusing Cosmopolitan.

1. Women are much more concerned about what men think and feel than men seem to be about women.
2. For some reason, a woman thinks it is her fault in some way when she ends up with a man who is unable to communicate or seems to have “lost interest.”
3. Women feel they can pursue a five-point plan to transform their hopeless situations to better, more romantic results.

I simultaneously was filled with admiration and sadness.

I found the pursuit placed in this magazine to be far from cosmopolitan, since “cosmopolitan” is the ability to function and be successful in any culture or environment at any time.

This magazine more or less was a handbook to explain to women why they are not crazy, insecure or extreme in their misgivings.

What the magazine was trying to impress upon its readership—mainly female—is that men are waiting for the right signals to become objective, interesting and involved.

When it came my time to head for the dentist’s chair, I closed the magazine and thought, I could probably make a million dollars by printing a magazine that encouraged women to be themselves and realize that men will eventually come in their direction since the alternatives are limited…and they do get horny and hungry.

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