Bust(ed)

I have a confession to make.  Last week, the mailman delivered my neighbor’s magazine to my mailbox.  It was a magazine that I had never heard of, and it had Maya Rudolph on the cover.  Combined with the magazine’s name (Bust), I became intrigued and gingerly cracked it open for a peek.  

Seems innocent enough.

 

Yes, I read my neighbor’s magazine, front to back.

Truly, I had no intention of going through every single page, but I quickly became fascinated by this smutty magazine.  And smutty it was.  Well, at least to these delicate eyes, it was.  Anything that has a dedicated section called “One Handed Reading” qualifies as smutty in my book.  Others (non-prudes) might call it refreshingly candid.

A couple of observations about this publication.  I get the feeling this is a magazine intended to liberate women, promote equality, and educate the world.  Which explains the unconventional female celeb on the cover.  But Maya Rudolph on the front cover was misleading.  For a brief moment, I wondered if it was a magazine for well-endowed women.  I didn’t know…there are all kinds of magazines out there, and Maya is rather bountiful in that area.  But that didn’t seem her style, and the cover oozed a Marie Claire vibe.  I expected page after page of clothes, shoes, hair, and makeup, with a few racy articles here and there.  What I got instead, was a 4-page article about Christy (I've changed her name to protect her identity) who discovered she had already accomplished 200 out of 300 sexual exploits.  She then proceeded to live out at least 20 more in one weekend with a noncommittal partner.  But not without first practicing by herself at home.

I read it to the very last word, the way a passerby rubbernecks a car accident.   I was strangely compelled to keep turning the page, out of sheer lurid fascination.

My other observation with this magazine was around their target audience.  Who exactly was this magazine trying to attract?  Maya Rudolph on the front cover is clearly in my age bracket.  But the one handed story about a college girl who hooks up with her younger brother’s friend in the backseat of a car couldn't have been meant for my age group, could it?  I mean, that’s the kind of storyline a hormonal 19 year old might dream up.

And then there were the advertisements…o…m…g…  Did you know that there is such a thing as a cup that you can insert inside you to “collect yourself”, so to speak, during that time of the month?  Ummm…eeeuuuuwwww.  So take a moment to imagine the circumstances around when you'd need to use this product.  And now I have two words for you:  cup removal.  It just seems like a bad idea and makes me queasy thinking about it. 

After all this illicit viewing, I had a dilemma: deliver the magazine to my neighbor or throw it in the trash and pretend I never saw it.  Either way, I had to get it out of the house or else risk my 12 year old son finding it.  If I delivered it, I might run into my neighbor.  We'd have to trade embarrassing, knowing looks (ok, I'd be the only one embarrassed).  But if I didn’t return it, I would surely burn in hell.

Cliff hanger.