Culture

It’s time we got over our prudishness about female desire

A new sex magazine for women provides a chance to rebalance the genders

November 18, 2014
New York night club owner Brian Ross posing for Playgirl in 1988. ©  John Irving
New York night club owner Brian Ross posing for Playgirl in 1988. © John Irving
About Fcking Time. Last week, online magazine About Time launched a “naughty sister” offshoot (decorously shortened to AFT) which provides frank, explicit discussions about sex and taboos for women. Posts include “It’s time to admit you masturbate,” “We asked why women fake orgasms,” and “You don’t have to be skinny to have good sex.”

As the title suggests, it is about time. Fifty Shades of Grey demonstrated that women (across the age/class/shape spectrum) have libidos so strong they can get past the most turgid of prose—and that there is serious money to be made from it. In the past, the most notorious concessions to women’s sex drives were the occasional Diet Coke advert and the 90s consumeristic fantasy Sex and the City. Now we have a thriving sex toy industry and mobile dating apps like Tinder, and yet there is no decent publication dedicated solely to women’s pleasure.

As male below-the-line commenters gleefully point out, women’s magazines are filled with hatred towards women. Idolising the rich and famous, weight loss tips, four-figure handbags, “must have” product lists, hair-removal, tooth whitening, fake tans, false eyelashes—the message is that in order to be acceptable to the outside world (both men and women), women must spend huge amounts of their time and money to preen themselves into Cheryl Cole lookalikes. Women’s magazines are no longer our friend. They’re the overheard comment in the corridor, a snide remark, the paranoid feeling you could be better, more “perfect.” Websites such as Vagenda and The Debrief attempt to redress the balance, but there's room for plenty more.

Only a week after its launch, About Fcking Time still has some way to go. It has a fair number of articles, but for now it isn’t much more than a glorified blog. The “debates” aren’t really in-depth affairs. But its unashamedly sex-based focus is refreshing and sure to take off with readers.

Its creators might look to the past for some dos and do-not-dos. Attempts to create erotic material for women have been made before, with very limited success. Playgirl's well-oiled, moustachioed models quickly attracted a (male) gay audience. Filament was let down by its baffling faux-gothic design. Adult, launched last year to much fanfare about it being the first sex magazine “for women,” later turned out to be “for everyone,” with photography largely focusing on semi-naked young girls.

If anything, then, AFT should go further than it already has. It could include suggestive photo galleries, erotic fiction (Anaïs Nin aside, why is so much of it so badly written?), selected porn websites (yes, women watch it too)—or at least provide forums for readers to recommend these things to each other. The weird prudishness around women's erotica needs to be overturned. It shouldn’t be seen in opposition to movements such as “No More Page 3” or “Lose the Lads’ Mags:” ideologically they ought to go hand in hand. As Kristina Lloyd and Mathilde Madden have argued, nakedness itself isn’t inherently sexist or problematic: what is questionable is the massive disproportion between genders. Just try to imagine Kanye West posing oiled and naked on a magazine cover in the same pose as his wife.

So yes, it is about fucking time we had a magazine that has the courage to be solely about women’s sexual satisfaction, without needing to puritanically dress it up with fashion shoots and articles about make-up. It’s not a particularly incendiary idea. The next step is for advertisers and the magazine industry to pluck up the courage to get behind quality erotic material for women. There are publications on a wide range of niche subjects, from teddy bears to pet ferrets, so why not on something as important and widespread as female sexuality? With Fifty Shades of Grey bringing in £33.3m for its author in 2013, surely the market potential is significantly higher than for magazines about carp fishing.