Prowling around the seedier cheap-thrills parts of the internet, as I am wont to do, I came across this numbered list article on Buzzfeed (always fishing for the next best angle ever) entitled 24 Diagrams to Help You Have Better Sex, which is fun, silly, banal and informative, all at once, according to your age or agenda. It offers everything from tips (no pun intended) on how to protect your junk and masturbation to politically correct sexual consent explanations to best positions for pregnancy sex. I particularly enjoyed numbers 15, “25 Things Everyone Should Know About BDSM” and 11, “For Knowing Just Where You Stand,” which were enlightening and confirming, respectively. Putting sex/identity labels in colored bubbles in flow chart fashion underscores the absurdity of the need for such labels or teaching the labels in the first place, was my initial reaction to 11. While I did not learn what was intended, I was provoked to thought–unlike number 2, which, amazingly to me for its seemingly sheer “duh” factor, I learned something new. I am not confessing what, however.
Though I am not fond of attempts at ordering enormously dense, complex subjects as easily numbered information pieces that pose as “all there is to it,” this article caught my eye for its eclectic–maybe hodgepodge better matches the tone of the piece–tidbits of information. Who is the target audience of this article? That question came to mind often. Trying to be anything and everything all at once, the anticipated audience seems to be anyone from a novice at sex–here are the erogenous zones for men, here for women–to long married couples who can laugh at recognizing themselves in rather unlovely, unsexy sleeping postures.
The ambition of the article’s reach and its equally serious and satiric tone amused me. I hope it likewise amuses and informs readers here. Oh, and the forgotten item to number 1’s list: blown kisses.
In the gaze of the other 