So I was over at a friend’s place and there was not an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine on her kitchen table, but if there were, I would have been disgusted. That stuff is a bunch of bologna. Please, if you’re a girl – or a guy for that matter – and you read Cosmo, just stop it.

The whole idea of women who are “experts” about men telling other women about men just doesn’t sit well. It’s one of those intuitively flawed concepts, like drunk NASCAR. It sounds like a workable idea after you’ve thought about it long enough, but it’s still wrong on the surface.

For once, I’m actually serious.

Cosmopolitan survives by attracting readers so advertisers purchase ad space. To get those readers, Cosmo boasts content rife with “secrets” covering relationships, romance, beauty and health — not that I would know — and it’s all seemingly geared to “help” women become more appealing to men.

These secrets are bogus. It’s fake insider information, cultivating the illusion women will fall behind in the social loop if they don’t read it.

I’m not saying it’s bad to care about those topics. Cosmo just does it the wrong way, creating a false need to find out “his biggest secrets,” as written by some lady. Even if it were a man, he could only speak  for himself.

And it’s more complicated than that. The patriarchal media already has advertising that reflects ideologies for “women who need improvements,” and “men who are already worthy.”

Think of it this way: Female magazine ads display famous women normal girls “could be like,” while men’s ads suggest – sometimes by showing the same famous women – that normal guys are already capable of winning female affections.

They give a man value because he can throw a football farther than Uncle Rico, while they mislead women to be self-conscious. It’s a harmful strategy, playing on the ideology that girls are “highly emotional.”

I couldn’t tell you, for example, how a woman chooses her maid of honor. It probably involves a lot of deep emotional connections and concerns about how other girls feel, but I really don’t know.

A guy, however, can make his best man decision at any particular moment by a one-directional process: He imagines everyone he knows is in one gigantic college party scene, and pretends he has to choose the one guy he would walk up to in front of everyone, do the handshake-chest-bump-bro-hug-back-pat with and say “pong partners for life.”  No further questions.

But this is way more than the silly discussion of men being rational and women being emotional. It’s still unfair for Cosmo to toy with girls’ esteems because the female self-image is already magnified through media icons.

For instance, I doubt many guys can name one famous male model in history, while girls can easily come up with Tyra Banks or someone else.

You see, female idols are mostly actresses, models and attractive singers, while male icons are mostly sports figures and musicians. The women are all about looks, while the men are sometimes nasty looking. Seriously, not many guys in Milwaukee are going to see Prince Fielder or Andrew Bogut and feel bad about their own appearance.

Meanwhile, Cosmo brainwashes women into thinking they’ll never be good enough –  It’s the reason why nearly every girl puts her arm on her hip when getting her picture taken because they’re so worried about how it looks. Come on. Really, who would  criticize arms?

Cosmopolitan shouldn’t tear women down by making them feel incompetent, and they shouldn’t hold them back by discouraging them from finding out “secrets” on their own. Magazines don’t define people, and they certainly shouldn’t control them.
Look, I could never type a word that’s more real than the world we actually live in. The authors in magazines are no different. The things that mean the most are in real life, not in the pages of Cosmo.
Of course, some advice is useful, like tips on communication or nutrition that average women wouldn’t know without doing research. But things like “what your man is thinking,” should be left alone.

Please. Just stop searching for something to believe in when you can believe in yourself. If my editors don’t take that line and put it one of the little quote boxes, then they’re out of their minds. And if girls think reading Cosmo is empowering, they are too. Guys don’t like that, but remember, this was never about them. Girl power.