UPDATE JULY 2021: The “Cosmo Confessions” book is no longer is in production. This sex toy review remains as a reference for anyone who’s curious about the toy. While you’re here, why not check out my BDSM advice, femdom advice, and femdom podcast? Or maybe even my list of online submissive activities.
Cosmo Confessions: Hundreds of Absolutely Shameful, Scandalous, and Sexy Real-Life Tales is a book that, as you guessed it, is produced by Cosmo. It’s a paperback book in full-color pages that includes lot of pictures. There are twenty-two different chapters with a total of 151 pages. The book doesn’t take too long to read – it only took me about an hour and a half. The book is about six inches tall and five inches wide. The front shows a naked woman (covered with a pillow) while the backside shows some sample stories. I wish Cosmo would have chosen a different cover for this book – this book is actually really work-safe, but the cover makes it look like it isn’t.
The book is printed in a traditional Cosmo Magazine layout. The pages are obviously much thicker, and the entire book is a book instead of a magazine, but if you’ve ever read a Cosmo magazine, you’ll recognize some of their design elements within seconds of first opening the book. They use white backgrounds for the pages and use accent colors to help some passages stand out. They use lots of different stock photos and add captions underneath the photos to help the picture make sense with the passages. (In fact, I actually get annoyed at the captions because the captions are all really lame. Things like “If she saw this, she wouldn’t have done it!” and general things. Plus, since it’s all stock photography, none of it really fits perfectly with what’s going on in the text.)
All of the pages are actually sewn together like most books are, but instead of sewing it securely into the cover, it’s actually just glued in the spine to the cover. This means that half-way through my reading, the cover ended coming off of my book half-way. It’s still secured on one side. I’m not sure if all books would do this or if the one I got just had been badly glued. It was still slightly annoying, but the pages themselves don’t seem like they’ll fall out.
The book is set up really simply. Each one of the twenty chapters features either a short “Confessions of…” essay or features different themed confessions. These confessions are pretty much the “Best of Embarrassing Moments” that Cosmo has printed in their magazines – you know those “I was mortified!” type of stories? Yeah, that’s what these are. The little essays, which there are four of, are short 3-5 page short essays about what it’s like to be a masseuse, ER nurse, bikini waxer, and bartender.
Each one of the confessions is mildly amusing. I say mildly because I rarely laugh at those things, but the boyfriend ended up giggling at quite a few. I personally looked at the confessions which included things like feeling embarrassed over silly things like not brushing your hair and thought these were kinda silly. However, not all of them are like that. Some of them are a bit more serious like your pants splitting out at work or your dad accidentally discovering your lubricant.
Each story is about a paragraph long – maybe a short paragraph and maybe a long paragraph. Either way, there’s about three or four different stories to every page, so as you can imagine, that leaves quite a few different stories for you to read. If you’ve ever read one of these in any type of women’s magazine, you’ll know what to expect from these. Not all of the stories are given from women either – there are quite a few stories submitted by males scattered throughout these pages as well.
The book is made for the magazine’s audience – people in their early 20s. Most of the stories are about embarrassing hook-ups or bad first-time sex. None of them really relate to long-term couples. Stories about kink (like femdom, enemas, pegging, forced feminization, or chastity) are nowhere to be found. People who are older than the target range may still enjoy reading the book, but people who have more life experience under their belt may not find the stories as “cringe” as younger counterparts might.
Like most Cosmo magazines, it was interesting to read, but I can’t say it was because it was really that amusing by itself. I love ending up reading how people get into bad situations – normally because the people in the stories did something stupid. Something, however, that really bothered me was located in the chapter about Confessions of a Masseuse. She dedicated a couple paragraphs to talking about how fat people coming in to get a massage really grossed her out because she couldn’t understand how fat people could let themselves get so ugly. I feel like the editors of Cosmo, if they cared about some of their readership, would have cut that out. However, it stayed in which really peeved me and made me remember that I’m reading a magazine book tailored to skinny, “attractive” 20 year old women.
The contents of the 22 chapters is:
1. Mortifying Foot-In-Mouth Moments
2. True Tales of Dates from Hell
3. “I Did a Bad, Bad Thing”
4. “His Psycho Ex Wouldn’t Go Away”
5. Ouch! Booty Sessions Gone Very, Very Wrong
6. “My Accidental Flasher Moment”
7. Confessions of a Bartender
8. “Oops! I Made a Move on the Wrong Guy!”
9. 25 Laugh-Out-Loud Hilarious Tales
10. Caught in the Act by the Cops
11. Confessions of a Bikini Waxer
12. Totally Wicked Tales of Sweet Revenge
13. Excruciating Ex-Boyfriend Encounters
14. “My Passion Prop Disaster”
15. Confessions of an ER Nurse
16. Hysterical Sex Slip-Ups
17. “Ew! I Can’t Believe I Hooked Up With Him!”
18. Confessions of a Masseuse
19. Caught with their Panties Down
20. Outrageously Evil Insults
21. “How I Got Back at my Monster Roommate”
22. Stars Fess Up to Cosmo
Overall, I’m not really sure about this collection. Yes, it was amusing, and I definitely liked looking through it and reading it, but I wouldn’t call it amazing. It’s not something I’d read again, but it is something I’ll pass on to someone else who enjoys women’s magazines. It ended up offending me in the end, and it just reminded me of what Cosmo considers the “right” readership – it wasn’t a horrible read though.
