Back in July, Cosmopolitan brought its signature brand of sex advice to lesbians for the first time with an illustrated slideshow called “28 Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex Positions” and, at the time, I was one of its harshest critics. After an awkward evening of grinding on my partner in a series of increasingly precarious configurations, I was ready to write off the magazine’s foray into the world of lesbian sex forever. Jenny Block over at The Huffington Post also enlisted the aid of some friends to try out Cosmo’s first set of lesbian sex tips and dubbed them “truly insane and downright impossible,” prompting a spirited defense from Cosmo in which Lindsay King-Miller hinted that they’d publish even more positions down the line.
True to their word, Cosmo is back for more with a new set of “7 Totally Hot Lesbian Sex Positions” and I’m back, too, to put them through their paces and see if they’ve taken any of the criticisms they received to heart. Last night, after a great deal of trepidation and a preemptive apology to both my partner and my own clitoris, we took the plunge once more, for science. Nothing could have prepared us for what happened next: We actually enjoyed almost every single position. Here’s my official review of each of them, in order:
1) The Sultry Soup Spoon: “Lie on top of your partner in the bath, and have her reach around to finger you with one hand and play with your nipples with the other.”
I’ve always admired people who can have sex in bathtubs. Some people measure whether or not they’ve made it based on the number of figures in their salary or the size of their family. Me? I’ll know I’ve made it when I own a bathtub I can get laid in. In my particular experience of urban living, bathtubs are simply the things you stand in while taking a shower. Sure, every so often you convince yourself that you’re going to bleach the tub, invest in some scented candles, and treat yourself, but then you just settle for some ice cream instead.
All of this is to say that we were unable to try this position in its proper setting, so we had to pretend that our bed was a bathtub. My partner got in the “tub” first and I leaned back on her so she could give me the old reacharound. With our disbelief firmly suspended, this position was actually remarkably pleasant, like lying down on a chaise longue that just so happens to have hands, hands that just so happen to be touching the most sensitive parts of my body. In fact, this first position was so disarming that we almost didn’t move on to the other six.
The winds must have changed over at Cosmo, I thought.
Eventually and reluctantly, we proceeded to try...
2) The Electric 69: “Your basic 69, but with vibrators in place of tongues. Get up close and personal.”
“I feel like an auto mechanic,” my partner declared, from her position at the bottom of the 69, the green glow of her vibrator’s LED lighting my nethers.
“Do you want to peek under my hood?” I responded in a bit of dirty banter that was so painfully on the nose I’m ashamed to even recount it.
Once I quit trying to be clever, a good time was had by all.
3) Call the Plumber: “Wear a strap-on dildo and have your partner give you a blow job while stimulating your clitoris or anus with her fingers or a small vibrator.”
There’s a theory that all lesbians secretly want the D. The only people who believe this theory are straight men so crushed by the idea that some women might not want to sleep with them that they choose to live inside a phantasmic world of their own creation where all lesbians are just faking it. So I need to make one thing perfectly clear before I weigh in on this tip: No matter its shape, a dildo is not a substitute for a penis. It’s a standalone tool in the erotic economy of lesbianism. Sometimes a dildo is just a dildo.
That being said, the task of faux-fellating my partner naturally fell to me. Sucking on a dildo wasn’t exactly agreeable because the dildo we used was quite large and it tasted nothing at all like a hot dog. But my partner sadistically enjoyed watching me struggle with it so much that she actually deemed this position her favorite one. And no, straight men, this does not mean that my partner is the “man” in the relationship or that I secretly yearn to give a blow job, thank you very much.
4) The Bend and Lick: “Stand, bent over at the waist, while your partner kneels behind you and licks your clitoris, anus, whatever strikes your fancy.”
“Fancy” and “anus” are not words that I like to see in close proximity to each other. Nothing against fans of rimming, but we run a strict no-annilingus household. Given that this position seems geared toward lesbians more sexually adventurous than us, it feels unfair to dismiss it so summarily, but this position was bad. When you bend over at the waist in the manner depicted in Cosmo’s illustration, your blood has a funny way of rushing to your head instead of your clit.
After a streak of three excellent positions in a row, my partner and I were worried that Cosmo was reverting to its old ways once we gave The Bend and Lick a try. But fingers crossed, we soldiered on.
5) The Deep Sea Diver: “Position yourself under the bathtub faucet so the water is stimulating your clitoris while your partner sits on your face.”
This past winter, my partner and I rented a small house in rural Vermont with a gorgeous clawfoot tub. The satisfaction of soaking in it was heightened tenfold by the knowledge that we were keeping deliciously warm during the depths of the polar vortex. That was a tub. Then, for my partner’s birthday, we spent some of our savings to go a luxury hotel where we ate a chocolate mousse cake in the bathtub while watching Chopped on the bathroom TV. Now that, that was a tub to end all tubs.
But once again, I must confess that I’m not wealthy enough to have a fantasy tub in my day-to-day life so, in order to test The Deep Sea Diver, my partner had to make do with what we have. But even outside of a tub, this position is a tried-and-true lesbian classic and I’m sure it only would have been improved with the addition of some pressurized hot water. The bond between women and detachable showerheads, after all, is both a marriage of convenience and one of love.
6) The Naughty Student: “Bend over the bed and have your partner penetrate you from behind with a strap-on dildo.”
Not only do my partner and I have a three-inch height difference but our bed is alarmingly high off the ground, thanks to a botched IKEA assembly. We had to improvise a little bit to make this position work, but it paid off in the end.
7) The Figure 8: “Lie on top of your partner and penetrate each other with your fingers simultaneously.”
In the lesbian community, we don’t call this position the Figure 8, we call it the No Duh. But despite the fact that this position is as self-evident as the truths in the Declaration of Independence, it still provided us with a relaxing way to finish off a night of surprisingly satisfying intercourse.
***
My mind was decidedly not blown back in July when Cosmo promised us “mind-blowing” positions but, this time around, I have to admit that their description of “totally hot” is warranted. Not only were all of the new positions physically possible, they were also eminently pleasurable. After July, Cosmo was the last place I expected to find sex advice but now that they seem to have turned a corner, I’m finally ready to celebrate their sex tips as a historic milestone for the women’s magazine.
What’s more is that Cosmo seems to have responded graciously to almost every criticism that lesbians lobbed at the original tips. A higher proportion of the positions center on direct stimulation and penetration, instead of what Jenny Block calls “straight imaginations of what real women do in bed.” And the gorgeous illustrations by Jenny Yuen depict a wider range of races and gender expressions, with a short-haired lesbian making the cut this time. I love these new positions so much I’m ready to move in with them.
Brava, Cosmo. And, as I’ve never said to my partner during sex, keep it up.
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