by Mia Freedman
The September 2004 issue of Cosmo was unremarkable, as far as I was concerned. I was lukewarm about the cover image of Kirsten Dunst that had come from US Cosmo. She was wearing a truly atrocious purple beaded mini-dress with midriff cut-outs, but it was the best I had that month.
Inside there were some nice stories but nothing stop-the-cab*. Still, we’d managed to massage the coverlines into something reasonably compelling. Among them were:
a funny, naughty one:
Bent
Huge
Pierced
Uncut
How to deal with a surprise penis
a relationship one:
8 LOVE TRUTHS
YOU NEED TO KNOW
(Babe, if he hasn’t called by day 7, he never will)
a body-love one:
HAPPY WEIGHT
Ditch the diets & depression
+ Cosmo girls tell how they beat obesity, bulimia & anorexia
and a sex one:
Oral sex lessons
Blow-by-blow tips for you & for him
The ‘oral sex lessons’ coverline was the largest and occupied the prime real estate, on the top left-hand side of the cover, just under the Cosmopolitan logo. This is where you always put your strongest coverline because it’s where the reader’s eye naturally goes first.
This story was an oldie but a goodie. Classic Cosmo content. Evidently there are a lot of women who aren’t confident with their technique or who want to improve it, because whenever Cosmo ran a how-to oral-sex story, sales spiked. So following the golden rule of publishing—‘If you find something that works, flog it to death until it doesn’t’—we did one every year. At least.
Around this time other magazines were sticking lipsticks and mascaras and bags and thongs and sarongs on the cover. As bribes, plain and simple. And because I didn’t want to do that, I had to make sure our editorial offering was compelling enough to compete with the freebies being flung about by our competitors.
Since I’d published far more sexually explicit content in the past, it never occurred to me that anyone would have a problem with yet another oral-sex story. If anything, I worried that the subject had lost its, ahem, potency and might fall flat.
Ha. Once again, just as with Sara-Marie, I didn’t see the controversy coming until it punched me in the face.
About a week after we went on sale, I received a call from the circulation department. The news was dire. Woolworths had pulled the current issue of Cosmo from sale after complaints about the oral-sex coverline. This had never happened before
I quickly went through my usual emotional spectrum in a work crisis: shock, bewilderment, alarm, anger, frustration.
At first, I was shocked that Woolworths had taken such an extreme measure—we usually had some warning if they were displeased.
Then, I was bewildered that this particular coverline was deemed so offensive. And I’d seen other mags do much worse. Why had everyone suddenly gone all prudish?
Next, I was alarmed by how fast things escalated. The media quickly picked up on the story and Coles followed Woolworths’ lead, yanking Cosmo from the checkout magazine-stands in all its stores too. Gulp. I felt sick. This would be disastrous for sales and management would not be pleased.
As the situation escalated, I became angry that the complaints of a few people could have such a dramatic effect, and that the supermarkets could essentially censor content they didn’t think appropriate—even though oral-sex stories had been touted on the covers of magazines for more than a decade without a problem.
Ultimately, I felt frustrated that we couldn’t even fight back. The two supermarket giants represented almost half of our sales every month and, after newsagents, were our biggest distribution channel. They were hugely powerful and had the ability to affect not just sales of Cosmo, but of all the other ACP titles. We couldn’t afford to piss them off permanently. Or even temporarily. Cue: massive back-pedal.
Since we were only a few days into the four-week on-sale period, it was vital we get back on the stands as soon as possible, so the circulation department, in consultation with the supermarkets, printed tens of thousands of stickers to go over the offending coverline. They said something twee and cheesy like ‘Bedroom Secrets Inside’ and it cost us a fortune, not just to print the stickers but for them to be applied to every issue by hand.
We also had to foot the bill for the removal of the magazines and their replacement. The whole debacle cost more than $100,000.
While I worked through the logistics privately with various ACP departments, publicly I had to do media interviews and tread a delicate line between defending Cosmo and placating the supermarkets. A lovey-dovey relationship had to be maintained regardless of how pissed off I was.
This is how I found myself one Wednesday doing an interview on the ABC’s youth radio station Triple J, about the ‘supermarket oral-sex scandal’ with the afternoon presenters who, understandably, found the situation hilarious.
In a forty-eight-hour period, I must have done a couple of dozen interviews with media outlets that delighted in being able to report such a salacious story in the guise of news. Some of the AM radio interviewers seemed hostile, with some presenters accusing me of peddling porn to unsuspecting kiddies in the supermarket under their parents’ noses.
In hindsight, I think the word ‘lessons’ in the coverline somehow gave the impression that we were targeting the information to schoolchildren. Clearly we weren’t, but the ambiguity of the wording didn’t help my cause. No matter how aggressive the tone of the interviews, I had to calmly address concerns and validate the actions of the supermarkets while trying to justify having such a story in my magazine. ‘I understand where the concern is coming from,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘But the content is sealed and unless you buy the magazine you can’t read it, so no children were at risk at the supermarket checkout.’
Although I was incensed by the censorship and was a passionate advocate for sex advice in magazines like Cosmo, I could also understand my critics. And for the first time in my career, I wasn’t relishing my public role as Cosmo editor, defender of sex stories. In fact, I was starting to feel downright uncomfortable.
Luca was almost seven, and I was beginning to understand the concerns of parents who didn’t want their children to be seeing sexually explicit words on a magazine cover while they stood in line to buy milk. Yes, the content may have been sealed but the words on the cover weren’t and there are few places more mortifying to have to answer your child’s innocent questions about sex than in a supermarket queue.
As I tried to play it straight in my conversation with the Triple J announcers, who were making all kinds of smutty jokes at my expense, I suddenly felt the conflict between my role as Cosmo editor and my role as mother more strongly than ever before. I couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling that I didn’t want to be there; I didn’t want to be doing this any more.
And then I got the text from my friend Alice, the mother of Luca’s best friend. She thought it was funny but inwardly I cringed. And with that, I knew for sure I was no longer the right person to be editing Cosmo. To stay relevant and successful, the magazine needed an editor whose life was anchored firmly in the lifestyle of its readers: mostly single, girls in their late teens and early twenties. Cosmo needed someone who could be fearless in her promotion of everything the magazine stood for, including—especially—the sex.
Even though I’d never really been that girl during my editorship, I was able to effectively channel her, quarantining my private life and feelings from my professional ones. But I couldn’t fake it so well any more. More importantly, I didn’t want to. It was time to grow up.
* * *
*‘Stop-the-cab’ is short for ‘stop-the-cab-I-need-to-jump-out-and-buy-that-clever-magazine-immediately’. It’s a term that was coined by Wendy to refer to an irresistible coverline that will boost sales.
START YOUR ENGINES
SMS to Jo from me:
‘Um, do you have any idea where exactly I’m meant to put my ovulation thermometer?’
Finally Jason and I were ready to start trying for another baby. It had been a few years since the miscarriage, and our life was back on track. I was wary, nervous and excited. Mostly though, I was terrified it wouldn’t work. I’d lost all confidence in my body’s ability to sustain a pregnancy and keep a baby alive. And I knew the emotional ride would be a rocky one. Still, we decided to take a deep breath and give it a whirl.
The first step was to go off the pill. I’d gone on a pill called ‘Diane’ a couple of years earlier to clear up my skin. The hormonal avalanche after the miscarriage and the stress of the aftermath had manifested itself physically in two ways. I lost a lot of weight and my face turned into a pizza.
The crappy state of my skin back then—the worst it had been since puberty—was another nail in the coffin of my self-esteem when I was already miserable. I finally fled to my dermatologist in despair.
‘I’m a gargoyle,’ I wailed.
She was too polite to agree outright, but she did write me a script for Diane. I sprinted out the door to fill it, guzzling my first pill while the chemist was still putting my money in her cash register.
I hadn’t been on the pill for years because it turned me into a nutbag. Literally within days of taking it, my personality would change. Since my late teens, I’ve tried a bunch of different pills and they’ve all been hugely effective in preventing pregnancy because they all turned me into a stark raving loon who was so hideous, no guy wanted to be near me.
But after I lost the baby and then my mind for a while there, I became so desperate to control something in my life that my skin seemed the most simple problem to fix. And I was so emotionally all over the place anyway, I figured I’d barely notice any lunatic side effects.
Diane and I became fast friends. I loved her with every pore on my face. There didn’t seem to be any adverse mental effects but who could say for sure. In the murky soup of my headspace, Diane barely registered as an ingredient.
I took her faithfully every day for the next few years and my skin was better than it had ever been. I almost looked airbrushed.
However, since it’s a little tricky to fall pregnant on the pill, breaking up with Diane was an inevitable first step on my road to conception.
About a week after I’d binned my pills and replaced them with folic-acid supplements, complete hell broke loose from my neck up. All the oil production Diane had switched off for two years suddenly got the message to return to work. It was like the taps got turned on full blast in order to clear two years of backlog.
My face was an oil slick and so was my hair. Pimples followed immediately. And the whole oily mess lasted for months. I had to wash my hair every day, but even that wouldn’t lift it off my head. I was desperate to get pregnant but I wasn’t thrilled about becoming a human oil refinery.
Even apart from the superficial stuff, I was not feeling great. There are few things unsexier than a woman who is completely desperate to get pregnant.
Early on, we went back to see Dr Bob. Even walking into that building was incredibly difficult for me. All the memories of having sat in his waiting room within minutes of having learned our baby had died reached into my throat immediately and made it hard to breathe. I could feel the tears behind my eyes and fought to keep them there. I’m not a public crier. I prefer to bottle it up even if it makes me feel like I’m being strangled by sadness and my own inhibitions.
Jason took my hand, squeezing it for support and we were soon ushered into Dr Bob’s office. I hadn’t seen him for a few years and he looked mildly surprised but visibly happy to see us.
‘Well, hello you two,’ he greeted us warmly and his voice made me feel like I was losing a grip on my tears. Deep breath.
‘Well, hi. We’re back.’ I tried to laugh. My voice caught in my throat. Keep breathing.
In front of him was my file. It was very thick.
‘We’re um, well, we’re ready to have another go at getting pregnant,’ I started haltingly, trying not to cry as Jason kept squeezing my hand supportively. ‘But…I’m really scared.’
Dr Bob nodded. ‘Let’s have a look at where we left off,’ he suggested gently, looking through the pile of papers. There were reams of pathology results but they didn’t reveal much. The facts were simply that my last pregnancy had ended unexpectedly and without symptom, at fifteen or sixteen weeks. Death In Utero. No explanation was ever found.
‘You’ve had one successful pregnancy with Luca so that’s a fantastic indicator that you’ll be able to do it again,’ he pointed out encouragingly. ‘The best indicator we could hope for.’
I sniffled. ‘Okay,’ I said in a very small voice.
Then Dr Bob gave us some basic instructions in baby-making.
‘To find out when you’re ovulating, you can take your temperature every day and chart it here on this ovulation graph. Your most fertile days are the ones directly on either side of your temperature going up. Ideally, that’s when you should have sex.’
My head was spinning with the effort of trying to stay in the present moment and not cry. It felt like I was drowning in my memories of being here when we’d lost the baby. I couldn’t snap out of it. I nodded absently at Dr Bob and took the chart while Jason asked some questions.
In the car, I clutched the empty chart and looked out the window, blinking back silent tears and clenching my teeth. Years later, I still had my guard up and I found it almost impossible to let it down, even with Jason. I couldn’t talk about it and I couldn’t cry. My grief was so tightly sealed I could only access it in private.
But at this stage, apart from my emotional baggage, I had no reason to seriously think getting pregnant would be that hard. Formative teenage years filled with scary warnings about how easy it is to get knocked up and ruin your life are a stubborn legacy to shake.
Even when I was a virgin, I was paranoid about getting pregnant. My boyfriend and I would fool around but I was always petrified. ‘Sperm can swim!’ I’d insist. ‘They told us that in sex education!’
‘Not through my jeans,’ he’d sigh.
Of course I let my guard down—heck, I sent the guard home—almost as soon as I met Jason. He was the first guy I’d ever seriously imagined having children with. With other boyfriends, sure, I’d momentarily thought about babies. But the fantasy was always about me being a mother, not about them being the father of my baby. And there’s a biiiiig difference.
Falling pregnant twice with Jason had done nothing to disprove my conviction that getting pregnant was easy. Surely this time, since we also had the right intentions, it would be as simple as throwing my pills in the bin and my legs in the air. Wouldn’t it?
TWICE THE SEALED SECTIONS
Voicemail to Jen from me:
‘Okay, so I had my meeting with Pat and I have good news and bad news. Need to debrief. Call me.‘
‘I don’t want to edit Cosmo any more,’ I told my boss over lunch one day, explaining how I’d come to my decision. ‘I have sealed-section fatigue.’
Pat understood. She’d been there herself.
And it wasn’t just the sealed sections I was sick of. Including my time at Cleo, I’d been working in the same ‘young women’s lifestyle’ genre for twelve years. My entire career. In the hundred issues I’d edited, I’d pushed Cosmo as far as I could. I’d staved off boredom by launching some extension titles—Cosmo Hair and Beauty, Cosmo Weddings and Cosmo Pregnancy—but they were all established and profitable now. I needed a fresh challenge.
We talked for a long time about what I might like to do next. ‘Get pregnant’ was the truth, although I didn’t say it out loud. Partly because I didn’t want to jinx the idea but also because no matter how outwardly supportive I knew Pat would be, having staff go on maternity leave was a managerial headache. And not a particularly helpful context in which to discuss my future career prospects.
I tried hard to be inspired
about my next move but I kept coming up blank. Having been hell-bent for so many years on editing Cleo and then shifting that dream slightly to edit Cosmo, I’d never really thought beyond it.
There was no other title in the company—or any other company—I was busting to edit. The weekly market held no appeal because of the workload. The hours were insane. And while I enjoyed reading gossip magazines, I didn’t want to turn a guilty pleasure into a daily job description.
At the other end of the spectrum, I was equally uninterested in editing a fashion magazine like Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. Sure, I like a frock as much as the next girl but I’ve never believed fashion is life or death and you have to feel that way to edit a fashion title effectively. My preference has always been to work on the perimeter of the fashion industry so I could holiday there without having to take up citizenship.
What else was there? The Australian Women’s Weekly has always been the jewel in the crown at ACP and is the most iconic magazine in Australia. At thirty-one, I still felt too young for that. So even if I’d had my pick of every magazine in Australia (which I didn’t), there was no title I was busting to get my hands on.
The answer turned out to be more of the same. Much more. It was suggested I take on a newly created umbrella role as Editor-in-Chief of Cosmo, Cleo and Dolly. I agreed. Why not? Cleo’s editor was about to leave to launch Madison. With me stepping down from Cosmo, there would be two new editors requiring guidance. I was already Editor-in-Chief of Dolly so it wasn’t a big stretch, although it was a big responsibility looking after about two million readers each month.
Staying involved with Cosmo meant a smooth transition for the magazine and for me. I wouldn’t be walking away from my magazine baby altogether. But it was a different kind of baby I wanted. Desperately. My head and my hormones were consumed with trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t going at all well.