Gender-based advice magazines, like Men’s Fitness and Cosmopolitan, make their money off of people’s social insecurities. People buy these magazines because they feel they need the advice being offered. These purchases demonstrate, among other things, that people are insecure about the quality of their sexual skills.

There are many reasons people want to be good at sex. On a biological level, a man’s sexual prowess tends to be a sign of his virility, while a woman’s sexual prowess a sign of her fertility. Subconsciously, signs of high virility or fertility may make one more attractive to the opposite sex. On a social level, a good reputation never hurts.

In a move of reprehensible opportunism, magazines harness that sexual insecurity and exacerbate it to make people feel like they are having lousy sex and that they will continue to disappoint their partners if they don’t take the advice. Such condescension blows this insecurity far out of proportion.

Men’s magazines tend to imply that the man reading them doesn’t know how to please a woman. Headlines like “”Orgasm Insurance: 5 For-Sure Positions She’ll Thank You for Tonight!”” and “”More Sex, Better Sex: How She Wants to Be Touched”” send the message that the man hasn’t really been satisfying his woman.

Similarly, women’s magazines imply that their readers don’t know how to please men. Headlines such as “”Discover the Sex Fantasy 68 Percent of Men Have!”” and “”The Secret Male G-Spot!”” imply that there are many secrets to satisfying a man to which readers have been oblivious. Some headlines are even downright callous, such as “”Sex Secrets from Couples Who Are Good in Bed.”” Unlike you, apparently.

A good cure for insecurity about one’s sexual prowess, it would seem, is to spend less time reading magazines and more time in practice, practice, practice.