I've known the Suz for 7 years. She has always been very vocal about equality between the sexes, from her comments in class about how girls are treated in school and Shakespeare's heroines to the more recent frustration as she bangs her head against the glass ceiling at the Shotz Brewery. So imagine my surprise when she brought home not one but two issues of Cosmo.

"I get it every month now."

Now, I don't judge.
And I don't read Cosmo.
Except sometimes late at night when nobody's looking.
And always on an airplane, because I'm afraid to fly, but somehow feel that I will be soothed if the plane goes down and the last thing I'll remember is that I am leaving a world with Cosmo in it.

I think we're looking for ways to figure out how to navigate through the maze of IsBoyfriends and NotBoyfriends and this thing called Modern Life. I think a lot of women don't know what to do if they're not out there trying to get married. So, if not marriage, at least The Relationship remains the brass ring for most.

And if that's your thing, then that's fine.

But I don't know if Cosmo and its ilk are the best road maps any of us could be using, regardless of our ultimate goals.

The damn things have more contradictions in one issue than, say, the entire Bible.

Here's a good example. On one page there's an article advising women to play hard to get. A few pages later is another article telling them about how to be really good in bed.

I know that doesn't really narrow it down and I'm not making commentary that hasn't been said in better ways by many many women before me. It just seems hard enough to know what to do in the boy-girl arena without all these mixed messages telling us that whatever we're doing, it's not the right approach. I spend weeks in an agony spiral after a breakup with someone I wasn't seriously dating anyway trying to figure out what I did wrong. According to these magazines, everything I did was wrong. I didn't play the right game, or I shouldn't have played games at all and men like mystery and men like women who are straightforward and I think it's just enough already.

And don't think I don't know that they're getting the same mixed messages over there. I know that. I don't blame them for thinking we're confusing. I read a magazine like that and think that every assumption that every man ever had about me, while probably wrong, wasn't entirely unjustified. They're getting fed the same ideas through marketing and entertainment and it's a wonder anyone ever ends up with anyone else at all.

I want the marketers out of my bedroom. I want to sit down with someone and not have to double check my every action, say what's on my mind and hear what's on his mind. It's just dating.

Not like it's something crucial, like the World Series or the Final Four.