In 2019, Evie Magazine was founded as a conservative version of Cosmo, one that catered to women with a more traditional and conservative message as opposed to all the liberal options that pushed sexual degeneracy and progressivism. The name itself is a biblical appeal to the first woman. They even founded a menstrual tracking app called 28.co which received funding from billionaire Peter Thiel. They have always been a niche novelty, but recently they made waves with their fashion show, in which Brett Cooper was photographed with male-to-male transgender Clavicular, where the magazine debuted the cover to their forthcoming Sex Edition.
Though it cannot be ignored that Evie is being provocative in their marketing of the sex edition, it did ignite debate online over whether it was both necessary and good for Evie to create this content. For starters, the cover that they debuted features a model wearing wedding dress-themed lingerie, and they have stated that the magazine is for married women. Where some have pointed out that wives should just have sex with their husbands, they have responded with deleted aspersions of “incel” to their critics.
To steelman their position, Founder Brittany Hugoboom stated the following:
Last week at [Evie Magazine’s] EROS party, we unveiled the cover of our next print edition in front of the press and hundreds of guests. It’s the first of many themed issues, and it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve ever produced.
For years, a recurring plea has shown up in our DMs, emails, and survey responses. Young married women asking us for real, honest, detailed guidance about sex. A reader once wrote to us and said, “Progressives own sex positivity but abandoned marriage and monogamy a long time ago. Conservatives own marriage but can’t bring themselves to be sex positive.”
That stuck with us because it’s true, and it perfectly describes the gap millions of women are living in. Many young women, especially from traditional or religious families, have come into womanhood without learning anything about sex. They saved themselves for marriage and then realized the culture that told them to wait had absolutely nothing to say about what comes after the altar. They grew up with negative associations to intimacy, but were expected to become uninhibited the moment they said “I do.”
Here she frames the issue of sex as political with the Left being degenerate yet sex positive while the Right is Sex Negative but Pro-Marriage. If anything, the Left is sexually libertine, but not when it comes to marital procreation. The Right is pro-sex within marriage. Really, these are caricatures of the Right and Left that many have believed, even though statistically, conservatives are the ones having children, meaning they are the ones having sex. But because the Right is not as “sex positive” as the Left, Evie is framing this as something to push back on when it is a race to the bottom to compete with the Left on Sex Positivity.
She also frames purity culture in a negative light, which goes against “Trad” or conservative values. This might have been true for a fringe minority or the clownish “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” trend, but many tales of disaffection with the purity culture movement coincide with religious deconstruction. So, these perspectives are not reliable narrators. In particular, women have a tendency to project their struggles onto other women, which is why women are more susceptible to propaganda. The Feminine Mystique had a communist activist project her marital dissatisfaction onto other women for feminist ends. Evie is playing into a narrative rather than refuting it.
We believe sex is one of the most important foundations of a thriving marriage. You cannot call something sacred and then refuse to take it seriously. We talked to doctors, experts, and women who’ve been married for decades. Â This issue is specific on purpose, because vague advice is the same as no advice. There are beautiful hand-drawn illustrations for the explicit content and gorgeous photography for the implicit content.
Some of you will read this and be surprised. In truth, this is the most evie thing we’ve ever done. We’ve always said we want to celebrate femininity and help marriages thrive by giving women real advice that actually makes their lives better.
Your sex life with your husband is arguably the most important part of your marriage. You asked for guidance, and we listened. You won’t find hookup culture propaganda in these pages. No “explore with multiple partners.” No decoupling sex from commitment. We’re giving you what is arguably the most complete, thoughtful, and beautiful guide on sex and intimacy ever put into print.
This issue isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. But for those of you who’ve been asking for this, you are going to be amazed. The Sex Issue is ready to order today!!
The precise content in Evie’s content is certainly not vague based on the outlet’s history. It can be agreed that they are not promoting promiscuity in this sex edition, yet that does not mean the content is necessary and good.
In another tweet, Hugoboom stated the following:
The old sexual revolution was a disaster.
But the ones who most loudly lamented it had no clear and exciting vision for an alternative. Instead, their best ideas were to push “purity culture” and shame women. They pushed chastity, they defended marriage, and told you to wait. They didn’t tell you what comes after. “Sex is sinful, it’s dirty. Stay pure.” And then the moment you’re married, “be a sex kitten for your husband!”
Do you know how many women got married not knowing they had vaginismus, a condition that is often psychologically induced, and physically prevents you from having sex?
The traditional corners of society refuse to talk about sex as something thrilling and pleasurable. Everything that made sex sound exciting and appealing was owned by the so called progressives.
The best the conservatives had to offer was the virtue of “restraint.”
Who wants that?
The answer to a failed sexual revolution is not less sex. It’s much better sex.
The problem is that temperance is a virtue, even when it comes to sex. This is the reason that monogamy is historically proven to be the most conducive to civilizational development. Sex being siloed into the institution of marriage is itself a restraint. Contrary to Hugoboom, the lack of restraint is a problem, and society is realizing the excesses of sexual liberation: ubiquitous pornography, homosexuality and transgenderism, democratized prostitution (Only Fans), readily accessible abortion and birth control, hook-up culture, STDs and AIDS, and sexual technologies (toys, robots, AI etc.).
If anything, conservatives should be promoting virtue, even if it is unpopular. Unrestrained sexuality leads to societal decadence. When sexual energies are channeled, this is how civilizations are built and defended. Moreover, flooding society with pornography is a means to sedate a population from posing a threat to those in power.
One can object to imperfections in the messaging behind “restraint,” but it is still the Christian ideal. Sex is restricted to marriage. There is a procreative design to sex that is intrinsic, and if anything, is discarded due to sexual liberation. One can advocate a positive message pertaining to sex within marriage without castigating the imperfections of Purity Culture. At the same time, Evie’s founder appears averse to shaming whoredom, which is a necessary solution to reversing the sexual revolution.
They might think Conservatives need an exciting alternative, but all they are really doing is being Cosmo driving the speed limit.
Evie’s Sexual Content
Evie has already published various articles pertaining to sexual intimacy that give rather detailed instructions and advice for marital sex. While it is framed as within the confines of marriage, these instructions are rather graphic and detailed, something that will probably be featured in their Sex Edition.
A year ago, they published “Mastering Cowgirl: How to Ride Your Husband Into Delirium,” which is a vividly detailed guide on a particular sexual position. The article goes into step-by-step instructions that teach women to “practice” the Cowgirl. While certain understandings of muscular control might be helpful to understand, straddling “a sturdy chair or a workout bench like you would straddle your man” and proceeding to “bounce” and “grind” is certainly excessive and quasi-masturbatory. There is even a step-by-step guideline on “the perfect mount.”
The “Make Him Watch” bullet point assumes that the husband will be into something he might not be into. One of the criticisms of the Sex Edition that was brought up by Timothy Gordon, a Catholic podcaster behind Rules for Retrogrades who does philosophy and theology, was that they are suggesting that women get advice on how to please their man from parties other than the husband himself. Maybe the husband does not want fake moaning, but an unsuspecting reader might attempt this, believing that all men are as described by Evie.
There are other variations of this sexual position relayed in the article. Nevertheless, where Cosmo might give detailed descriptions on using vibrators or threesomes, this is the same style but packaged to a different audience. Do women really need step-by-step guides when they could just be told to communicate with their husbands?
Female pornography is more written than visual. This is why female smut novels, colloquially called cliterature, are a thriving industry with many offerings, some of which are AI-written, that often contain outlandish, even bestial, sexual fantasies masquerading in traditional literature genres.
Let the reader decide whether Evie is pornographic content or not.
Availability: The Greatest Ability
Another article from December, entitled “The Gift Your Husband Will Never Forget,” gives some rather saucy advice on how to spruce up the intimacy with a rather titillating thumbnail of a woman with two cherries in her mouth. It is one thing to publish a piece on a wife gifting her husband a good time for Christmas instead of something material and mundane. Some of the advice…
What it is:Â Sex somewhere you’ve never done it before. Not your bedroom or your couch or your shower. Somewhere that requires a little planning and a bit of nerve.
Ideas:
·        Book a beautiful hotel room in your own city for the afternoon
·        Find a secluded hiking trail with a view
·        Late-night skinny dipping in a heated pool (think hotel or Airbnb with private access)
·        His car in an empty parking garage after dinner downtown
One might call parking garage sex lewd, even if nobody else is around. Not all of their advice is even bad, as they suggest mixed drinks to create intimacy and coital acts after an adrenaline-inducing activity, like the gun range. Some of the ideas are more over-the-top, involving role-playing, card decks, and spoiling the husband all day long.
The Domestic Surprise
What it is:Â Deep clean the house (or one room, let’s be realistic) while wearing lingerie or something revealing, then casually let him discover you mid-task.
Why it works:Â It’s the ultimate fusion of domesticity and sex appeal. Men are drawn to femininity in both its nurturing and seductive forms. Combining them is almost unfair.
There are other examples of the wife seducing the husband or otherwise conveying her desire to him in semi-subtle ways in the article where the wife sets the expectation throughout the day of desiring sex. One does not need to give bedroom guides when all it takes is telling women to convey their femininity with desire for their husbands.
The biggest problem with the article is the reality that women desire sex less than their husbands on average. Cultivating that desire as natural and good is more needed than bedroom tricks. Even a failed attempt at implementing these ideas is above average effort. Whether it is sports or sex, availability is the greatest ability.
Conclusion
Evie Magazine is branding itself as a conservative Cosmo when the reality is that women do not need Cosmo to begin with. The hype and controversy around the sex edition might be overblown, but their history of graphic sexual instruction guides gives some foreplay on what their forthcoming edition will entail. There is some merit to the need to cultivate a positive sexual ethic on the right, but Evie devolves into quasi-pornographic instruction manuals only less debased than Cosmo or Vogue. The solution to combating the sexual revolution is not to sublimate its worst tendencies with a conservative veneer, but to point to the virtuous alternatives. If anything, the sex is the easy part of the equation: be available, give an effort, and lose some weight. Women do not need graphic bedroom notes, but instruction on how to cultivate a mutual desire with their husbands.
