Former UCLA sex columnist Lara Loewenstein blogs:
Early this past spring I received an email from an editor at Playboy magazine inviting me to participate in a sex columnist round-table discussion about, well, you can guess what about. And since I’m an optimistic person and enjoy taking things as they come to me I agreed to participate. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I was definitely hoping for a free trip to Chicago, some good (free) food, a celebrity host (Dan Savage, please) and a little undivided attention. That bubble soon burst, however, as I didn’t hear back from the editor for about two months after I agreed to participate.
In the end there was a discussion, although not around a round table. The discussion was conducted via email, which of course meant no free trip to Chicago, no free food, and definitely no celebrity host. Us sex columnists were left to discuss things as we wished with the occasional interruption by Rocky, the Playboy editor, with questions such as "Do you think Playboy is porn?"
I didn’t participate much in the discussion. This is partially because I was busy graduating from college, being irritated with Playboy (for reasons that will be discussed in a moment), and being "over" the topics at hand. Not that the issues the other columnists brought up weren’t things I cared about, but I’d just finished my stint as a sex columnist and was ready to move on to other things.
As for being irritated with Playboy, during the ongoing "round-table" discussion Playboy sent us each a questionnaire that we were meant to fill out and return to sender. It included questions such as "How many times did you get laid during Spring Break?" and "How does that compare to the average college students’ spring break experience?" And so on.
