"The first time I saw an International Male catalog was at the all-girls Virginia boarding school I attended in the 1980s. The cool girls—the ones who owned their own horses and got BMWs for their 16th birthdays, with car-size bows on top—got the catalog in their mailboxes, along with subscriptions to GQ. The uncool girls, if we were lucky, got to peer over their shoulders at pictures of male models in thong bikinis. I found the presentation of male genitalia, packaged and posed and seemingly aroused, totally terrifying. Were they really that long and tuber-like? And were men supposed to stare at you in such a brooding, animal way, their eyes glowering at siesta level, their mouths puckered in baby-doll O's?" Read on if you like, but this is where we stopped.