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Before my hair appointment, I stop to buy three things: a diet pepsi, a pack of gum, and a trashy magazine.

There's no rule stating that you couldn't read, say, The New Yorker, or a well-worn copy of the works of Arthur Miller. It's just that a head full of foils and Cosmo go together like 5-inch heels and crotchless panties. Plus, I don't think it's coincidence that an issue of Cosmo can be read in about 3 hours, which is the average time it takes to cut, colour, highlight, and style a medium length of hair. The world works in mysterious ways.

So I'm sitting there under the big hair dryer wondering if it reads my thoughts as it warms my scalp and I'm trying not to blush over the token "guy with no shirt" and I come across a shocking how-to article: how to surreptitiously measure his package.

Really.

Because you'd hate to waste a 5-minute conversation on a guy who wasn't packing at least 6 inches. And now, through the magic of Cosmo, you don't have to!

Imagine talking to a guy, finding out that he's a great person, really smart, funny, kind, then accepting a date from him, letting him pay, basking in his compliments, walking through doors he holds open, dancing in is arms, realizing you have loads in common and that he's practically perfect....except for his average penis.

What a waste!

Now you can bypass all that nonsense, save yourself from getting to know those "great" catches, and skip right to what's important: how big he is in the pants.

Cosmo offers not one but TWO fail-proof methods of sizing up a potential mate:

1. The good old stare-straight-at-his-crotch method. Now, good girls that we are, we wouldn't want to actually get caught checking out his little buddy, so Cosmo coaches us in really great undercover tactics, such as gazing in the general direction of his groin as if you're thinking deeply about something, and tapping your forehead to make it look extra realistic, or using a prop, like a book, and holding it just under the line of sight to his goods so that it looks like you're an intellectual when actually you're a perv.

But wait. It gets better.

2. The tried and tested actually-reach-out-and-touch-it method. It seems to be unsaid but understood that in a perfect world, boys would just line up, perhaps behind a table, and whip them out for close inspection, but since they're a little less forthright than this, we have to help ourselves. Now, to just outright feel someone up is called "molestation" or something like that, but helpfully picking lint off his fly? Well, that's just good citizenry! There's about to be an epidemic of invisible dick-lint, so boys, beware: guard your junk!

This is the crap with which I filled my head that day, and normally I forget about it the minute my hair is looking like it's ready for its Vidal Sassoon moment, but this time I wasn't so lucky.

The very next day, riding the train home after work, I was seated while others were still crowding around, putting a random man's penis right in my eyeline. I tried to look away, I really did. I tried to be interested in the only other scenery available to me at the time: a woman was (ironically, I assume) wearing a track suit stretched precariously over her considerable behind that offered a very obvious VPL (visible panty line) of epic proportions. But I just couldn't help myself. This man actually had lint on his crotch!

Fate was tempting me and it was only a testament to my iron will that I did not succumb...and to the fact that in my experience, men who start out a bit on the smaller side often grow to be bigger than average once erect, which is what's important, after all. So the results of Cosmo's groping tactics were a bit dubious to me.

Plus, call me old-fashioned, but I'm the kind of girl who still thinks that finding out a guy's girth is more of a second-date activity.