On January 31, TinyNibbles friend and author of The 4-Hour Body Tim Ferriss Tweeted, “Big news – Costco yanks The 4-Hour Body off shelves due to sex chapters! That’s precisely why the US needs those chapters.”
For those outside the US, Costco is a big discount chain store that is a huge warehouse that buys large lots of everything from electronics to food, clothes to books and even BBQs and offers it all to members at a discount. My first thought was – hey, The 4-Hour Body was on sale there? I have friends I really want to buy it for! I’m serious. Then I was miffed. While the book’s concepts have caused controversy (and the tone has rubbed some people the wrong way until they actually read it), I’ve been spending a lot of time with it. (Disclosure: I’m Ferriss’ featured sex expert in the book.)
The book is actually awesome. It’s not a sex book at all, it’s a body book: mostly about dieting and experimenting to get your body to do what you want it to, in the most efficient ways possible. I learned a ton from it – and got ideas. It is really solid, highly recommended, and I’m putting a lot of the other advice like diet stuff to good personal use. A lot of geeks I know are trying the diet suggestions, and it’s neat to see geeks getting healthy because it’s like a safe science experiment. It’s also very straightforward, which is perfect for my overstimulated mind – though I personally know how meticulously researched and fact-checked this book was, from the other side.
Anyway, the sex chapters are excellent: they approach the “harder, longer, bigger” mentality and explain how things really work. I’m pleased to have contributed solid advice on sex and drugs, first orgasms for women (and how to have orgasms when they’re difficult – or feel impossible – to have) and much more.
But it’s not a sex book, nor is it dirty. At all. No photos, and no edgy sex content at all.
Costco sold a ton of his first book, and 4-Hour Body is #1 on Amazon… It’s so safe he talked about it on The View. Road = middle. So why did Costco *really* pull the book?
Well, since Costco carries Viagra, I can only guess that The 4-Hour Body put too much emphasis on female orgasms.
You see, in the book you can read how to give/experience 15-minutes of female orgasm (seriously). This has gotten the book quite a lot of attention – of course. Positive and negative: sadly, from sex-negative critics. People have gotten so freaked out about the female orgasming part, they have shunned and attacked the book: one cracked-out critic of the book (“Beyond Growth”) attacked the book by actually claiming that giving women 15-minute orgasms was bad because it would lead to “infidelity.”
::sigh
I’m in several pages of Ferriss’ book, but you can get a tiny glimpse more of here.
We weren’t that impressed with the sex information, but then we’ve been reading you for years {big smile}, and, honestly, this stuff has been happening in the bay area forever – even Mr. Ferris is tracing some of this back to 1976. But we’ve got to give him credit – here is a guy asking women for information about sex – and here he is recommending Violet and Betty Dodson.
Yes!
I find it really interesting that an American store took a morally righteous stance on the 4-Hour Body. I don’t know if Costco has a magazine section, but I would doubt they would pull magazines such as Men’s Health, GQ, and Cosmo because they have sections on sexuality.
Nevertheless, the dissemination of information – especially on topics such as health and sex – seems to be easily suppressed in America and elsewhere on moral grounds. I find this really chilling.
Gosh, that cracked out critic is so stupid. What they don’t realize is that if you can indeed give your woman 15 minute orgasms on a fairly regular basis, she will never want to stray!
I didn’t need to hear that about Costco. We have them here in Tokyo, and it’s a really great place to get western food and other things that are difficult to find in Japan (even if you do have to buy your refried beans in a twelve pack, then find someplace in your tiny apartment to store them.)
Now? Now I’m going to be much more alert to any bad political news I get about them; and yes, if I feel they’ve gone too far to the Walmart side of the force, I will stop shopping there. God, but I hate being a conscientious consumer some days.
And do you know how much it costs to ship refried beans from America?
usually those things happen because someone or many people (in coordinated campaign, eg) complain. want to get a ton of complaints to them to put it back in. maybe they won’t but they’ll notice & think about it more next time. sexpos people have to always respond when the prohibs try to ban something. they are what they say we are: insatiable, but what they are insatiable about is to interfere with other people. that’s what they like to do.
Wow, that’s bizarre. Costco’s pretty good in terms of politics. They keep their non-union employees on an agreement that’s the same (afaik) as the union agreement, people seem to work there for a long time, etc. Sad.
But now I want to read the book…
I think Costco did the author a favour by stirring up “controversy” about the book.
Or: Costco’s loss is Amazon’s gain.