Even if you’re not having sex, you’re probably thinking about it.
Lickerish magazine founder and editor-and-chief, Medill junior Evelyn Wang, recognizes this carnal preoccupation. In the promotional poster for the new magazine, she entices possible contributors and readers by asking, “Love sex? Loathe sex? Can’t get any sex? But obsess over it constantly?”
A quarterly magazine debuting in the second half of Spring Quarter, Lickerish will feature “artistic, literary sex writing and reporting (and art and photography) [that] titillates and eviscerates at the same time,” Wang said. She said she agrees that Northwestern students often think about sex, but that she doesn’t think our conversations about it are open or diverse enough. Northwestern's lack of sex positivity inspired her to start Lickerish, she said.
“I saw a flaccid, dried-out campus, and, to really hit you over the head with this metaphor, there was no Viagra and there was no lube,” Wang said. "Lickerish is not just the Viagra and the lube, it’s the mink-tipped platinum butt plug, it’s the ostrich feather tickler, it’s the pearl-draped nipple clamps."
Medill freshman Melania Hidalgo, Wang’s partner-in-deviance and managing editor, agrees that the Northwestern sexual climate is lacking in both conversation and vitality.
“Sex is everywhere,” Hidalgo said, elaborating on the budding publication’s uniqueness and purpose on campus. “But its materialization is very narrow-ended and is mostly leaked from what I’ve always thought of as ‘corporate sex,’ mass advertisings drowning the public with implicit sexual content.”
According to Hidalgo, Lickerish wants to “defamiliarize the individual with the greedy, shameful and taboo perspectives that have long prevailed. It'll finally provide the typical NU kid with a tool to artistically and freely articulate their sexual prowess, confusion, hatred or indifference in a shameless environment.”
"Lickerish is not just the Viagra and the lube, it’s the mink-tipped platinum butt plug, it’s the ostrich feather tickler, it’s the pearl-draped nipple clamps."
- Evelyn Wang, editor-in-chief of Lickerish
Wang said she hopes that Lickerish will provide regular online content in the future once it has become better established on campus. “[The print magazine] will have to be shrink-wrapped in opaque plastic according to our legal/ethical adviser, which should tell you all you need to know,” Wang said.
For those of you who want a preview before you eagerly tear open that plastic, one example of work featured in the first issue is a Good Cop/Bad Cop advice column by former NUKES (Northwestern University Kink Education Society) co-director Weinberg sophomore Jessica Castellanos, and a friend.
The column will feature different advice for Northwestern students’ sexual problems, such as a girl who wrote in about how her long distance boyfriend wasn’t answering her texts. In her application sample, Castellanos gave the girl advice as a "Bad Cop," drawing inspiration from a certain Drake song, "to wear less, go out more, make out with his friends.” Meanwhile, the “Good Cop” advised her to “communicate with her boyfriend and find what she deserved.”
Wang said Lickerish has received a good amount of submissions so far and hopes to entertain your wildest fantasies in the near future. As stated in its bio, the magazine promises to publish “all things pertaining to sex, provided it’s high quality." The magazine even allows students to publish pieces anonymously.
However, there is one important restriction: "no bigotry (so no racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.).”
For more information, the contact email is lickerishmag@gmail.com.
Editor's note 4/28: This article was updated to clarify Wang's reason for founding the magazine, as well as the magazine's acceptance of anonymous submissions.