From Bradley Cooper’s chiseled physique to Bill Clinton’s infamous intern activities, Georgetown alumni certainly have a reputation for sex. Enter Julia Allison (COL ’04). Sexy and smart, this blogger, former Time Out New York columnist, and all-around media personality is now starring in Bravo’s new reality show, Miss Advised.

After several years working as a blogger and political pundit, Allison finally wiggled her way into the public eye after dating Jack McCain, 2008 Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain’s son. Despite the brouhaha of the failed political relationship and her growing star as a relationship pundit, Allison’s stardom and expertise on all things intimate arose from beginnings as Georgetown’s first dating and relationship (a.k.a. sex) columnist for The Hoya.

In an interview with Vox back in 2009, Allison spoke candidly about the cultural barriers she faced breaching the topic of sex at a school as conservative as Georgetown. Building on her experiences working with the Cosmopolitan and The Hoya, Allison is going the way of the Kindle and moving away from print, voyaging into uncharted  territory with a new reality TV series.

In Miss Advised a self-proclaimed bay-area sexpert (Emily Morse), an entrepreneurial NYC matchmaker (Amy Laurent), and a dating/relationship writer and LA transplant (Julia Allison) have the roles reversed, as America gets the chance to scrutinize the dating lives of three smart, successful women hopelessly searching for love themselves. Inherently sabotaging the experts’ “credentials,” Miss Advised is an honest admission and a reassurance that even after spending years of your life studying relationships, these women still don’t have a clue.

Read the rest of this entry »

WWCD: What Would Carrie Do?

When I wrote about Georgetown’s sex and relationships columns in the paper a few weeks ago, I wasn’t too impressed by The Hoya‘s current sex scribe, Colleen Leahey (COL ’11).  Apparently I’m in good company: yesterday The Washington City Paper‘s The Sexist blog surveyed the sex columns currently running in local student papers and ranked them on how progressive they are—and The Hoya‘s came in last.

According to The Sexist, the city’s most progressive sex column can be found in the American University Eagle.  Co-written by three anonymous authors, the column has been a bit of a mixed bag, with high highs (tackling anal sex in an enlightened way) and low lows (the inaugural column kicked off with a disturbing date rape scenario).  But the Sexist found enough promise in the column-writing threesome to give them a progressive score of seven.

Coming in second was the GW Hatchet‘s sex column.  The Hatchet switches off between an anonymous male writer and an anonymous female writer, and tends to neglect the LGBTQ perspective, according to the Sexist, earning them a six on the progressive scale.

The Sexist gave Leahey props for using her real name and acknowledged the challenges inherent in writing a column for a relatively conservative paper where “vulgarity” is frowned upon, but took her to task for directing her columns at “desperate” heterosexual females.  Ultimately, Leahey and The Hoya walked away with just four progressive points.