In the autumn of 2015, I was invited to give a lecture to a cohort of undergraduate students from politics-related fields, at a university in South-Eastern Europe. Before starting my talk, entitled ‘Cosmopolitanism: A political theory for the world as a whole’, I decided to ask them what they knew about cosmopolitanism: ‘What is cosmopolitanism? What does it mean to be a cosmopolitan?’ Silence. Asking again. Encouraging not to hesitate. Finally, the first answer: ‘Cosmopolitan is a magazine about sex.’ And the second: ‘Cosmopolitan is a drink.’ After some breathless long seconds, I found my voice: Yes, the word ‘cosmopolitan’ is used in the title of a magazine and in the name of a drink. There are such expressions as ‘cosmopolitan style’, ‘cosmopolitan fashion’, ‘cosmopolitan cities’ and so on. All these expressions point to us how desirable is for people the state of being called ‘cosmopolitan’. Thus, we need to imagine the world from a cosmopolitan perspective where everyone could be a cosmopolitan. Therefore let see how we can think, imagine and eventually do this.

I continued the lecture expecting the imminent questions that were in the air: ‘But is sex cosmopolitan?’ ‘Is cosmopolitanism achievable through sex?’ ‘If sex is cosmopolitan, why do we need these abstract theories?’ No one asked them during the discussion that followed, perhaps because the convener who invited me to give the lecture warned the audience to ask ‘serious’ questions. Immediately after the lecture, I rushed to clarify why the magazine about sex is called ‘cosmopolitan’.

The history of the Cosmopolitan magazine shows that the title and the content were associated contingently. When in 1965 the author of a bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl (Gurley Brown 1962), bought the magazine to tell the truth about sex – ‘that sex is one of the three best things out there, and I don't even know what the other two are’ – the magazine was already called Cosmopolitan, as it was named in 1886 by its initial founders who, in the spirit of Enlightenment, intended to make their readers familiar with science, culture and world literature. Once bought, the magazine already ‘had a name’, and under this name the magazine claims that it changed the world by empowering women to ‘take charge of their own sexual pleasure’ and presents its legacy in terms of ‘sexual liberation’.