------------------
        From: 	H-Net Staff <revhelp@mail.h-net.msu.edu>
	Subject: 	H-Net Review Publication:  'Redefining Feminism to Include Cosmo
Icon Helen Gurley Brown'
	Date: 	November 13, 2009 9:01:37 AM EST

Jennifer Scanlon.  Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley
Brown.  Oxford  Oxford University Press, 2009.  xv + 270 pp.  $27.95
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-534205-5.

Reviewed by Kim Voss (University of Central Florida)
Published on Jhistory (November, 2009)
Commissioned by Donna Harrington-Lueker

Redefining Feminism to Include Cosmo Icon Helen Gurley Brown

The women of reality television dating shows could use a copy of
Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 bestseller _Sex and the Single Girl_. The
book's message of self worth and the rejection of marriage as the
only ideal for women continues to resonate--particularly for _The
Bachelor_ contestants who reject dignity in exchange for an
engagement ring. Gurley Brown's message still feels timely and is
testimony to her progressiveness in her day. As book author, magazine
editor, and social critic, Gurley Brown sent a message in support of
women's changing roles. Yet, her name is typically left out of the
history of those who championed women. As demonstrated in Jennifer
Scanlon's _Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown_,
the iconic former _Cosmo_ editor's name belongs alongside those of
Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. That is Scanlon's thesis, and she
proves it well. As she writes, Gurley Brown "sought to liberate not
the married woman but the single woman, not the suburban but the
urban dweller, not the college-educated victim but the working-class
survivor" (pp. 94-95).

The fight for women's liberation was a war fought on several fronts.
The leaders of some of these battles are well known, such as Steinem,
Friedan, and Martha Griffiths. Less prominent as a feminist icon is
Gurley Brown, best known today as the longtime editor of
_Cosmopolitan_ magazine. She was an advocate for women outside of the
middle class and forthose   who saw no need for marriage. She
encouraged earning a good pay check and promoted self-reliance. She
just happened to do so while fashionably dressed and wearing good
lipstick. It's these women who are not recognized as feminists often
enough--who did not fit easily into the media-defined feminist
categories.

The story of the largely overlooked feminist--a term she embraced--is
told in Scanlon's book. It relies heavily on Gurley Brown's extensive
papers at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts, and provides impressive primary-source
documents--including early drafts of her writing. These materials
provide new insight into a woman who has created her own media image.
Scanlon, a professor of gender and women's studies at Bowdoin
College, has a background in the scholarship on women's magazines.
Her previous work includes _Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home
Journal, Gender and Promises of Consumer Culture_ (1995).

Scanlon's biography of Gurley Brown covers the more recognizable
accomplishments of the _Cosmo_ editor and, most impressively, her
behind-the-scenes struggles. For example, Gurley Brown's papers
reveal her male editor's censorship of sections of the initial drafts
of _Sex and the Single Girl_ and her exclusion from the Hearst
(male-only) editorial community when Gurley Brown headed _Cosmo_.
Scanlon also reveals Gurley Brown's lesser-known activities such as
her pitches for television programs that were ahead of their time. It
should be noted that while she was well known for her message about
"singlehood," Gurley Brown could also be a fan of marriage, as this
book demonstrates. The real issue was finding a man who saw his wife
as an equal. The author gives appropriate credit to Gurley Brown's
husband, successful movie producer David Brown, and the partnership
they created. (He was a force in the entertainment industry in his
own right, and his marketing plans were a good match for his wife's
talents.)

While Helen Gurley Brown deserves her place in the literature on the
women's liberation movement, her role was complicated. Her promotion
of sexualized images and make-your-man-happy copy irked many
feminists. (And her views on sexual harassment could be updated.) Yet
she also championed many of the issues central to the movement--such
as women's employment rights and abortion access. But her real
embrace of feminism would come later. In early years, she was simply
trying to make her way and hoped to share her story with others. Her
voice was a unique one. Being an outspoken single woman carried a
stigma of being a spinster destined to a lonely existence. (And this
has not necessarily changed much. After all, the reality television
program _The Bachelorette_ was not entitled _The Spinster_ for a
reason.) Of course, many women have long thrived without marriage, as
is noted by Betty Israel in her book chronicling one hundred years of
_Bachelor Girl_ (2002). This was especially true by the 1960s when
young women saw a (usually traditional female) career and an
apartment as an option. Israel noted, "marriage as a national idea,
an enforceable teenaged daydream, had lost some of its hypnotic
force."[1] It was in this changing societal view that Gurley Brown
saw her opening. Women of the time could have a career--but if they
wanted to go beyond the secretarial pool, they had to create their
own way.

While Friedan would reach out to college-educated, middle-aged women
in the early 1960s, this was not the community Gurley Brown related
to. Born to poor circumstances and left fatherless at a young age,
Gurley Brown watched her mother struggle to raise her two children.
(Her mother sacrificed her first love and her career for her
family--a sad rather than noble experience that was not lost on her
daughter. Later, Gurley Brown would see the roots of the need for
women's liberation in her mother's life.) Not an attractive child,
she was encouraged to rely on her intellect for her success. This is
not to reinforce Gurley Brown's self-described role as an average
"mouseburger." Her own high school photos and letters reveal that
Brown was a cute, popular young woman. One of the highlights of the
book is what the fifty boxes of archival materials reveal in
comparison to the persona that Gurley Brown has crafted. (The main
criticism of the book is that this analysis is not taken further.)

After a semester of college, Gurley Brown attended secretarial
school. A career was not merely an option--it was an economic
necessity. And those careers were limited. It was in this low-paying
role as a secretary that her education in gender politics began. She
learned that women had inferior positions in the workforce but they
managed to glean what they could from them, like padded expense
accounts and leftovers from business lunches. As Scanlon notes, "For
women of Gurley's generation, ambitious or not, gender continued to
dictate when and where career paths might open up" (p. 27). She was
also a closeted writer, recording her views on unapologetic
singlehood in her private time while later developing her
professional voice as an advertising copywriter.

Her marriage to David Brown and those musings on the single life led
to the book that would change the course of her life and lead to her
own brand of feminism: _Sex and the Single Girl_. The title was
outrageous for the time and her thoughts were also radical--promoting
a single woman's sexual satisfaction, career rather than motherhood,
and money of her own. It should be remembered that these messages
were seen as a direct affront to the traditional role of women. A
1956 report that ran in _Life_ magazine about single women who worked
and delayed marriage painted a poor picture: "chances are that she
will suffer psychological damage. Should she marry and reproduce, her
husband and children will be profoundly unhappy" (p. 77). As Gurley
Brown would later prove, the right husband could make all the
difference.

The publication of her book (which came out after she had married)
made Gurley Brown a star and led to more books and a newspaper
column, "The Woman Alone." She became a media darling, making
numerous television appearances and becoming a regular on _The
Tonight Show_. This led to her position as editor of _Cosmo_. (The
couple was looking to start a magazine when they learned that _Cosmo_
was ready for a make-over.) The magazine had a long and distinguished
history, including as a significant muckraking publication. Gurley
Brown  had no journalistic experience, but she had an editorial
vision that would serve her well for decades.

In essence, she wanted a message that encouraged women to both be
individuals and partners for men. This was not a simple message at a
time of social change.  Despite Gurley Brown's liberated views, the
discussion of sex and male attraction fed the perception that _Cosmo_
encouraged women to be subservient to men. Her use of revealingly
clad women on the cover of her magazine (cleavage was purposely
featured every three issues), led to accusations of sexual
objectification. Her regular response was: "There is nothing wrong
with being a sex object. He is your sex object. It goes both ways"
(p. 109). Some of these messages were questioned by feminists. The
criticism was unwarranted, according to Gurley Brown. She explained
_Cosmo_ in an interview with Gloria Steinem: "I've used their
magazine. I didn't put up a penny. I've got this instrument in which
I say what I want to" (p. 166).

And much of what she had to say was about sex. Readers may have
received  scientific and medical messages about sex from the Kinsey
Report, but Gurley Brown offered a different discussion. Marriage was
not a precursor to sex and, furthermore, sex should be enjoyed. As
Scanlon writes of female sexuality, "In the end, Friedan saw danger
where Brown saw fun" (p. 109). The magazine editor did not shy away
from the topic at a time when it was not just frowned upon, but not
discussed at all. Following in the wake of Hugh Hefner's _Playboy_,
she promoted women's sexual freedom and enjoyment. This also meant
that she addressed the progressive issues of birth control, rape, and
abortion in her writing. Unfortunately, her publisher removed
sections on date rape--the term was unknown at the time--and the need
for abortion access from one of her books. Gurley Brown also
regularly attempted to include information about lesbians but was
rebuffed each time. Had her work  not been censored, her feminism
would have been more obvious and her messages would have reached a
large audience.

Ultimately, after establishing her magazine as a cultural landmark,
she was ousted as _Cosmo_ editor in 1997. At that time, _Cosmo_ was
the sixth-ranked women's magazine and the top women's magazine on
college campuses. She stayed on as an international editor of the
magazine's nearly sixty editions. Last year, _Slate_ magazine named
her one of the top people over age 80. It would have been interesting
to hear her views, but she declined to be interviewed by Scanlon.

The book's author argues for Gurley Brown's place in both magazine
history and the literature of the women's liberation movement. In the
1950s and 1960s, women were not on the mastheads of major newspapers
nor did they head the bureaus of wire services. (It would take
lawsuits for that enlightenment to occur.)[2] But they often spoke to
each other in women's magazines. While research has been done on the
"Seven Sisters" magazines, _Cosmo_ is also worthy of scholarship.[3]
It would also be interesting to learn more about women's newspaper
columns, such as Gurley Brown's "The Woman Alone." This well-written
book helps to illuminate the complex changes in gender roles in
American society, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. The stories of
more women, including Gurley Brown, need to added to the scholarship
on journalism history.

In the end, _Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown_
is less the story of a "bad girl" than that of a "smart woman." Her
story belongs to the history of  women's magazines and the history of
women in journalism.

Notes

[1]. Betsy Israel, _Bachelor Girl: 100 Years of Breaking the
Rules--Social History of Living Single( _New York: Perennial, 2002),
209.

[2]. Kay Mills, _A Place in the News: From the Women's Pages to the
Front Pages_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 149-172.

[3]. The Seven Sisters magazines include _Better Homes & Gardens,
Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, McCalls,
Redbook, _and_ Woman's Day_.

Citation: Kim Voss. Review of Scanlon, Jennifer, _Bad Girls Go
Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown_. Jhistory, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25587

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.


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