Helen Gurley Brown is climbing the bestseller list again. Okay, her biography, Bad Girls Go Everywhere by Jennifer Scanlon, isn’t on the list yet, but give the girl a break. It takes her longer to climb now. There should, at the very least, be no doubt in your mind that her life deserves our attention and her career, the thanks of a grateful pubic – I mean public.
Condoms. Porno. Infidelity. If sex is on the agenda today, it's because Helen Gurley Brown put it on the menu forty years ago. As editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, she encouraged women to demand sexual satisfaction. She urged them to be stern judges of its quality and connoisseurs of its variety. She made it as much a part of their daily lives as putting on eye shadow. Now, after four decades, Helen Gurley Brown’s life has been committed to print.
Was she the only leader of the revolution? The only life of the party? Hardly. Yet, no one can deny that she was a tent pole in the sexual big top of the Sixties. Can Helen Gurley Brown even claim exclusive credit for the influence of Cosmo? Probably not, but an executive who doesn't take credit is like a thief passing an open window. So, how do we know that her tenure reflects achievement and not just the sort of aggression usually rewarded with a prison sentence? Look around. Her influence not only remains, it's stronger than ever and has multiplied.
Most daytime talk shows would not exist had Ms. Brown not preceded them with articles like, "What a real orgasm feels like. Some much beloved Cosmo Girls tell. Maybe you're being cheated." The romance novel industry and its weaker offshoot, publishing, owe thanks to the very covers of Cosmo. Here is where America learned what a bodice really looked like. They always featured a beautiful woman with abundant hair and pronounced cleavage (pronounced: KLEE-vidge). Carving these fabulous busts was Brown's court sculptor, Francesco Scavullo. (Frankie to his friends.) Is it too much to say he was Michelangelo to her Pope Julius II? Not if you remember how dull the checkout line was before they met.
The most tangible proof of this editor's effect on popular culture is Madonna.Who else so deftly blends sexual aggressiveness, marketing skill and pure image? Helen Gurley Brown not only made Madonna possible, she made her necessary.
Women's magazines have been published in this country for over a hundred years. Brown's genius lies not in aiming at women, but hitting them where they love. Like Isaac Newton, if she has seen so far it's because she's stood on the padded shoulders of giants. Which leads naturally to the question of who she stepped on to get and keep her job. Let's just say she was in power almost as long as Franco and never had to bomb Guernica.
One still has to wonder about the personal qualities that go into such a life of achievement. I've never met Helen Gurley Brown, but I've formed a rather strong picture of her: bedroom or kitchen, office or vegetable garden, she strikes me as the sort of woman who calls a spade a spade and a cucumber, "Darling."
I don’t mean to strike an elegiac note, simply one of appreciation. So, I’ll say, “Thank you, Ms. Brown” as we, to paraphrase Steven Spender, think of one who was truly great and left the vivid air sighing with orgasms.
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