BROWN, Helen Gurley

(b. 18 February 1922 in Green Forest, Arkansas), influential writer and magazine editor whose work in the 1960s celebrated the pleasures of being a single woman.

Brown was born to Arkansas schoolteachers Ira M. Gurley and Cleo Sisco. Her father, who had also served as a state legislator, died when she was ten years old. After her sister developed polio, her family's modest lifestyle became even more spartan. Brown attended Texas State College for Women but opted to move to Los Angeles in 1941 to start a secretarial career. She graduated from Woodbury Business College in 1942 and also took writing courses through the University of California, Los Angeles, extension school. She worked as a secretary and advertising copywriter until 1962.

Brown describes having transformed herself into a confident, financially secure, and independent woman during this period. "I once had the world's worst case of acne.… I grew up in a small town. I didn't go to college. My family was, and is, desperately poor, and I have always helped support them." She married the motion picture executive David Brown on 25 September 1959. They had no children.

With her husband's encouragement, she wrote Sex and the Single Girl (1962). Based on her own experiences, the book celebrates the single lifestyle and provides honest advice on everything from sex to entertaining. It became an instant best-seller. Brown's aim was to remove the stigma placed on the single life and give women a guide for staying single "in superlative style." At the time, women were expected to desire marriage and children rather than the single life, and to be single in one's thirties was viewed as a particularly awful predicament.

Although happily married when she wrote her book, Brown touted her thirty-seven years of being single as qualifying her as an expert. She tackled topics from fashion and lifestyle to domestic life and career in 267 pages.

The book was considered sensational at the time. Its candor, particularly regarding sex, generated condemnation. Who would have considered advocating relationships between married men and single women—even tips on spotting homosexual men—as appropriate? Although the 1960s were noted as a period when sexual freedoms were explored and celebrated, frank discussions of sexuality—especially women's sexuality—were still taboo early in the era. It was a popularly held belief that "nice girls" remained virgins until their wedding night. Brown knew better. The book filled a void in providing information to young women, causing Sex and the Single Girl to remain on bestseller lists into 1963. With the success of the book, Brown started writing a syndicated newspaper column, "Woman Alone."

Letters poured in from readers of Sex and the Single Girl. The Browns discussed how out of touch most contemporary women's magazines seemed and began concocting plans to start their own publication, devoted in great part to answering some of the questions readers continued to ask. Brown's publisher put her in contact with executives at the Hearst Corporation. The company, although unwilling to finance a new publication, decided to hire Brown. In 1965 she was named editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan.

The magazine, originally founded in 1886 as a general interest publication, was one of the oldest magazines in the United States. In 1964 its sales were off by 20 percent, and Brown was brought in to revamp the magazine. During the process she invented the image of the ideal contemporary woman, the "Cosmo girl." Each magazine cover featured one of these Cosmo girls—beautiful, provocatively clad women oozing confidence and sexuality.

Much like her book, Brown focused the editorial content of Cosmopolitan on advice for single women. Brown envisioned her prototypical reader as a youthful career woman, interested in topics from fashion to—of course—sex. Each issue included information about how to have a successful career as well as how to attract and keep a man. This feminine approach to feminism stood in stark contrast to those advocating radical political change for women in the late 1960s and 1970s. The magazine's circulation began steadily improving.

Feminist activists opposed Brown and differed with her opinions, arguing vehemently that she was setting the women's movement back by failing to be more overtly feminist in the magazine's content. They went so far as to organize a sit-in in 1970 at the Cosmopolitan offices.

Brown says feminists objected to the magazine because "they feel that Cosmo panders to men, that we try to make life comfortable for men, and you can't do that and be a feminist. I say you absolutely can." Rather than vilifying men, Brown espoused the beliefs that feminists could like men and that being a sex object was fine. "If you're not a sex object, you're in trouble. You want to be known for your brain, but to have somebody want you sexually is the best thing there is. You can still look pretty and smell pretty and achieve."

Brown also endured criticism from other quarters, especially from parents and others concerned about the morality of messages the magazine was sending young women. She said the assumption has been made "that Cosmo and I are leading their daughters astray. We aren't.… We say do your own work, … use your talent, live up to your potential."

In reflection Brown considers her tenure at Cosmopolitan her greatest professional success. "The next biggest success is my first book, Sex and the Single Girl, from which Cosmo stemmed. There wouldn't be any new Cosmo if it hadn't been for that book." Brown supervised her final issue of Cosmopolitan in February 1997.

Autobiographical information about Brown can be found in Sex and the Single Girl (1962). See also "Bad Girl Helen Gurley Brown, the Original Cosmo Girl, Defies Every Label You Want to Pin on Her," Psychology Today, 27, no. 2 (Mar.–Apr. 1994): 22–26.

Linda Dailey Paulson