Helen Gurley Brown shook up the gender roles, revolutionized Cosmopolitan

Longtime Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown shocked some Americans with her views on the single woman.

|
Marty Lederhandler/AP
Helen Gurley Brown was editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for more than three decades.

Helen Gurley Brown, the writer credited with turning Cosmopolitan magazine into a bible for single women and who shocked the U.S. with her book “Sex and the Single Girl,” died today at age 90, according to the Hearst Corporation.

“Helen Gurley Brown was an icon,” said Hearst Corporation CEO Frank A. Bennack, Jr. in a statement. “Her formula for honest and straightforward advice about relationships, career and beauty revolutionized the magazine industry.”

Brown was born in Green Forest, Ark. and later moved with her family to Los Angeles. After graduating from Woodbury Business College, she held various secretarial jobs, and her writing caught her boss’s eye when she was working at advertising agency Foote Cone & Belding as the executive secretary to board chairman Don Beldin. Beldin promoted her to copywriter.

She later married David Brown, a Hollywood executive who produced films such as “Jaws” and “The Sting.”

Brown published “Sex and the Single Girl” in 1962. The book was shunned by some for encouraging sexual relationships before marriage and its advice to women to become financially independent.

Following “Sex and the Single Girl,” Brown became editor of Cosmopolitan in 1965 after sending the president of the Hearst Corporation a proposal of how to transform the magazine. Before Brown’s tenure, the magazine ran advice to housewives, then later switched to fiction and investigative articles. Cosmopolitan quickly became devoted to beauty and romance tips for women under Brown’s reign.

Though she was replaced as editor in 1997, Brown remained at the company overseeing the foreign editions of the magazine. Her official title was editor of all international editions, a position she held until her death, and she still went into the office almost every day, according to the Hearst Corporation.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Helen Gurley Brown shook up the gender roles, revolutionized Cosmopolitan
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0813/Helen-Gurley-Brown-shook-up-the-gender-roles-revolutionized-Cosmopolitan
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe