Helen Gurley Brown died today. Here’s a re-print of a post I wrote about her earlier this year:
Helen Gurley Brown turned 90 this past February 18. I discovered her when I was a teenager and became an instant fan. She was a woman ahead of her time; I hadn’t heard another woman with her message. I was certainly familiar with (and appreciative of) feminists who were trying to empower us, but Helen was coming at it from a whole ‘nother angle: it’s okay for a woman to be single, and really ok for her to have and enjoy sex, to have fun, to have a full life. I didn’t know anybody else who was saying this quite that way.
I bought her book, Sex and the Single Girl, and read it at night after I went to bed so my mother wouldn’t catch me with it. Helen was 40 when she wrote the book so she wasn’t some young, flighty girl being wistfully naive. This woman had lived. She went on to showcase her perspective as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.
Katie Roiphe wrote an article in Slate magazine acknowledging HGB’s birthday and celebrating her accomplishments.
From the article: “It has now been 50 long and eventful years since the publication of Helen Gurley Brown’s feminist classic, Sex and the Single Girl, in which she made the groundbreaking observation: “I think a single woman’s biggest problem is coping with the people who are trying to marry her off.”
True then, still true. But I’m trying to do my part to help chip away at this notion that a woman must be married to have real worth. I certainly know this “you must marry” sentiment has softened since she wrote this book…but it hasn’t softened enough. Just last week I patiently explained to my new doctor how it was possible that I was “really ok” without a husband or kids. He said he couldn’t understand how a woman could feel that way. And he’s only 40, so I can’t even blame it on him having grown up in a different time. I like him, though, so I teasingly reminded him that it’s the 21st century and the old rules don’t apply. I hope I gave him something to think about.
Anyway, happy belated birthday to Helen Gurley Brown and many thanks to her for helping enlighten me as a teenager. I’m hoping that one day some young girl will say the same thing about my book –The Spinsterlicious Life: 20 Life Lessons for Living Happily Single and Childfree–which will be out on March 15. I can only hope.
How did you come to the conclusion that being single is ok? Or have you?
NOTE: Don’t forget to visit The Spinsterlicious Life Shop. The goodies make a statement… and a great gift!
I’ve never seen an obit generate so much debate as HGB’s did in the NYT – and in our office, being a women’s magazine. I think Helen did much to shake things up, and was ultimatley an amazing woman, but as I get older, I often wonder if women, as we evolved and became less repressed sexually, were we perhaps counting a little too much on men evolving along with us? After all, women have different sexual responses to men – they tend to bring emotions into it, even during those briefest of flings, where men seldom do. For all this celebration of the rise of the female sex fiend, in the end, I don’t feel remotely empowered by any of it. I don’t see the ability to “score” worthy of a big high-five. I don’t see it as a personal goal to have multiple orgasms or sexual adventures. I don’t feel that blowing a guy’s mind in the sack gives you any power whatsoever. At best, it’s a brief buzz, then it goes away, as do the men, very quickly, when they suspect you’re a “slut” – a word which remains in common usage despite all this “progress”.
I actually think the messages you bring in your blogs are more helpful to me as a single woman – that is to be OK with being single and enjoy your life – with or without meaningless sex. Sadly, my encounters with modern sex now leave me cold, at worst like an unpaid hooker, so I’ve moved way on from the coverlines of Cosmo, but I’d like to have a read of that book by HGB some time, so I can make a fairer judgment of the lady. May she rest in peace.
I too was a huge HGB fan. I fell in love with her via her book, Having It All. I still have it in my study and while some of the advice is dated, a lot of it is still dead on. I was so sorry to see she’d passed away, but at least when she was “put to rest,” she could honestly say that she lived.
I’m 41, single with no kids. Sometimes I want a husband and kids and then other times I don’t. I have become okay with being single over the years of watching friends and friends of friends get married, have kids and then get divorced. Some of them have done it more than once. I always say that I would rather be single and sometimes lonely than married, lonely and unhappy.