Sensationalist Literature or Expert Advice?

Abstract

Helen Gurley Brown, diva of the New York magazine world, is best known for her 32-year editorship of Cosmopolitan magazine. Taking over the ailing Cosmopolitan in 1965, Brown transformed the magazine almost overnight, turning it into Cosmo, which became shorthand for the sexually astute, sexually active, single woman. Putting sex front and center, however, was not a new undertaking for Brown, who initially made her mark in the publishing world with the 1962 publication of Sex and the Single Girl, her upbeat guide for living in what she considered “superlative” style. Published a year before Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Brown's book counseled her readers to avoid the pitfalls of suburban domesticity by embracing a philosophy of long-term single living, sex before and even outside of marriage, and an enjoyable domesticity based on the self rather than the family. This essay explores the publishing context for Sex and the Single Girl, locating the book within the traditions of sensationalist literature and advice literature and claiming that Brown relied on these traditions, as well as her own instincts and her long history of working in advertising, to write convincingly of the plight—and the delights—of the single woman in postwar American life.

Keywords:

• publishing
• sexuality
• feminism
• popular
• culture
• women