Helen Gurley Brown, the woman who re-shaped the landscape of the women’s movement with her titillating tales of sex and provocative proposals all encased in her first bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl, passed away yesterday at the age of 90.
Brown was also the editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, a position that she held for many years and ironically it was after she pitched her prototype, Femme to publishing giant Hearst that she was offered the gig at Cosmopolitan and it ended up being her best career move. She was given the perfect platform to exert her message which was always doused in themes that celebrated all the joyously complicated facets that added up to create the strong, sexually viable and ambitious female. This model of a woman had the ability to navigate her own course in life while also maintaining a sense of vulnerability and girlish charm without sacrificing her sense of worth or purpose.
She applied those principals to her own life, and at one pointed noted that her husband, Hollywood producer David Brown whom she married in 1959, was drawn to her fierce independence and financial stability, which considering the era must have been a rare quality to find a young attractive woman.
Sex and the Single Girl was a collection of Brown’s personal adventures as a single gal in the city and in 1964 it was translated to the big screen with an all star cast that included Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Lauren Becall and Henry Fonda. Her literary journey continued through the 60’s and 70’s with other ravishing titles, including Sex and the Office, and Having it All and I’m Wild Again: Snippets From My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts which she produced much later in 2000.
Brown was certainly ahead of her time and laid the foundation for the other media mavens that have burst on the scene and dominated their respective genres.
Her legacy will continue to thrive especially in the city that reciprocated her love and appreciation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it best when he paid tribute to his dearly departed friend, “She was a role model for the millions of women whose private thoughts, wonders and dreams she addressed so brilliantly in print. We will miss her, but her impact on our culture and society will live on forever.”