Helen Gurley Brown

Tue, 26 Sep 2000 19:18:00 +0000

Up through the 1950s, women's magazine articles spoke of fixing lunch and darning socks. But in 1965, Helen Gurley Brown took the helm of Cosmopolitan and spiced up forever the Woman In Print. Her magazine prattled about the joys of women doing and having it all: excelling at work, splurging on luxuries, beguiling men. Decades before, ad execs had targeted women as leading consumers; now, Brown was urging her reader to snag a man (or men) to satiate her physical, emotional and material appetites.

Helen Gurley was born poor in rural Arkansas in 1922. She began to work at 18, fresh out of her first year of college, holding down a string of secretarial jobs until one boss, delighted at her sprightly, straightforward writing, hired her to write copy for his ad agency. In 1958, she joined the Los Angeles firm of Kenyan & Eckhardt as an account executive, and became the West Coast's highest-paid woman in the field.

Salon.com > Melissa Hantman

Helen Gurley Brown