In Praise of Difficult Women

by Karen Karbo

  At KHJ, she observed that the office environment offered the chance for a young woman with no attachments to hang out with a lot of men, most of whom were bored with their jobs or bored with their wives and open to having a fling. The working world was raining men.

  Duty and sacrifice were of no interest to Helen Gurley. Having watched her mother suffer a mediocre marriage, sacrificing her career so she could do the correct wifely thing, she was not about to fall down that rabbit hole. But wishful thinking was also anathema. She was well aware that the most powerful weapon in a woman’s arsenal was her looks. Helen never struck me as particularly homely, but she did suffer from a ferocious case of acne and was self-conscious about her lack of “bosoms.” But by the standards of the time, she felt she couldn’t measure up, and would never be one of those women (see Elizabeth Taylor) who could capture the attention of men simply by entering a room.

  Instead, she repurposed the Serenity Prayer, accepting the things she couldn’t change and changing the things she could. She figured that if she wasn’t pretty, rich, or well educated, she could always work 10 times as hard as everyone else, and also be really good at sex. She came to learn from her life as a single girl that when it came to men, as long as you were naked and smiling, they were happy. In the era of No Sex Before Marriage, this attitude was societal high treason.

  “From nine to five is actually a marvelous time to sink into a man,” she would write in Sex and the Single Girl. “Even though hordes of your male co-workers are married, plenty of unattached or ‘detached’ men from the outside should be calling on your firm, thus giving you access to them—salesmen, consultants, suppliers, clients, friends of executives, even naughty chaps from the Internal Revenue Service who are auditing the corporate books.”

  The only women among the disc jockeys, sound engineers, and managers at KHJ were secretaries and receptionists. Every so often, the guys would launch into an impromptu game called scuttle, whereby they would chase one of the girls around the office, pin her down, and pull off her panties. Helen considered this good, clean workplace fun, on a par with going out for a smoke or a stroll around the block. Scuttle, or the promise of impending scuttle, could make a dull job exciting!

  Decades later, in the 1970s, Helen would still defend scuttle as something to help while away the time at work. No matter that her cheery endorsement of flagrant harassment horrified prominent feminists. No matter that most workplaces were blatantly sexist, harboring environments where men felt entitled to grope the women who made their coffee and typed up their letters. Places where a game like scuttle…wait, hold on a second. Before I go any further we need to stop and imagine being chased around an office in 1950-whatever. Did the guys have to yank off a garter belt and girdle before getting to the panties? Because bare legs in a pair of kicky heels for work wasn’t a thing then. Were the men treated to a full OB-GYN view of things once the panties came off? Helen, Helen, Helen: How could you have thought this sort of thing livened up an otherwise ho-hum workday?

  DURING HER 20S AND EARLY 30S, Helen hopped from secretarial job to secretarial job. Once she was fired for sleeping off a hangover under her desk, and once she was fired for not sleeping with her boss. (Just because she was pro-office canoodling doesn’t mean she wasn’t discriminating.)

  In 1951, at the age of 29, Helen entered Glamour magazine’s annual “Ten Girls with Taste” contest, honoring young women of modest means who still managed to live with style. The contestants enthused, on a lengthy questionnaire, about their work wardrobes, cooking secrets, and personal credos. Helen made the finals but wasn’t chosen. Two years later she tried again, taking poetic license with her application. She invented a new, more fetching wardrobe, feigned more interest in cooking for friends than she actually possessed, and fabricated an interest in being a copywriter. (A hunch told her that a girl with ambition would be more appealing to the judges.) This time, she triumphed. The grand prize was a trip to Hawaii; the grander prize was a personal phone call from a junior editor at Glamour to Helen’s boss at Foot, Cone & Belding, where she worked as a secretary, suggesting it was time she was promoted. In 1952, at the age of 30, Helen became one of the agency’s first female copywriters.

  As we know from Mad Men, ad agency sexism is a species all its own. Women were generally thought to be too high-strung and emotional to write ad copy (find an occupation coveted by men and you will find a farfetched reason why women cannot cut it). When women were allowed into the ranks, they were immediately saddled with all the products targeted at the ladies. Helen wound up working on campaigns for diet plans, bathing suits, and Max Factor eye makeup. Even though she was relegated to the lady-product ghetto, she became, over the course of the next half dozen years, the best paid female copywriter in L.A.

  Helen enjoyed her freewheeling romantic life into her 30s. Some of her beaux were married, some weren’t. But in the end she was like anyone else: She would get involved with the man du jour, become attached, and when the romance ran its course—as it inevitably would—she would be broken-hearted. She decided that maybe a spot of therapy was in order. Who knew there were so many kooky methodologies to choose from in 1957? She tried hypnosis, so-called touch therapy, and psychodrama. Nude group therapy was a thing: Patients took turns standing naked in the middle of the group, cataloging what they liked or didn’t like about their bodies. Helen disparaged her too-wide hips, her too-small breasts. The point was to demonstrate that body shame was universal—though the most famous outcome would be Helen’s insistence on using only big-breasted models on the cover of Cosmo.

  In 1958, when Helen was 36 years old, a friend threw a dinner party and seated her beside David Brown, then head of the story department at 20th Century Fox. After the party, David walked Helen to her car—the stylish gray Mercedes.

  HELEN AND DAVID WERE MARRIED at Beverly Hills City Hall on September 25, 1959. She wore a long-sleeved fitted-waist dress and a strand of pearls, bought off the rack. (Hell if she was going to spend a fortune on a wedding dress.) David, known for being a gentleman with a literary bent, wore a dark suit. He had started out as a magazine journalist and editor before moving to L.A. Eventually he would partner with Richard Zanuck at 20th Century Fox to produce The Sting, Jaws, and other classics.

  Helen was not interested in quitting her job to sit around being a wife—or God forbid, a mother. She remembered how miserable her own mother had been and, anticipating what pregnancy might wreak on her svelte figure, took childbirth off the table. Still, there were traditional components to the Browns’ union. She fussed over him in typically wifely ways. It was a point of pride for her that no matter how busy she was, she would cook his dinner every night. She obsessed about his weight, in addition to her own, and made him weigh himself every morning.

  But mostly, they were also a team: a pair of indefatigable workaholics. Helen loved to work. Her capacity for it was staggering. Over the years, what had originally been a matter of putting food on her table and a roof over her own head had given her life meaning. This runs counter to what so many of us are taught, and what we teach our children—to first find your passion, then go for it. In Helen’s case, poverty and necessity had come first.

  SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL was David’s idea. Then as now, “write what you know” was the cornerstone for aspiring authors, and David thought his wife’s take on the open secret of workplace affairs might be intriguing. Helen loved the idea, and felt she had plenty to say about it. She knew it was a man’s world: vastly unfair to women and particularly unfair to single working girls. Still, she didn’t let inequity stop her; she was an eager proponent of gaming the system. The best chance a woman had for getting what she wanted, she asserted, was to figure out how to manipulate men and the world they claimed. Presumably, the two and a half million people who would buy Sex and the Single Girl when it came out in 1962 understood this as well.

  The book is both ridiculous and empowering. Yearn for tips o
n some intensely creepy flirting? “Look into his eyes as though tomorrow’s daily double winner were there. Never let your eyes leave his. Concentrate on his left eye…then on his right…now deep into both.” Want to know how to decorate a man-pleasing apartment? (Did you even think there was such a thing until you read that sentence just now?) Aim to make yourself appear fascinating with “gobs” of pictures, travel posters, a TV set, books, and a hi-fi stereo. Your “sexy kitchen” should be equipped with a spice rack with at least 30 spices. This conveys that you love to cook—and nothing is sexier. (Even though you shouldn’t cook too much; one of the main reasons for taking a lover is his willingness to pay for stuff, dinners at fancy restaurants included.)

  Still, the money chapter reads, with a few exceptions, as if it were written last week, and under the tutelage of trendy Marie Kondo: Don’t buy stuff you don’t need. Only buy things you find beautiful, or that make you feel beautiful. Learn how finances work, learn how to manage your money, and take advantage of the fact that as a single working girl no one expects you to live beyond your means.

  Published by Bernard Geis & Company, the book’s original title, Sex for the Single Girl, sounded alarmingly prescriptive. So “for” was swapped with “and,” and Helen was on the map. Sex and the Single Girl was the “it” book of 1962, selling an astonishing two million copies in three weeks. When people weren’t worrying about the Cuban missile crisis, they were wondering how they’d missed the memo that it was a lot more fun being single than married. The reviews were mixed, verging on terrible. It was “tasteless” (Los Angeles Times), “libel against womanhood” (San Francisco Chronicle letter to the editor), “racy and sassy…but full of hard core common sense” (Houston Chronicle).

  Helen made no bones about the fact the book was for girls who had nothing, came from nowhere, and had to get by on their wits. When someone accused her of writing the book for money, she said, why of course she did. “I love money!” she laughed. She didn’t read the bad reviews and seemed impervious to criticism.

  Off she went on a book tour, becoming one of the first authors to do so. Thirteen weeks later, after visiting 28 cities and appearing on every television and radio show that would have her (even late-night call-in shows where incensed listeners who hadn’t bothered to read the book phoned in to suggest she be burned at the stake), she had the country in the palm of her hand. She smiled, flirted, and shilled her way through appearances on the Today show, the Tonight Show, Merv Griffin. Her inner workaholic was fulfilled: Success begat success. The movie rights to the book were sold to Warner Brothers. Thirty-five countries snapped up the foreign rights. David was thrilled that she’d not simply found her niche, but created one that she alone occupied: an expert on how girls (they were always girls) could—and should—live it up before marriage. “I think marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life,” she wrote in the book. “During your best years, you don’t need a husband. You do need a man, of course—every step of the way—and they are often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen.”

  That Helen was no longer single, but loved, supported, advised, and promoted by a powerful, influential husband avoided irony by underscoring her book’s main thesis: You don’t have to be pretty to land a great husband; you simply need to use your single-working-girl years to “work like wharf rats” to develop your strong points and become independent, interesting, and sexy. And most of all, to have fun.

  The book’s sequel, Sex and the Office, appeared in 1965. Helen’s editor, Bernard Geis, wanted a repeat of Sex and the Single Girl. He quashed Helen’s more radical and progressive views. Out went the chapters on how to find the most effective contraception, what to do about date rape, lesbianism (it’s bound to happen, she insisted, with all those young, sex-positive girls in the steno pool!), and how to get an abortion. The book did well by regular publishing standards, but wasn’t the massive best seller they’d hoped for.

  Part of the problem was the zeitgeist. The world was changing. There was a new, serious conversation beginning to brew about the status of women. In 1963, Betty Friedan had published The Feminine Mystique, in which she described how most of her fellow Smith College graduates dutifully got married after graduation, moved to the suburbs, had a few kids, and were now bored out of their minds (as Helen Gurley Brown, without her fancy college degree, might have predicted). Friedan’s book precipitated the second wave of feminism. It received serious attention in all the correct, serious places. Even though Helen had blazed the trail, insisting that women and men deserved the same things, Sex and the Single Girl bore the cultural stigma of being too perky and full of advice (including a homemade solution for bleaching the hair on your arms).

  The times may have been a-changin’ but Helen still received so much fan mail that her postman in Pacific Palisades refused to deliver it. (She had to go to the substation and fetch it herself.) She had always been an avid letter writer, and tried to answer each one. She prided herself on being able to type 80 words a minute on her Royal 440 typewriter. David thought that if she had her own magazine, she could in a matter of speaking answer all the letters at once. To that end, Helen and David created a prototype for Femme at their Southern California kitchen table. When they went to New York to pitch it, they discovered a better solution: to take over the ailing Cosmopolitan, a once great literary magazine that had grown anemic in recent years.

  Founded in 1886, Cosmo had an illustrious history. Some of the editors who blew through on their way to greatness: Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., and William Randolph Hearst. It published Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Edna Ferber. Moreover, David had been the managing editor of the magazine in the late 1940s, and he also knew people who knew people. In a matter of days, it was decided that Helen would take over as editor in chief, folding all of their ideas for Femme into a new, improved Cosmopolitan to be targeted at Helen’s readership: single working girls of modest means and education, hoping to make their mark in the world.

  Helen was 43 when she took over as editor in chief. Her magazine experience was limited to reading them. She might as well have been entering an operating theater to perform an appendectomy. Every person on her staff had more experience than she did, including her own secretary. She had no idea how to manage people, oversee editorial budgets, and translate her vision into magazine-ese.

  Later, when telling the story about the first few months at the magazine, she would admit how scared she was, and how she would call David and beg him to come collect her in their town car for a cruise around Manhattan. Cuddled together in the backseat, she would pour out her woes and they would brainstorm new stories. By the end of the ride he would have buoyed her up enough to face the rest of the day. No steel magnolia ever loved this damsel-in-distress business more than Helen. “Women are all female impersonators, to some degree,” the celebrated author and activist Susan Brownmiller once said. And Helen was a master: an iron-willed she-wolf in silky sheep’s clothing.

  To whatever degree she felt truly terrified or insecure, Helen never abandoned the central organizing principles of her life: to trust her gut and work harder than everyone else. Her gut said, If I care deeply about men, sex, love, money, and looking hot at all times, other women will too. Her premise was simple and answered the hoary old Freudian question: What do women want?

  What men want, silly.

  The July 1965 issue of Cosmo was her first. The blond cover model wore a plunging red-and-white gingham top that displayed her “bosoms” to full advantage. David wrote the come-on headline.

  In the dark contraceptive ages of the 1940s and ’50s, a woman had to either prove she was married or pretend to be to be fitted for a diaphragm by her doctor. In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive, but the Pill wasn’t available to married women in all states until 1965; unmarried women didn’t have access until 1972. Despite the fact Cosmo was geared to single girls (who presumably wouldn’t
be able to snag a prescription unless they lied), Helen ran a story about the Pill in her first issue. Hearst axed “The Pill That Makes Women More Responsive to Men” as being too risqué. The problem was solved by deleting the last two words. The story became “The New Pill that Makes Women More Responsive.” What does that even mean? The would-be readership was in a sexy frame of mind, and took a wild (and accurate) guess. The issue flew off the stands.

  As did the one after that, and the one after that. Under Helen’s editorship, Cosmopolitan became the most successful newsstand magazine in the nation.

  A few editors quit during her first few months at the helm. Those who stuck it out found Helen to be straightforward, fair, and exacting. She was against all forms of negativity, and also complex sentences. She was not afraid of italics, and she never met an exclamation point she didn’t like! During editorial meetings, she either stood in front of her desk or kicked off her shoes and curled up on the couch. Her managerial style was essentially to flirt with everyone, because that was something at which she was expert—and it seemed to work. With nothing but faith in herself and what women wanted—which was, in essence, what she wanted—Helen upped the Cosmo circulation from 800,000 to three million.

  BUT THEN CAME the 1970s and Gloria Steinem (see Chapter 3). Yes, there were other feminists of equal influence and importance—Betty Friedan, co-founder and president of the National Organization for Women; U.S. Representative “Battling” Bella Abzug; and Kate Millett, author of the seminal 1970 Sexual Politics, which was adapted from her doctoral dissertation at Columbia—but it was pretty freelance journalist Gloria, with her perfect features and aviator glasses, who captured the public’s imagination.

  Betty, Bella, Gloria, and Kate locked arms, and behind them marched a tribe of smart, college-educated women who thought Helen was the enemy. They despaired of Helen’s determined belief in promoting female artifice; capped teeth, pancake makeup, push-up bras, wigs, and false eyelashes*3 made them want to pull out their unstyled hair. Helen further drove them mad by insisting that women enjoyed makeup, fashion, and looking sexy—and that women could be traditionally feminine and powerful, making her a Sex and the City feminist while Candace Bushnell was still awaiting her 14-year molars. But pro-nookie, pro-have your own apartment, pro-have your own money, pro-birth control, pro-choice Helen Gurley Brown was locked out of the feminist clubhouse.