Product Description

Helen Gurley Brown tells women how to fill their lives with romance and delectable men. Sexual attitudes may have changed, but the art of being a woman has not.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87798 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-25
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 267 pages

About the Author
Helen Gurley Brown became the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan in 1965. Since then the magazine's sales and advertising have risen spectacularly. For five years, she was voted by World Almanac one of the 25 Most Influential Women in the U.S. She is a widely-known television personality, having made frequent appearances on 20/20, 60 Minutes, Oprah Winfrey, Entertainment Tonight, Larry King, and many others.

Customer Reviews

HGB was even wiser than we thought, and still plenty funny
I well remember when this book came out and caused an instant sensation and plentiful moral outrage. It was a guilty read. But also a wise, intelligent and savvy piece of work, as well as being hilarious. I think a lot of us back then thought Helen Gurley Brown was a real talent and were not surprised when she became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and presto chango made it the hottest magazine in the world (and a bible on college campuses). Now, in retrospect, after all these years, I'm thinking Mrs. Brown was even more talented than we knew and certainly a visionary. Her advice, which seemed so outrageous then, is above all practical and now seems totally reasonable. I own every book she's ever written and can tell you she is incapable of writing anything dull or dumb. If you don't know this classic, get it, you'll love it and it even has recipes!

Not for the morally righteous!
Sorry y'all, if you all thought this book was a 5 star rating. Unfortunately, I barely got past the first three chapters after putting the book down. Another two more years went by and I still haven't picked up the book. One day spring cleaning came, and I had to rid myself w/hoards of collected junk around my apartment.

When I came across this book again, I jumped all the way to the last chapter, and then skimmed some pages. Finally, I decided to place the book in a very special place. The thrift store. Lol!

No, I don't regret spending a hefty penny for this book. Although, I found the contents of the material quite intersting, I most certainly don't live by Brown's philosophy about being one of those high corporate, high maintenance, highly independent "sex in the city" girl. Althoug, I am currently and happily single.

This Book Saved Me from the Siren Song of the 60's
Isn't that an odd thing to say about a book whose title starts with the word "sex?"

Well, around 1964 one of my parents brought this book home, although neither of them would ever confess to the deed. Whoever it was, they did me a big favor. When the folks weren't watching, I swiped the book and devoured it in a single long sitting.

Helen Gurley Brown should have entitled this masterwork "All the Hard-Nosed Things that Young Women in the So-Called Pre-Feminist Era Need to Know about Money, Career, Independence, Women's Rights, and The Way Things Unfortunately Are. And Oh Yes, Sex. That." However, the book would undoubtedly have sold fewer copies if the title had truly reflected the contents, so it's just as well they hyped the sex part.

Under the impression that I was going to get to read some really naughty stuff, I studied Brown's book with the intensity I would later reserve for pre-calculus. Brown was the friendly, more experienced adult ("Aunt Helen," I liked to think of her) who cut the BS and told you how it really was with respect to a number of important subjects, often contradicting the messages of the dominant 60's culture, as it materialized later in the decade.

Money? Girl, Woodstock or not, you will need it when you are no longer "pristinely young," so get a career and earn it. You will appreciate the freedom and self-respect it brings you. Do the very best you can with whatever abilities you have and the education you can get, and the rewards will carry you through the inevitable bad times that everybody faces. Beauty? Even if you are gorgeous, don't put all your eggs in that basket, because your beauty will fade, and then where will you be if that's the only card you ever played? Love? It is NOT all you need, no matter what the Beatles say. Marriage? Fine, fabulous (Brown herself has been married over forty years), but don't pin all your reasons for living - or your financial survival -- on a guy. Guys are just fallible human beings. Don't give up your ability to stand on your own two feet when you fall in love, because there are no guarantees in life, ever. As Brown eloquently put it, in middle age (or at any time before) a man can leave a woman "like dishes in the sink" if he wants to badly enough. Exercise and a healthy diet? Essential to self-respect. Property ownership (or at least having a fine apartment)? Also essential, particularly when you get older; living in a garage apartment furnished with orange crates is cute when you're twenty, but pathetic when you're forty.

I came of age in the late 60's and early 70's, when the culture was telling us to tune in, turn on, and drop out. Don't conform, don't join the establishment, don't become the man or the woman in the gray flannel suit, don't throw away your life working and forget to smell the roses. Follow your dreams and the universe will magically provide.

This was good advice as far as it went. It sounded so great, and it really was well meant and idealistic and heartfelt...if only it had been true. Unfortunately, it should have been taken with a small but healthy dose of skepticism. Such as, yes, do follow your dreams, but along the way learn some marketable skills, okay? However, the cultural mindset discouraged us from planning for the future, or thinking seriously about money, financial issues, and practical things. We might have known with our minds that the Woodstock generation would eventually get much, much older, but we didn't believe it.

I, however, had Aunt Helen whispering in my ear, so around age thirty I finally rolled up my sleeves, quit hanging out in Austin drinking dark beer and swimming in Barton Springs, and got an advanced degree and a good job -- but did plan things so I still had some time to smell the roses. I couldn't have done it without her advice. At the end of the day, although Brown was not considered a "real" feminist, and in fact came in for a great deal of scorn on that account, she helped me every bit as much as the rest of them.

She wasn't into rhetoric, ideology, or internecine wars with the sisters, she just gave good hardheaded advice about the way things were, like it or not, that's city hall so just deal with it. She liked men. They were people, they had their problems, but generally they were pretty nice. This was quite a relief to those of us who liked them too, even though there were times when it wasn't politically correct to dwell on it. She just didn't believe that liking men required her to give up everything else worthwhile in life, or her ability to provide for herself.

Yeah yeah, like just about everybody else I take issue with her rather Darwinian attitude about carrying on with married men. However, as the writer Molly Ivins would say, she had the guts to tell young women how the cow ate the cabbage. I honor her for that.