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Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine
 
 

Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine [Kindle Edition]

Jennifer Scanlon
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Print List Price: £14.99
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Review

Bracing biography...thoroughly absorbing. (Frances Wilson, TLS )

Scanlon's biography, both scholarly and readable, is an excellent treatise on the subject. (Jeananne Crowley, Irish Times )

Scanlon...is to be applauded for her revisionist approach. (Liz Hoggard, Evening Standard )

The book moves at a cracking pace and is mercifully free of academic jargon. (Liz Hoggard, Evening Standard )

A deeply satisfying and illuminating read...Scanlon is also a clear-headed and fair biographer. (Sarah Vine, The Times )

An important book for any modern woman who occasionally wonders how we got where we are today. (Sarah Vine, The Times )

Product Description

Read Jennifer Scanlon's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community.



"Scanlon's shrewed biography reveals a woman of contraditions...a strategically racy cultural pioneer."
- O, The Oprah Magazine


As the author of the revolutionary Sex and the Single Girl and the longtime editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Helen Gurley Brown changed how women thought about sex, money, and their bodies in a way that resonates in our culture today. In Jennifer Scanlon's widely acclaimed biography, the award-winning scholar related Brown's escape from her humble beginnings in the Ozarks to her eyebrow- raising exploits as a young woman in New York, and her late-blooming career as the world's first "lipstick feminist." A mesmerizing look at an often overlooked figure, Bad Girls Go Everywhere will appeal to everyone from Sex and the City aficionados to students of women's studies.


Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 694 KB
  • Print Length: 289 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0195342054
  • Publisher: Penguin (31 Aug 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B004WB1CEG
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #245,391 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Jennifer Scanlon
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Jill Meyer TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
f I could, I'd give the writing of this book the five stars I did, but give the subject of the book, Helen Gurley Brown, two stars for her very existence. The author wrote an almost scholarly bio of Brown and her very heavy influence on society from the publication of her first book, Sex and the Single Girl in 1962 to her three decade-long editorialship (and redefining of) the magazine Cosmopolitan.

Brown DID have a great influence on post-war American women, "okaying" their position in the workplace, and telling them that it was "okay" to stay single and - gasp - enjoy an active love life. Even with - gasp - married men. The women Brown was writing for were not the ones later aimed at by feminists. These women were the secretaries and other white-collar workers, who maybe didn't attend college and were not aiming for "careers", but rather to get along in life. Betty Friedan - contrasted with Brown - was writing for the college-educated lawyer and doctors-to-be.

Brown's "girls" were urged to take advantage of men, in ways both financial and personal. In many sneaky and underhanded ways, Brown, tells her "girls" to score both money and other material objects from men. And that's what I always felt was dishonest about Helen Gurley Brown. She condoned "girls" sleeping with married men (while pointing out the obvious disadvantages) but I wonder how SHE would have felt had David Brown had affairs?

I can recommend the book for the writing as well as the analysis. I still didn't like Helen Gurley Brown, but I feel I understand her better.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As someone who came of age reading HGBrown's book Sex and the Single Girl, and glad of the confidence which came of reading her books and magazine, I was delighted to read Jennifer Scanlon's biography of her. Finally HGB is getting the recognition she fully deserves. A well rounded and researched portrayal.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By anna
Format:Hardcover
This is a thoughtful and scholarly account of the life of Helen Gurley Brown whose influence on my generation through 'Sex and the Single Girl' and 'Cosmopolitan' was profound. Ms Scanlon is a model biographer, generally sympathetic but not oblivious to the contradictions in HGB's character which she explores with a nice combination of honesty and delicacy. The author contextualises HGB's feminism, contrasting it with others whose take was different, such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, in a style that is accessible and mercifully jargon-free but also intelligent and polished. It is also good to be reminded how far women have come from the oppressive, limiting, hypocritical fifties and sixties.

A pity about the title though: fine for a light Cosmo article, but I would be sorry if potential readers were to assume that it's just a lightweight biog. and therefore miss out on an interesting, authoritative and thought-provoking work.
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