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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 )
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
Born in Arkansas to a family of modest means, Helen Gurley Brown worked at countless secretarial jobs and was an advertising executive before writing the 1962 international bestseller Sex and the Single Girl, marrying the love of her life, becoming the diva of the New York magazine world, and editing Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years. In her farewell column in 1997, Brown offered her Cosmo readers three pieces of advice: every woman has something that makes her unique and gifted; men are not the enemy; and sex is among the best things in life. With these brief directives Brown summarized the philosophy that made her such an important and contested figure throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Imagine the life of a single woman in 1962. Women were encouraged to attend college primarily to obtain an Mrs. degree, newspaper ads listed jobs by sex, women could only obtain credit through their husbands, and unmarried women became suspect by the time they reached their mid-twenties. Along came a firebrand named Helen Gurley Brown, who had remained single into her late thirties and who had the audacity to encourage her unmarried sisters not to grab a husband, or to hide their single status, but to live, instead, in what she called "superlative style." Her 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl, became an overnight and international sensation for its frank look at single women's work lives, financial lives, and, of course, sex lives. To conservatives, Brown's books and magazine released the single woman from all social and sexual constraints, making her a threat to the institution of marriage. To many in the women's liberation movement, Brown's views enhanced men's rather than women's lives by turning women into sexually available playmates rather than making them powerful in their own right. For her legion of fans, however, Helen Gurley Brown represented another path, one that let women pursue heterosexual relationships yet remain independent, work at being beautiful yet call themselves feminists. Jennifer Scanlon's book is the first biography of Helen Gurley Brown, an icon of contemporary women's history and popular culture. Brown's irreverent and daring life and work challenge the stereotype of second-wave feminists as frumpy and humorless, while foreshadowing the sex-positive, lipstick-wearing--Cosmo-reading--third wave. Because Brown both bought into and utterly transformed advertising and consumer culture, this book will interest not only a female trade audience, but scholars in women's studies, American studies, popular culture studies, sociology, and history.
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Before it became famous as the birthplace of Helen Gurley Brown, Green Forest, Arkansas, a tiny town in the Ozarks, was known principally for two things: its individualistic traditions and its bawdy folklore. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
Before it became famous as the birthplace of Helen Gurley Brown, Green Forest, Arkansas, a tiny town in the Ozarks, was known principally for two things: its individualistic traditions and its bawdy folklore. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bad Girls Go Everywhere,
By China girl (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful, scholarly, fair,
By anna (Somerset, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book about a fairly odious subject...,
By
This review is from: Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (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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