Helen Gurley Brown passed away at age 90 yesterday, and modern feminism is left to ponder her legacy.
She is sometimes held up by secular culture as a pioneer and a role model, yet feminists could never quite get comfortable with her. She championed women in the workplace and encouraged no-strings-attached sex, which earned her much praise, yet her feminist sisters often rejected her for her intense focus on attracting the attention of men. Brown said in her famous book Sex and the Single Girl that "if you aren't meeting any men through your job, you are in the wrong job." She advocated for sleeping with married men, and she summed up her thoughts on the impact it might have on wives by saying, "I'm afraid I have a rather cavalier attitude about wives. The reason is this: A wife, if she is loving and smart, will get her husband back every time."
She really attracted the ire of modern feminists when she wistfully recounted an old workplace game called "scuttle" for the Wall Street Journal:
When I was working my way through secretarial school in Los Angeles at radio station KHJ, and I came in from school every afternoon, some of the men would be playing a dandy game called 'Scuttle.'
Rules: All announcers and engineers who weren't busy would select a secretary, chase her down the halls, through the music library and back to the announcing booths, catch her and take her panties off.
Once the panties were off, the girl could put them back on again. Nothing wicked ever happened. Depantying was the sole object of the game.
While all this was going on, the girl herself usually shrieked, screamed, flailed, blushed, threatened and pretended to faint, but to my knowledge no scuttler was ever reported to the front office. Au contraire, the girls wore their prettiest panties to work.
At the core of Brown's message to women was the view that attracting men is one of the most important things a woman could do, if not the most important. The intense diet and exercise regimens, meticulous dress, and the strict weight limits she suggested for women were all ordered toward being more sexually attractive to men. She wrote in Sex and the Single Girl:
The sheer stocking, the twenty-four-inch waist, the smoldering looking have nothing to do with successful mating or procreating, but they say to a man, "I'm with it. I have tried to make myself beautiful for you. I've gone to a lot of trouble because I think you're worth it and I like myself. I want you to notice me and want me."
Brown would bring this worldview with her when she took over Cosmopolitan magazine in 1965, and to this day the magazine is known for its headlines that promise to teach women how to please men sexually, with little concern for commitments or lasting relationships.
Betty Friedan once said that Cosmopolitan is "quite obscene and quite horrible" because it "embraces the idea that a woman is nothing but a sex object." In more recent times, countless feminist websites have lambasted Brown for being a traitor to the feminist cause. Modern secular culture seemed to have little use for Brown's ideas, seeing her at best as a quasi-feminist with outdated views, and at worse as a betrayer of womankind.
But is this fair?
It strikes me that Brown may have been denied the full embrace of modern secular feminism simply because of her intellectual honesty. Her views were wildly politically incorrect, but they flowed directly from the "truths" held dear by American culture. If it is the case that it's good and healthy for single women to be sexually active, then is it so outrageous to suggest that they should make themselves as physically appealing as possible in order to maximize their prospects for sex? Many feminists echoed Betty Friedan's words and claimed that Brown's views objectified women, but Brown merely pointed out the obvious truth that if a woman wants to have a variety of sexual encounters with men she doesn't know well (and who therefore would not even have the opportunity to be interested in her for anything other than her body), then she'd better put down that brownie and get to the gym.
When modern-day feminism shunned the traditional understanding of human sexuality in which sex was meant for marriage and marriage meant commitment and mutual self-sacrifice, it was they who laid the foundation for the objectification of women. Brown merely took those ideas to their logical conclusions.
Brown never caved in to pressure to change her message, and in the end she became a tragic symbol of its consequences. She once advised women that "if you're not a sex object, you're in trouble," and that idea certainly gets harder and harder for a woman to maintain as the years roll by. She wrote in her memoir Wild Again about getting breast implants when she was 73 and working out for two 45-minute sessions a day, seven days a week, even into her late 70s (saying that being skinny was still "sacred" to her). Brown's passing yesterday marked the closing of an era, the end of a type of controversial feminism whose ideas she boldly and fearlessly originated. May she now find the peace that eluded her in this life.
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This is too much secular information. There was no reason to include the details of this “panty” game in the article. This is Catholic media not secular media, and I am disappointed!
Thanks Jennifer, for taking time to mention Helen Gurley Brown. She’s older than I am but I certainly remember her “gospel”. What’s amusing is that while today’s secular feminists decry her mantra of “Get the man at any cost”, you have to notice a very high percentage of them still slavishly following her prescriptions. Goodbye Helen, I may have thought you were confused but you surely were consistent.
Thanks for this, Jennifer. I was seriously swayed by Brown’s thinking as a young, working girl in NYC. It was not unlike the precursor to Sex and the City philosophies. Bottom line was that she was a mistress, a kept woman, to a married man and made her first money through her money-maker. She had a lot of justifying to do.
And Mrs D Johnson, I am so tired of prudes like you; here we have a culture who is eating up our kids alive (I was one of them) and you want us to keep quiet about it, lest it bruise your delicate un-secular sensibilities. We’ve got to face reality - by spelling it and calling it out - and having a case of the vapors isn’t the way to do it.
Has her death really marked the end of her “type of controversial feminism”? It appears to me like her type of feminism is what really has won. Yes, there have been positive developments where women can succeed in the work place… but at the same time, the message society seems to be sending to women seems to have increased the importance of being “sexy”.
What a pity that a generation of daughters had to grow up with trash like Cosmo as a source for gleaning information because their “proper” mothers didn’t have discussions with them. There was no internet when I was 18! I think it was also fascinating that in a study that Simcha Fisher linked to, the girls who were exposed to secular ideas and images, but had mothers to talk them through the ideas that life would inevitably present them with, were less likely to choose the image of a scantily dressed, pretty girl, as the most popular or attractive one—*More so* than the “sheltered” girls who were supposedly being kept away from such ideas!
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What is also sad is when a woman gives up cultivating her feminine beauty as a “weakness” which she is afraid will surely end up exploiting her, or when those on the far right try to counteract the “hell in a handbasket” world they see, by shaming women into withdrawing from the world, and everything that is good or neutral in modern society. This is the arena where the evangelisation of modern women and culture is taking place. The puritans will be left across their great divide where they can compete with each other, and shake a finger at the ones in the “hand basket”.
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Good Catholic wives and mothers need to open their eyes to what their husbands are being subjected to as well. Women can be shocking predators. I would imagine that Ms. Cosmo herself is facing the aftermath of her “fun and games” mentality. I used to think that women just weren’t “wired that way”, until my husband opened my eyes,describing the aggressive tactics that some women employ for “love” and attention.
Regarding the workplace “game” played in the radio station: nothing “wicked” happened. What would qualify for wicked in her rules?
I’m with you Mrs Johnson you are hardly a prude. She celebrated the life built of hay and straw and left nothing that will last into eternity. A life wasted and remembered only by a world savaging among the ruins of its own last gasp before like a puff of smoke it can be found no more. Yet there among the gold and silver tried by fire pray by God’s grace may our lives found forever more. If that makes us prudish then how happy a prude I am to be.
When I saw the obit for MS Brown, I said a prayer for her salvation. I want to yank out all the COSMO filthy rags from the supermarket checkouts - it belongs in the GARBAGE.
While I would not use the harsh criticism of calling Mrs. D Johnson a prude - there is not enough info from her comment to justify that name - I disagree that including the “Scuttle” game was not relevant information for a Catholic media article. As a revert to the faith (and now much more traditional than I used to be), I think it is important to know what we are up against in the secular world. These are the influences that are affecting our sisters and brothers, and potentially our children in the future. It does not help to turn a blind eye to the things that affect others in our lives, whether family, friends or more distant acquaintances. I have worked a lot with troubled youth and young adults, and interestingly, it was often those who grew up very sheltered that became most exposed to such things once becoming young adults. I could tell of unfortunate experiences in my early 20s that affected my coworkers. Many who had never heard of such things had no tools to cope with the problems when they became apparent in their lives.
The scripture passage (don’t have the reference right now, sorry) that comes to mind: We should be as innocent as doves but as wise as serpents.
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Then the God of peace will be with you.
I not really all that sure we need to remember this ladies wake of destruction at all but then rosee does make a good point.
“Behold, I am sending you as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.”
Matthew 10:16 (NAS)
...err… make that Matthew 10:16 (NAB)
It is insulting and judgmental to call anyone a prude. I also did not need to hear the details of the Scuttle game.
I needed to hear the details. Want to know why? Because it makes what little indignities I endure pale in comparison to what passed for the usual treatment of women at work, and because it reminds me that my place at work as an attending physician is a blessing. I cannot believe that something presented without lascivious humor, as illustrative of this late “feminist” mindset’s acceptability should be under such blistering attack. Ms. Fulwhiler is a journalist. Sorry I can’t spell your name, but I’m exhausted. It’s just silly to expect her to omit details that she clearly takes no pleasure in. It’s history, in the same way that sitting at the back of the bus is history. She’s not recounting this out of pleasure. The article actually emphasizes that HGB was actually wistful for this idiocy. Indeed, God rest her soul, and have mercy on us too.
I would like to address the comments made by cosmo. Keeping in mind the words of St Paul from 2Timothy (correcting opponents with kindness and gentleness) I will not return insult for insult.
Cosmo, we are what we eat. Eat junk food and you WILL gain weight (and injure your health.) We know from Scripture that when we “touch pitch we blacken our hand.” We are also advised to watch the company we keep. Mother Teresa said, “If you put your finger in the fire, it will burn.” The catechism advises us to monitor what we read, see and listen to. There are very good reasons for all this. To maintain any kind of spiritual purity in a hedonistic, secular culture one must be ever vigilant. And cosmo, I hold Catholic media to a higher standard. (BTW I LOVE the NCR.)
Alexis and MM, thank you and God bless you both for being encouraging! :)
Doctor, I’m sorry but I disagree. The point can be well taken without the inappropriate details. There is so much in this world that is horrific. It does not accomplish anything useful to learn the sordid details of every unGodly act. God bless you all and goodnight :)
I honestly don’t see the description of “scuttle” as gratuitous, but something that helps us see the inconsistency of the modern feminists who saw Ms. Brown as doing a disservice to their movement. I find it odd that they rejected her publicly, but seem to follow her every advice privately. We’re told not to obsess about our bodies, but Cosmo has been screaming about being a sex object for decades (even fitness magazines tout that they’ll help you be sexy as opposed to healthy).
There’s guarding your eyes, which I work hard to do, and there’s hiding them to the point that you cannot gain information that helps to make a point without going into lewd territory. I think Jennifer’s purpose of including this description wasn’t to titillate, but to inform us - to perhaps show how this depravity started with “games” that were touted as innocent that were anything but.
I think it’s possible to engage the culture, and even discuss the less-depraved lewdness, without being over the line. After all, St. Augustine wrote about his own sins in Confessions. Should we avoid that, as well, because it may contain discussion of inappropriate actions? (I know St. Augustine didn’t go into details about his fornication, but neither does the above.)
As far as feminists rejecting Ms. Brown, I honestly don’t see anything but lip service to such rejection. Perhaps it was just in the beginning. Right now, I see a full-on embrace of her “ideals” on self-image and sex. It’s a shame, and I pray daily that I can teach my girls well enough and help form their consciences well enough that they’re able to sort through the muck of our society as they enter adulthood. Goodness knows we can’t even go to the store without being surrounded on all sides by the filth. At some point, they become too old for me to keep having them cover their eyes, and they must be able to use what they’ve been taught to sort through, to throw away the garbage and take in the good. They need to be able to avert their eyes on their own, not because I told them. This is our challenge as Christian parents, and it certainly is a monumental task.
I lived a life I should not have owned for years in New Orleans where one can become surrounded by the life of vice. Eventually I moved away both from that life and the city of New Orleans which I very much love now in a new way.
Years later I went back to visit and while driving through the city from the airport I couldn’t help but notice the nonstop cavalcade of billboards of strip clubs, alcohol and gambling. and thought about just how ugly and destructive it must be to adorn such a city with these messages and wondered out loud to my friends just how this could have happened. They replied “what do you mean these same signs were there when you lived here”. I was stunned but I suppose they were right but I was so much a part of it all that I was no longer able to see them they just disappeared as part of the normal background.
My point is that it wasn’t having the signs of vice around that made it possible to see them but living a life in a place that didn’t have them at all that made their ugliness able stand out. I also suppose pointing them out to the locals doesn’t do much as it has been part of their landscape for so long they can’t see it any longer. Leading people to a cleaner city does however make everything else fall into place so when they go back they can see everything clearly till one day we will never have to go back and get anyone out again.
Making time for a retreat regularly we all need this if we are ever going to see clear enough to bring others to that amazing City on a Hill. The spiritual exercises with Miles Christi is a great way.
Dr. Marrero is exactly right. And let’s be perfectly clear: NO ONE here is saying anything positive about Brown herself. What some of us ARE saying is that it is absurd to demand that JF not upset one’s little bubble of uber-pious serenity. It might be upsetting. Dear, oh dear.
Of fercryinoutloud, it’s not “judgmental” to have an opinion. And anyone who reads the above and demands that the author shut up about it is going to hear that that’s a prudish overreaction. We need to hear, discuss, opine, use our God-given minds to debate, argue and talk about what the hell is going on out there. But then again, if you insist that everyone bend to your personal fainting-couch standards, then you’d be proven holier than thou. Which is really what this is all about.
I’m not sure why anyone would click on an article about Helen Gurley Brown and expect something G-rated.
It’s fine to have differing opinions & express them through our right of free speech but you’d hope those comments would be respectful, especially on a Catholic site.Name calling detracts from the conversation.
But surely Mrs. D Johnson make some valid points as well. I cant find any demands from her just some disappointment. The things she has written in her second post are very true and I think it can be acknowledged by all that it is at least possible to make the same point about her life without including examples of it. It really is possible.
When I clicked on this story I expected either 1) a personal blog account of Jennifer’s impression of the feminist movement as a Catholic woman in the wake of Helen’s death; or 2) a solid piece of Catholic journalism on the death of a significant cultural newsmaker. I got neither.
Mrs. D. Johnson was on track: This wasn’t a piece that quoted leading Catholic moral theologians (think Dr. Janet Smith for starters) on what Helen/Cosmo got wrong. And it wasn’t a personal essay.
It could have been better. It could have articulated how the Catholic worldview differs vastly from the Cosmo worldview. It could have built on Jennifer’s valid analysis of secular feminism with what 20+ years of Theology Of the Body has taught us. And it could have made any of points while meeting a tight deadline. NC Register Editors: Time for an editorial policy on secular obits?
Polish Pilgrim ,
It’s just a blog, not an encyclical or thesis.And we’re each free to start our own blogs-which may or may not be featured on the NCR.
So there it is: A non issue to persecute a perfectly good and conscientious writer, who has a stellar track record. It proves a point, doesn’t it?
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Have you ever been at mass with your family, and the gray haired lector is stiffly reading, as if he were reading a math equation. You feel sorry for him because he got stuck reading that shocking part where God speaks of love and ample breasts. You are startled for a second because for goodness sakes! This is mass! Your three oldest are smirking and your husband squeezes your hand. Your middle kids are blissfully unaware and your youngest is happily nursing in your sling. (It took you five kids to be able to do THAT in Mass) You are batting away his little hand which is searching for your other breast because he loves to hold it too. What would people think? Then something comes to you, and you realize that God himself is not like us at all…“A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved unto me, he shall lie all night between my breasts…” Sighhhhhh. Thank you God for not being held hostage….
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Time to wrest that sublime gift of God back. Time to shamelessly stand up to the Cosmo editors who promote the Devil’s counterfeit. Time to grow up and mount a counter defense. Time to resuscitate it, from those who would hold it hostage and smother it under rigid sackcloth and shame for the body.
To cosmo: Since you insist on continuing with the name calling and misquoting me I cannot continue to fruitlessly dialogue with you, but wish you well.
Alexis as you stated I made my points and used myself as an example (and Scripture as a reference point.) We demonstrate on a daily basis that we ARE, in fact what we eat! We shall know we are Christians “by our Love” . . . by our ability to interact with without condemning one another :)
In addition although I expressed disappointment in the details which I previously mentioned, I found the author to be a fine writer.
Have a blessed day everyone!
I am glad that Jennifer included that disgusting “game,” because I wouldn’t have fully understood what that woman stood for otherwise.
We have to know how to confront evil when we’re faced with it, not hide from it.
Mrs. Johnson,
Hi, I’m not “Cosmo” as you referred to me. I’m a mother of many who has no time or energy for Cosmo’s lies. What I wrote above was general, if anything a reaction to “Polish immigrant. You are probably a very upstanding woman, like my own amazing mother who I try to emulate in so many ways. I love her dearly. I would never condemn you. It’s too late to take my own mother to task for never befriending me at all, or for leaving wolves to interpret such weighty matters. She’s a wonderful, stellar, woman whose cheeks turn pink when such things I described are mentioned in mass. May God reward her for her virtue. She taught me my faith, which is everything. I’m doing things differently with my own children, in discussing sexual matters very openly, kindly, with discretion, humor, solemnity, and yes, wonder and joy.
Hi to the previous poster,
Sorry for the misunderstanding, glad I checked back to see if my post went through!
There is another cosmo that I was addressing. If you take a look at the previous posts you will see a “conversation” with somebody by the name of “cut by cosmo.”
You and I must have been typing at the same time, because I just read “Your” post for the first time and you seem lovely. Thank you for your sharing and God bless you, your mom and your family :)
How is this legacy complicated? She was propagating how to act like a trollop and it’s likely she was funded by the gov’t as was Gloria Steinem who admitted the CIA had funded MS Magazine.
Thank you Jen for your insightful reflection. Helen Gurley Brown has indeed left a mixed and complicated legacy. She was gifted in that she recognised certain fundamental aspects of a woman’s nature - our longing to be beautiful and to be desired, our desire to please our men, and to be physically and emotionally fulfilled through loving them. This is why women continue to read Cosmo in such great numbers - because it recognises and affirms these desires, however twisted and tragic its response to them is. Helen Gurley Brown did not accept or understand that the inescapable meaning of sex is marital love, and so she taught women that they could - and should - settle for pleasing *any* man, rather than the one man who truly loves them and is worthy of the gift of their body - their husband. This was a terrible and tragic error that continues to have devastating consequences for women.
There is a beautiful story about Helen Gurley Brown and Cardinal Dolan here:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/when-the-archbishop-hugged-cosmos-queen/
May God have mercy on Helen’s soul and may she find in Him the passion, the peace, the intimacy and the love that she was made for.
“A wife, if she is loving and smart, will get her husband back every time.”
This assumes that *she wants him back.* How a woman who is both loving and smart would stick around to put up with perpetual abuse of trust, I cannot understand.
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I did not think the description was gratuitous or titillating either. In fact, it sounds so much like making a game of rape that I believe I have friends who would be horrified and, if they ever picked up a Cosmo, would never do so again. I find it a strange reaction to seemingly be more shocked about its appearance here than shocked that someone could think it up in the first place, and a “feminist” would not object.
Message to Mrs. D. Johnson: Get real. Jennifer did exactly what Catholic media is SUPPOSED to do: take the pieces of our daily news and pop culture and place them into a Catholic Christian context. This is as open-minded and fair a statement on Ms. Brown’s legacy as has been written in religious or secular media. Cal Thomas once called Ms. Brown “the female Hugh Hefner” and he was right to this degree - both sold promiscuity as liberation and sophistication, then delivered their followers to advertisers trying to do the same. A gullible bet.
Posted by Tony on Thursday, Aug 16, 2012 10:29 AM (EST): Cal Thomas once called Ms. Brown “the female Hugh Hefner” and he was right to this degree - both sold promiscuity as liberation and sophistication, then delivered their followers to advertisers trying to do the same. A gullible bet.”
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It’s a good comparison.Her magazine always seemed like soft-porn for women.Maybe not even “soft” in later years, just guesing from the covers in the check-out aisle.
Erin- I think your comments are spot on. Thank you for sharing.
I didn’t realize the Helen Gurley Brown was that old (or me either). I’m not a prude, but seeing some issues of Cosmo when it first began as it emphasized sex with no regrets was really what was going on in that period, the hippie movement, free love etc. I understand that the articles now though are far more explicit and young women are still following her mantra. Seeing her as a guest on some TV shows, I thought she may have been suffering from cancer because she looked so thin. Its obvious she was obsessed with her body probably much to her concern now in eternity. I did work at a radio station in the sixties though, and there were plenty of sexual hijinks going on there much to my embarrassment because I had gone through Catholic schools and this was my first exposure to the real world. Ironically too, I read that many of these articles are meant to deceive as they are written by men, not women. One more soul to pray for.
Sorry but I don’t think I’ll be able to pray for a soul who was so obviously unrepentent until her bitter end. Again, I refer all here to the fact that Brown was a willing pawn in the culture creation that has been going on for centuries. “Culture” is not created from the bottom-up but most decidedly from the top-down. It’s driven by powerful entities masquerading as governments and non-governmental organizations with unlimited (tax-exempt) funds at their disposal and it is all geared to the end game—world domination by a very small clique of persons belonging to a very old clique indeed. Brown did nothing but further this agenda by aiding and abeting the destruction of the family.
Pia ,
I don’t think forgiveness is optional for Christians.We don’t have to feel it as an emotion but can certainly pray for those who have strayed.No one but God knows the disposition of any soul at the time of death.
Complicated? I just hope she didn’t go to hell.
Wow, if I were a non-Catholic reading these comments…I think I’d probably stay that way. Just saying…
And Jen, keep up the excellent work. You always do.
Posted by Jenny on Sunday, Aug 19, 2012 9:46 AM (EST):Wow, if I were a non-Catholic reading these comments…I think I’d probably stay that way. Just saying…”
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I agree & I’ve thought about that reading some of the comments in other blogs.Scary.
You just don’t get it.
Feminists are the ones who fought the long, hard battle to illegalize sexual harassment in the work place. Feminists are the ones called sexless humorless b*tches every time they spoke out against the sexualization that woman endured in the work place. If you are a working woman today and have not been sexually harassed: thank a feminist!
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