The Single Girl

She attempted to have the book censored or banned in the United States.

No, she wasn’t your socially conservative female.

Yes, in 1962 it was viewed as a scandalous book:  Sex and the Single Girl advocated having sex before marriage, and gave advice on how to have an affair.

And she was married.

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But she failed to get it banned…

She failed to get her… — own book — banned.

L’audace, l’audace. Toujours l’audace!
— General George S. Patton

Her PROMOTER‘s idea didn’t work.  Publicity by infamy, clever, but probably the establishment got wise, or more likely they were just confused: they didn’t know what had hit them.

But it didn’t matter.

The book was selling like hot cakes. It eventually sold in 28 countries.  Her advice to women seemed to hit the spot.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.
– Bob Dylan

Yep, it was the sixties — 1962 — before the sixties revolution.

“Her advice to women came from hard-won personal experience. Without higher education, Ms. Gurley Brown spent her 20s bouncing from one menial job to another before landing at the Los Angeles advertising agency Foote Cone and Belding as the executive assistant to one of the partners. There, she leveraged the position into a job writing ads, eventually becoming one of the highest-paid copywriters on the West Coast.

When Ms. Gurley Brown took the editor’s chair of Cosmopolitan, Hearst had almost nothing to lose: The magazine was in decline, with only $1.5-million in ad revenue and a circulation of 782,000. Her flair for punchy copy and compelling visuals – the very first Cosmo cover she produced featured a woman with a plunging neckline – was instantly successful. She courted controversy and buzz with stunts such as publishing a 1972 centerfold with an almost-nude Burt Reynolds and one in 1977 with Arnold Schwarzenegger.” [Online Newspaper column, revised]

Ms. Brown, Promoter Artisan, instinctively knew what to do, even at forty and married, when she published Sex and the Single Girl.

In Memoriam: Helen Gurley Brown (February 18, 1922 – August 13, 2012) was an American author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.

When a Promoter is present, things begin to happen: the lights come on, the music plays, the games begin. Clever and full of fun, Promoters live with a theatrical flourish which makes even the most routine events seem exciting. Not that they waste much time on routine events. In work and in play, Promoters demand new activities and new challenges. Bold and daring at heart, and ever-optimistic that things will go their way, Promoters will take tremendous risks to get what they want, and seem exhilarated by walking close to the edge of disaster. Because of this, they make the very best trouble-spot administrators and negotiators, and they can be outstanding entrepreneurs, able to swing deals and kick-start enterprises in a way no other type can. [Please Understand Me II]

And oh, yes, she was married for 50 years to her husband until he died.  She died single, still working for the Hearst Corporation at the age of 90.

Warning the following video is for mature audiences.

What you have to do is work with the raw material you have, namely you, and never let up. — Helen Gurley Brown

2 thoughts on “The Single Girl”

  1. Vale Helen Gurley Brown, a leader and campaigner in wonderful and bold Promoter Artisan temperament style, sex is good, to bring sex to the table and just have fun with that. The table, the bed, the bushes, whatever and wherever you like. Yes, women love sex, loved the detail on her sex lesson101. 🙂
    Also she is very funny, I so chuckled over her humor, “go to the kitchen and put you head in the oven”-(re if you were having sex back then and a single girl), and “it was kinda puritanical up there”..such guts, such honesty. Here is to the Promoter Artisan females, and a toast to girls just wanna have fun.
    Loved this. Nearly sprayed my breakfast coffee over the laptop, but absolutely love her.

  2. God rest her fun-loving soul. It’s interesting to compare and contrast her with fellow Promoter and sexual revolutionary Hugh Hefner.

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