One of Arkansas’ most notable native daughters passed away this week. Helen Gurley Brown, progenitor of the “modern woman” ideal, died Monday morning at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was 90 years old.
Most known for her tenure as editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, Gurley Brown changed the landscape of modern feminism. Nowhere do we see this more fully than her 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl. The influential and highly controversial tome encouraged young women to enjoy single life, to find career fulfillment and to use non-marital relationships with men — much as men had done with women — and to take pleasure in sex. Combined with the release of Betty Friedan’s landmark 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, Sex and the Single Girl ushered in the modern feminist movement. The book was listed as a bestseller for more than a year and was the basis for a movie starring Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda. It was Gurley Brown who invented today’s notion of a modern woman — one who could have both a successful career and an exciting, satisfying sex life, said Bonnie Fuller, who took over at Cosmopolitan when Gurley Brown stepped down in 1997.
Apparently, Gurley Brown took her own advice to heart. She “was an icon,” said Frank Bennack Jr., CEO of Hearst Corporation (publisher of Cosmopolitan) in a statement. “Her formula for honest and straightforward advice about relationships, career and beauty revolutionized the magazine industry. She lived every day of her life to the fullest and will always be remembered as the quintessential ‘Cosmo girl.’ She will be greatly missed.”
Of course the jet-setting, svelte and glamorous Gurley Brown wasn’t always the maven of haute couture and redefined gender roles that we came to know. She was born in Green Forest, Ark., on February 18, 1922, to Ira and Cleo Gurley, both school teachers. The family moved to Little Rock when Ira was elected to the state legislature. He died in an elevator accident when Helen was just 10 years old. After trying to support Helen and her older sister, Mary, in Depression-era Arkansas, Cleo Gurley moved them to Los Angeles in the late 1930s. There, Gurley Brown excelled socially and academically, graduating from high school as class valedictorian.
She spent a year at the Texas State College for Women and returned home to put herself through Woodbury Business College. In 1941, with her business degree, Gurley Brown took on a series of secretarial jobs. Gurley Brown often said she was determined not to be a “hillbilly.” She used a succession of jobs (and relationships with men during those jobs) to climb both professionally and socially.
Her 17th job at the advertising agency Foote, Cone, and Belding, proved to be the springboard her future success. As executive secretary to Don Belding, Gurley Brown’s work ethic and wit impressed both her boss and his wife, who suggested she try her hand at writing advertising copy. She proved her talent, winning prizes for her copy. By the late 1950s, she had become the highest-paid female copywriter on the West Coast. Perhaps the greatest irony of Gurley Brown’s life was her 1959 marriage to studio executive David Brown. The couple stayed together until his death in 2010.
It is in this paradox that Gurley Brown becomes most interesting. At once a defiant iconoclast and promoter of unfettered sexuality, she embraced the pinnacle of conventional social institutions: marriage. However history remembers her, there is no denying that Gurley Brown made waves, changed lives and did it with great aplomb.