Sex and the Single Girl

I well remember when this book came out and caused an instant sensation and plentiful moral outrage. It was a guilty read. But also a wise, intelligent and savvy piece of work, as well as being hilarious. I think a lot of us back then thought Helen Gurley Brown was a real talent and were not surprised when she became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and presto chango made it the hottest magazine in the world (and a bible on college campuses). Now, in retrospect, after all these years, I'm thinking Mrs. Brown was even more talented than we knew and certainly a visionary. Her advice, which seemed so outrageous then, is above all practical and now seems totally reasonable. I own every book she's ever written and can tell you she is incapable of writing anything dull or dumb. If you don't know this classic, get it, you'll love it and it even has recipes!

Isn't that an odd thing to say about a book whose title starts with the word "sex?" Well, around 1964 one of my parents brought this book home, although neither of them would ever confess to the deed. Whoever it was, they did me a big favor. When the folks weren't watching, I swiped the book and devoured it in a single long sitting. Helen Gurley Brown should have entitled this masterwork "All the Hard-Nosed Things that Young Women in the So-Called Pre-Feminist Era Need to Know about Money, Career, Independence, Women's Rights, and The Way Things Unfortunately Are. And Oh Yes, Sex. That." However, the book would undoubtedly have sold fewer copies if the title had truly reflected the contents, so it's just as well they hyped the sex part. Under the impression that I was going to get to read some really naughty stuff, I studied Brown's book with the intensity I would later reserve for pre-calculus. Brown was the friendly, more experienced adult ("Aunt Helen," I liked to think of her) who cut the BS and told you how it really was with respect to a number of important subjects, often contradicting the messages of the dominant 60's culture, as it materialized later in the decade. Money? Girl, Woodstock or not, you will need it when you are no longer "pristinely young," so get a career and earn it. You will appreciate the freedom and self-respect it brings you. Do the very best you can with whatever abilities you have and the education you can get, and the rewards will carry you through the inevitable bad times that everybody faces. Beauty? Even if you are gorgeous, don't put all your eggs in that basket, because your beauty will fade, and then where will you be if that's the only card you ever played? Love? It is NOT all you need, no matter what the Beatles say. Marriage? Fine, fabulous (Brown herself has been married over forty years), but don't pin all your reasons for living - or your financial survival -- on a guy. Guys are just fallible human beings. Don't give up your ability to stand on your own two feet when you fall in love, because there are no guarantees in life, ever. As Brown eloquently put it, in middle age (or at any time before) a man can leave a woman "like dishes in the sink" if he wants to badly enough. Exercise and a healthy diet? Essential to self-respect. Property ownership (or at least having a fine apartment)? Also essential, particularly when you get older; living in a garage apartment furnished with orange crates is cute when you're twenty, but pathetic when you're forty. I came of age in the late 60's and early 70's, when the culture was telling us to tune in, turn on, and drop out. Don't conform, don't join the establishment, don't become the man or the woman in the gray flannel suit, don't throw away your life working and forget to smell the roses. Follow your dreams and the universe will magically provide. This was good advice as far as it went. It sounded so great, and it really was

When you consider that this book was written well before the 60's started swinging it is truly a wonder. Helen Gurley Brown gives some very sound advice on how to really LIVE as a single woman at a time when if you weren't married by age 25 you were doomed. You have to watch your finances and buy quality items of clothing and above all don't be afraid to be fabulous. Let a married man take you out for dinner and cocktails or buy you lovely things if it makes him happy. Most shockingly, you can have intimate relations with several men and not end up a sad and broken woman! Some advice is amazingly current: She describes what is essentially a low-carb diet as the road to health. Some ideas are also jarringly outdated: The idea that homosexuality was the result of arrested emotional development. But for most of it you can just hear the collective AAaaahhhhh of women being freed from the restrictions of the 1950's and being told "Yes, you CAN have just as much fun as the boys!"

For someone like myself who has grown up with "everything is relative, make your own way, be yourself etc etc" you may be craving advice that doesn't just "sit on the fence."This book is like having a naughty aunt whisper in your ear the "real facts" of life, love, men, apartments, food. Some advice may be a little dated, but curiously, not as much as you think.My favourite quote, and there are many of them, is "When you work for toads, drain the pond..." I've repeated this to myselfmany times in my first serious job after university working for loser macho men - and that's in a supposedly more "enlightened post-feminist" 2004! I sincerely hope Helen is still living life to the fullest. It's a fun read.

My sisters and I devoured Helen Gurley Brown's "Having It All" back in the 80s, so we were delighted to hear that her first book was back in print. It is a gem! Mrs. Brown attacks her perennial subject, that of taking charge, taking yourself and your endeavors seriously, and making the most of your life, with her characteristic vigor, honesty, and humor. This book talks not only about love and marriage, but about work, diet and health, entertaining, personal finance, style...no subject is too mundane for Mrs. Brown's lively investigation and commentary. Even the bits that are dated offer a fascinating window into another era and only serve to highlight what a zesty forerunner Mrs. Brown is and was. If you believe (or would like to) that your life is worth living well NOW, grab a copy of this book before it goes out of print again!