How Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmopolitan Magazine Shaped My Life



1982, during my most formative years

 It is with great irony and sadness that I write about the passing of the legendary publisher and icon Helen Gurley Brown, who passed away yesterday at the age of 90.  Only two days ago, as my husband and I were checking out of the grocery store, I spotted the magazine rack and as I always do, I began flipping through the various covers shouting at me to bring them home. My husband gave me his usual look, indicating I still had countless magazines I'd not yet found time to read....still, I flipped through everything from House Beautiful and Redbook to People, debating on which one would most speak to me this week.  This has been happening since I was knee-high.  While I love reading everything from non-fiction to literary classics and yes, even the trashy Harlequins, my one weakness has always been glossy magazines, with the strikingly beautiful models on the cover and headlines, screaming how they will improve every aspect of my life from my sense of fashion, career to fitness and most importantly, of course, my love life.
I blame it on my mother and the copies of Photoplay and Look magazines she left lying around the house.  Even at my daughter's tender age of seven, I'd grab them and peruse every page, filling my monthly need of Hollywood gossip.  I learned to make my father's favorite fried chicken from a recipe right out of Mom's Good Housekeeping magazine by age 10.  Once a month, Mom would let me cook an Sunday entire meal by scratch, copied from one of those magazines.  By age 13, I was making amazing meals for my family while telling you the latest fall fashion trends, the newest movies coming out and which Hollywood couples made up or split up.


Cosmo January 2012

But I digress. Back to the other day.  Just as the cashier asked if there would be anything else, I shook my head, then spotted the ever-present Cosmopolitan on the stand, with a beautiful model on the cover as usual and the alluring price of $3.99 in a bright red banner across the top. 

"That's a great price for Cosmo," I mused to myself.

Did I buy it? Of course not, because I reminded myself that my love affair with Cosmo had by now been long over for more than a decade. It was about 12 years ago I first uttered, with great lamentation, that I'd "outgrown" Cosmopolitan Magazine, the glossy companion I'd never missed an issue of since I was 18. OK, if you count the issues I'd snuck past my mother as a young teenager, I guess you can say more like age 15....

I imagine back in those days, Cosmopolitan Magazine, or what I later called "Cosmo," was to teen- aged girls what Playboy was to our male counterparts.  After all, It was Cosmo that first boldly splashed a young, naked Burt Reynolds across its centerfold in 1972.  I was all of nine years old and I remember my mother, my aunts and my mom's girlfriends' quiet giggles over it, especially after one aunt dared to tape it to her wall.



1957

One afternoon, at the age of 15, one of my BFFs from high school brought over a pile of magazines for us to read as we slathered our young bodies in baby oil to "lay out" and tan <insert audible gasp here.>  As my friends read Tiger Beat, I first read Cosmopolitan in my own right.  For the first time, my "mother's" magazine had turned to "my" new favorite read, as many of the articles (OK MOST of the articles) featured the latest hair and make-up tips and ways to tantalize and attract men, all of which appealed to my by-then boy-crazy, fashion-obsessed young mind.

Mom didn't, at first, have a problem with a few issues she'd let me pick up at the store, until the day she almost fell over in the kitchen when I waltzed in and asked her what the word "Orgasm" meant.  I was not yet 16!  She hurriedly grabbed the magazine from my hands, told me Cosmo had turned to "smut" and said I was never to bring that trash into her home, again.  (Hence the smuggled articles from then until I turned 18...)

Once I was a college girl, Cosmo was no longer smuggled into the house in a brown paper bag even if my mother still shuddered over the headlines which became ever bolder through the next several years. I'd even read HGB's daring books from the 1960s, Sex and the Single Girl, and Having It All in the 1980s, which reinforced my notion to grab life by the horns. NOW. By the time I was ready to graduate college with a degree in journalism I announced I had sent my resume to none other than Helen Gurley Brown, herself.  My mother was not surprised. 
"You know you'd have to move to New York, don't you," she asked.

Without such things like the Internet or even e-mails back then, relocating to New York was a writer's only hope to work at such a prestigious magazine like Cosmo.  That, to me, was a problem, since by then, my mother's lifelong joint disease had morphed into an affliction that would keep her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.  Mom and I had always been extraordinarily close and there was no way I was going to move away from her, especially now that she couldn't come and go as she once could.   So....I went to work in TV news, followed by stints at local newspapers and the like, maintaining both my love of writing and my family ties.

Cosmo, however, remained in my life and became tantamount to the bible to me, a young career woman of the 1980s who was busy trying to break glass ceilings, dating multiple men and not yet ready to settle down and marry.  Every year, my BFF Julie, who has as many bumps and bruises from her past love life as do I, would call me in January to be sure I'd picked up Cosmo's annual "Bedside Astrologer," which we'd pour through like schoolgirls well into our 30s.



1927

Looking back  think about the many affirmations I received from Cosmo during those years.
Aunt at family wedding: "Dear when will you settle down and marry?  You've been out of college for five years, your mother wants grandchildren!"
Me: "You know, Cosmo magazine says women do not need to marry before 40 and they can STILL have children."

I took to citing facts from that wonderful magazine to ward off many an inquiring mind through the next several years.
I was once involved in a long-term relationship I finally ended, in part, thanks to Cosmo's article and tha magazines monthly "quizzes" urging women to be sure we weren't "settling."  While all my closest friends were getting married and I would feel that gnawing sense deep down inside that maybe I'd never have children, Cosmo ran an article about the growing trend of women postponing motherhood for their careers.  That soothed me through many a stint as the unmarried bridesmaid.

Subsequently, I was engaged twice, before I met and married my husband, at age 39.  When I finally did so, I felt like maybe I'd somehow mirrored Helen Gurley Brown, who married her husband in her late 30s. 

Just as Cosmo predicted, I did, indeed, have a baby after 40 and the universe did not tilt. By then, I was more than READY to be a mom unlike so many of my close friends who were frazzled young moms in the years that I earned my own money, bought my own cars and traveled in and out of the country on a whim.  Thanks to Cosmopolitan Magazine, I've lived a vivacious,fun-loving life without the pressure of having to do "certain things" by a "certain age."  I pursued my educational and career goals and to boot, I finally did what I knew I'd ultimately do on MY terms.... marry and become <another audible gasp> a housewife.  Only this time, I'd say I'm anything BUT a "desperate housewife" thanks to Helen Gurley Brown's non-conventional wisdom.

I chuckle when I stop to think how I'm more "Family circle" than "Cosmo" these days....but somehow I think the now late, great HGB would approve. In fact, as I approach my <gasp> 49th birthday this fall I think I will be snatching up her final book, "The Late Show: A Semi-wild But Practical Plan for Women Over 50," so I can go boldly into the next phase of my life. Somehow I feel she'll still be with me for several years to come and I've a feeling the "wild child" within will not be tamed by my "Fab 50s"  Rest in Peace, HGB and a special thanks from your "Cosmo Girls," everywhere.