Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown

This would be a great choice for an ambitious book club, because I spent a lot of time going "Yes, but..." and frustrated that there was no one around to actually discuss it with. I did read Sex and the Single Girl about a year ago, which provides some really helpful context. The academic defending-a-thesis tone of this isn't too heavy, although it leads to some distractingly odd (ivory tower?) statements (by the author, not by Brown) about things like why women dye their hair, what is a healthy daily calorie count, and what a grain elevator does. Lots of interesting cultural history and context, and I ILL'd several books from the bibliography. Love that she suggested a tv series set in an advertising agency and the studio said no one show more would be interested in that setting. Totally unsurprising that Cosmopolitan is currently most successful in Russia. Would have liked more explanation of why she thought college never would have worked for her. Impressive that she tried (if not very hard) to get positive pieces on abortion and homosexuality published way before their time and insisted on leaving in the career and finance columns even when reader polls said they didn't care. Useful discussions of how class privilege enables social protest, but it still seemed like Scanlon was too lenient with the whole courtesan thing, not to mention the infidelity angle. Scanlon was also surprisingly accepting of the 'universal' fear of the 'ravages of aging.' And what the heck was with the spoon bending?

Now to go read the Caitlin Flanagan review in The Atlantic that's generating so much discussion. show less

I was an avid reader of Cosmopolitan magazine in college and have read most of Helen Gurley Brown’s books, so I was delighted to find that there was finally a biography of this interesting woman. I found the book uneven reading, though. Instead of being a straight biography, parts of the book read like a textbook, attempting to relate Brown’s beliefs to the feminist movement, and comparing and contrasting her ideas with those of other feminists like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. Analysis of her stands on working women, abortion, birth control, sexism, and other feminist issues seem to occupy an inordinate amount of space in the book and, to me, come across as somewhat dry and uninteresting compared to the straight biographical show more sections, which I found very absorbing. The author is, according to the book jacket, a professor of gender and women’s studies, so it is easy to see where her interest lies. There are very few photos included in the book—I would like to have seen more. Worthwhile reading for fans of Helen Gurley Brown. show less

I very much enjoyed this biography of Helen Gurley Brown, and didn't mind the academic tone of it at all. It reminded me of why I loved Cosmopolitan in the late 60s - early 70s, and how much Helen Gurley Brown spoke for me as a working-class secretary, while the rest of the screeching sisterhood did not.

Loved you, Helen. Thank you, Jennifer Scanlon, for writing this book.

This book could have been so much better if the author had actually dove into the story, rather than dog paddling around in generalizations.

adult nonfiction/biography.

i agree exactly with aardvark.