Born Today- Helen Gurley Brown- Cosmopolitan

How Cosmo Changed the World

Millenials, of course, do not know how the invention of "The Cosmo Girl" was such a big deal for its time

The fascinating story of the magazine you know, love, and can't live without.

By Jennifer Benjamin

If you're like most of our readers, you can't wait to tear into Cosmo every month, eager for tips on everything from having great sex to scoring your dream job. Oh, let's just say it: Cosmo's your bible! But have you ever wondered the way it all began?

The story of how a '60s babe named Helen Gurley Brown (you've probably heard of her) transformed an antiquated general-interest mag called Cosmopolitan into the must-read for young, sexy single chicks is pretty damn amazing — and so is the effect her creation has had on the world. Over the years, Cosmo has not only become the number-one-selling monthly magazine on the newsstand, but it has also served as an agent for social change, encouraging women everywhere to go after what they want (whether it be in the boardroom or the bedroom).

Birth of the Cosmo Girl

Back in the '60s, young, single women were enjoying a new level of freedom. For the first time, they were beginning to bust their butts in formerly male-dominated fields and explore premarital sex. But the phenomenon was still so new that nobody was really talking about it — at least not in public. Although these forward-thinking women were definitely enjoying themselves, there was a small part of them that needed to know they weren't alone.

Enter Helen Gurley Brown. In 1962, the just-married copywriter penned Sex and the Single Girl, a fictional book about a swinging singleton who was leading this new kind of life. Not only did the book tell women they didn't need a man to be happy, but it also encouraged them to enjoy sex with whomever they damn well pleased — without guilt. Those two messages struck a chord: Helen's book was an instant best-seller, and unattached girls everywhere were so psyched that someone had finally spoken to them, they flooded her with thank-you notes — and begged her for personal advice.

Helen realized that if she had her own magazine, she could answer all of these women at once, so she mapped out a proposal that explored her book's main messages. "I knew that women were having sex and loving it," she says. "I wanted my magazine to be their best friend, a platform from which I could tell them what I'd learned and talk about all the things that hadn't been discussed before. I wanted to tell the truth: that sex is one of the three best things out there, and I don't even know what the other two are."

As soon as the mock-up was finished, she started shopping it around New York publishing companies. Rejection followed rejection, until Helen met with people at the Hearst company. "Cosmopolitan — their old general-interest publication for men and women — was hemorrhaging money," she says. "They had been planning to just close it down but instead agreed to give it to me and let me try out my new format."

Breaking New Ground

The first issue to totally reflect Helen's vision was September 1965, but the July '65 issue was the first she edited. "It had a piece about the Pill, which was still new and hadn't really been written about before," she says. "To me, the most important thing about it was that if you weren't worried about getting pregnant, you could enjoy yourself more in bed. So we wrote a cover line to that effect." When women saw the line — "The new pill that makes women more responsive" — they knew exactly what Cosmo was talking about and snatched the issue off newsstands in droves.

From then on, the magazine continued to push the envelope with articles on provocative (and often taboo) topics like man-meeting vacations and extramarital affairs. Soon it had a huge — and fiercely loyal — readership.

"Cosmo was so popular, libraries couldn't keep it around — women kept stealing the issues," says Laurie Ouellette, PhD, assistant professor of media studies at Queens College and author of "Inventing the Cosmo Girl," a 1999 article that looked at the cultural impact of the magazine in the '60s and '70s. "What made it so desirable is that it outlined an American dream for single, working women. It provided them with a vision and detailed advice on how to live a better life — on their own terms."

"Cosmopolitan put female sexuality right out there on the front page, where everyone could see it at the grocery store," adds Janna L. Kim, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University. "People could no longer pretend that it didn't exist."

Fun Fearless Feminism

While the revamped Cosmo was flying off the stands, the mag's empowering message was rubbing many men — and even a few women — the wrong way."All of a sudden, there was this mass female audience out there that some people found threatening," says Ouellette. "These girls were sexually liberated and independent and infringing on territories that had previously been reserved for men. Many of Cosmo's opponents were saying 'Who the hell do these women think they are?'"

And it wasn't just prudes and conservatives who took issue with the mag: A number of hard-core feminists were anti-Cosmo as well. "They felt that the magazine's emphasis on beauty and man pleasing didn't jibe with their own message of sisterhood and independence," says Julie Berebitsky, PhD, professor of women's studies and history at Sewanee: The University of the South.

What they didn't seem to realize was, Cosmo's gentler brand of feminism was more realistic and palatable." Cosmo is feminist in that we believe women are just as smart and capable as men are and can achieve anything men can," says Helen. "But it also acknowledges that while work is important, men are too. The Cosmo girl absolutely loves men!"

She also loves having a smokin' hot sex life. "Over the years, the magazine has consistently given women permission to steer their own sexuality," says Joyce Brothers, PhD, renowned psychologist and syndicated columnist for Parade magazine. "It empowered them by giving them the confidence to take the lead in relationships and in bed."

In fact, according to a study done by Kim, women who read Cosmo for sex advice are more likely to believe that women should take charge of their own sexual pleasure; readers are also more likely to believe that women should be strong, assertive, and speak their minds. "I found that the more often a woman reads Cosmo, the less likely she is to censor herself or act in ways that are inconsistent with how she feels," says Kim.

Who could wish for a better legacy than that? We here at Cosmo will miss the legendary Helen Gurley Brown, but we know her impact of empowering women around the world will live on for years to come.