I'm No Cosmo Girl




I’ll never forget when I first saw Helen Gurley Brown’s steamy Cosmopolitan magazine. Well, actually, I didn’t see it. It was hidden behind the library counter. This was over 40 years ago.  If someone wanted to read the risqué Cosmo and gaze at the male centerfolds, they had to ask for it. And believe me, the ladies behind the library counter gossiped about who asked for the latest edition.

Who could have imagined what a rather ordinary, young secretary making her way up the corporate ladder in the world of advertising and publishing could do, and then writing the blockbuster, Sex and the Single Girl—a how-to manual for enjoying sex without commitment. It must have been destiny for her to take the helm of a struggling women’s magazine and make sexual liberation history. Ms. Brown, Cosmopolitan’s savior, recently died at age 90.





It didn't take long for Cosmo to come out from behind the counters. It was prominently displayed at grocery checkouts nation wide. Those daring magazine headlines boldly challenged women everywhere to have sex—anytime, anywhere—with whomever you wanted.

Millions have been snookered with those slick, glossy, glamorous, sexy lifestyles craftily displayed to look so appealing. As the Cosmopolitan queen, Helen Gurley Brown, declared, “I would want my legacy to be, ‘She created something that helped people.’”

So how did that ‘legacy’ work out? According to the Center for Disease Control, our nation has epidemic levels of sexually transmitted diseases. Abortion? Over 50 million. Unplanned pregnancies? Single moms? Broken relationships? Divorce? Has all the sexual freedom made us happier? Check out the rates of depression.



Cosmopolitan joining the sexual revolution wasn’t a worthy legacy for millions of Americans who bought the lies. But I’ve got some good news—today's young women are smarter, savvier, and abundantly more mindful—and many more are rejecting the Cosmo Girl.

Maybe Helen Gurley Brown was overly insulated from the fall out from her wanton behavior, but millions of others haven’t been. No, she didn’t help people—except to show us how wrong it all was.



Image:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helen_Gurley_Brown_1964.jpg


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