Helen Gurley Brown has truly 'had it all'. The daughter of school teacher parents, she worked her way up from a secretary to become one of America's highest-paid advertising copywriters, a top-selling author and magazine editor. She married film director David Brown and sold sex to a generation
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When Sex And The Single Girl was published in 1962 it became an overnight best-seller, although it outraged feminists of the day. This was not, after all, a handbook for the young, free and single: it was stiff with hints on how to ensnare your man
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In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown became editor-in-chief of the ailing Cosmopolitan magazine, and revived its fortunes. Its circulation had dropped to below 800,000. At its peak, it would preach to more than three million American readers, it would reach out to Cosmo Girls from Turkey to Taiwan
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The gospel Gurley Brown preachedthrough Cosmo, and later through TV shows, horrified the new wave of feminists. But in some ways the philosophy was not so far removed: feminists wanted women to have the same rights as men; Gurtley Brown wanted them to have just as much fun
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In the UK, in 1972, the magazine-reading public was agog to see the first British edition of Cosmopolitan. If a girl was 'lively, sensual, fun, adventurous, honest with herself' - not to say self-obsessed and sex-obsessed - then Cosmo, on the winning Gurley Brown formula, was for her
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In 1993, the fit and sexy septugenarian author of Sex And The Single Girl saw the publication of her seventh book, The Late Show, A Semiwild But Practical Survival Plan For Women Over Fifty. Gurley Brown was seventy-one at the time
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By 1982 British Cosmopolitan was top of the circulation league. Women had come a long way in the two decades since Sex And The Single Girl, but still had the same concerns as Gurley Brown had identified. Newsagents' shelves now groaned under the weight of Cosmo-clone lifestyle magazines
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At 61, Gurley Brown was still going strong on a punishing regime of exercise and vitamins. She was no stranger to the plastic surgeon's knife, or to the psychiatrist's couch ("My shrink is the Elizabeth Arden of my soul"). No-one could say she did not practise what she preached
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Cosmopolitan remained preoccupied with sex, career, sex, the pursuit of the body beautiful, and partnerships. And sex. The world had moved on, but, as the magazine's brilliant editor-in-chief understood, many things had changed very little
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In 1992, Helen Gurley Brown convened a London conference of 17 Cosmopolitan editors - 16 women, one (Dutch) man. At age 71, she continued to embody the Cosmo spirit, the Cosmo Girl message was disseminated worldwide, and she could truly be judged one of the most influential women of her time
