Cosmo Girl!

                       

Helen Gurley Brown the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan dies at age 90. She was the crowning of a new women's movement.


Brown's bestselling book Sex and the Single Girl was published. In 1965, she became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and reversed the fortunes of the failing magazine. During the decade of the 1960s she was an outspoken advocate of women's sexual freedom and sought to provide them with role-models and a guide in her magazine.

She claimed that women could have it all, "love, sex, and money", a view that even preceding feminists such as Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer did not support at all and has been met with notable opposition by advocates of grass-roots devotion of women to family and marriage. Due to her advocacy, glamorous, fashion-focused women were sometimes called "Cosmo Girls". Her work played a part in what is often called the sexual revolution.

In 1997, Brown was ousted from her role as the U.S. editor of Cosmopolitan and was replaced by Bonnie Fuller. When she left, Cosmopolitan ranked sixth at the newsstand, and for the 16th straight year, ranked first in bookstores on college campuses.

However, she stayed on at Hearst publishing and remained the international editor for all 59 international editions of Cosmo until her death on August 13, 2012.

In September, 2008, she was named the 13th most powerful American over the age of 80 by Slate magazine.