A look back. . .

The Huffington Post reported the other day that Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, who invited millions of women to join the sexual revolution, has died. She was 90 years old.

Long before "Sex And The City" hit TV, there was Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl," her grab-bag book of advice, opinion, and anecdote on why being single shouldn't mean being sexless. It made a celebrity of the 40-year-old advertising copywriter in 1962.

Wow! That was 50 years ago and I bet today's generation of young single women have never even heard her name. What a difference a mere half a century can make.

While I was no longer a single girl in 1962. .I remarried in 1957 after several years of fun and games. . . attitudes about working women were already changing. The Feminist Movement was in full swing and Women's Lib was the watchword of the day with Betty Friedan's book, "The Feminine Mystique", a must read and Gloria Steinem the woman we looked up to.. Sounds antiquated today but I clearly remember my brother-in-law asking my then husband "why he allowed Joan to work". To his credit, my husband's response was that "allowing" had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Helen Gurley Brown's book was considered shocking in its day by many, but this was a time when AIDS and HIV were still unheard of, and to paraphrase FDR, the only thing a single girl had to fear was the fear of getting pregnant. And contraception generally took care of that problem. The times they were a-changing, that's for sure.

Today's generation of young women doesn't feel it necessary to marry and have children right out of school like mine did. They also don't feel compelled to "do it all". . be Super Mom, Successful Businesswoman, Wonderful Wife, like we did. (Not always so successfully in the last category.) When they do marry, they have husbands who share the load, helping with the house and the kids. Unheard of in the 50's and 60's. I can attest to that.

Reading about Helen Gurley Brown's passing made me reflect a little. Just as my Mother's generation paved the way for women to have the right to vote, my generation paved the way for a more equal workplace for women. And oh yes. . the radical idea that sex was lots of fun!
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Photo caption: HGB & Cosmo