Helen Gurley Brown, the original Cosmo girl, defies every label you
wantto pin on her. She's part girl, part feminist, part man-pleaser, part
workaholic. And in an age when other leaders try hard to be politically
correct, she's refreshingly, unsentimentally honest. Not to mention, a
killer listener.
PT: You're probably one of the most famous, if not the most famous,
editors in the country, and have been for the last 15 to 20 years.
HGB: I'm always afraid that what I have is going to be taken away
from me. But that is a great motivator. I've been looking over my
shoulder here at Cosmopolitan for 29 years. I've been running scared for
29 years.
PT: With all the professional, personal, and presumably financial
success you've had, why are you insecure?
HGB: Nothing recedes like success. You absolutely cannot count on
it sticking around unless you take measures to see that it does so. You
cannot coast. It doesn't work. I wouldn't dare take anything for granted.
I have the best staff in the world, but what I really should do is work
harder in order to continue to keep having it happen.
Part of my success, if I may, is the financial success of my
magazine.
PT: You always make money for your publisher?
HGB: Tina Brown, the editor of The New Yorker and former editor of
Vanity Fair, is possibly the most brilliant editor in the world. I
couldn't begin to do what she does. She couldn't do what I do either, but
she wouldn't want to. She's just formidable. But there's something I do
that she doesn't, which is make money for her publisher. I don't think
Vanity Fair ever got into the black. Maybe a tiny touch. The New Yorker
loses millions of dollars a year.
That doesn't mean she's a bad editor, but when you're toting up the
qualifications of a successful editor, that would be one of them, and
Cosmo's a little gold mine. I think that's just super. Cosmo makes money
because it's good.
PT: What would you describe as your biggest success and your
biggest failure?
HGB: The biggest success in my professional life, of course, is
Cosmo because it's been carrying on like this for 29 years. The next
biggest success is my first book, Sex and the Single Girl (Avon; 1962),
from which Cosmo stemmed. There wouldn't be any new Cosmo if it hadn't
been for that book. I've written three other books. I consider them very
satisfactory. All but my last book, The Late Show (William Morrow; 1993),
which is about how I hate getting older, have been on best-seller
lists.
My biggest failure is that I really can't assimilate all this and
be as grateful for it as I should be. All I can do is be very fearful
that it's going to disappear pretty soon, which it will because of how
old I am. Isn't it a shame that I can't just be thrilled and happy that I
have had this wonderful magazine and a terrific husband? We're both
healthy; we've done okay financially. Why can't I be happy about that? I
really can't.
PT: You're not happy?
HGB: I wouldn't call myself a happy person. I would call myself a
realized person, a very grateful person for all the wonderful things that
have happened to me. I have moments of great pleasure. I know how to have
fun. I enjoy sensual pleasures. I can think of people who are day-to-day
more tranquil than I. Happy is a very strong word.
PT: Women's magazines are an important socializing force among
young women. Men, perhaps, are the poorer for not having them. These
magazines create a community among women, and you certainly help foster
that sense of intimacy by inviting women to "step into my parlor" 12
times a year. What messages do you try to give women through
Cosmo.
HGB: Work and love. These are the most important things in life.
They always have been; they always will be. I believe Sigmund Freud said
that. The readers of Cosmopolitan are young women 18 to 34, and it is
important for them to know that they can love men and love their kids and
have their own identity. These facts haven't changed in the 29 years that
I have been editing Cosmopolitan. These are the things that make us who
we are.
PT: You get criticized for calling the female sex "girls" in Cosmo.
But there are some who insist the reference be to Cosmo "women."
HGB: I absolutely have not changed on that and I don't plan to. By
the time you reach the age of 23, you're a grown-up. You can think
seriously about men, about having children. But at the same time it is
important to retain the qualities of being a girl-- remain enthusiastic,
playful, have fun. I don't think that side of a woman ever stops. A woman
can enjoy being a girl and can enjoy the power being a woman also.
PT: Do you feel like one of the girls, or like their mother? What
chronological age do you see yourself as?
HGB: I just don't have a chronological age. I do feel that I'm one
of the girls. I feel that a woman is both girlish and womanly as long as
she lives, and I'm not that different from the girl hanging out with her
girlfriends in Little Rock, Arkansas, or at high school in Los
Angeles.
There is just no way that I can believe I'm the real age that I am.
It doesn't work. It's not acceptable. I think older age is just the pits,
but you have to be some kind of nut case to assume that you're escaping
it. So I escape it as best I can, through my work.
PT: You never mention anything a out women and aging in
Cosmo.
Tags:
aging,
Cosmopolitan,
editors,
feminism,
Helen Gurley Brown,
listener,
measures,
motivator,
tina brown,
vanity fair,
women
