Helen Gurley Brown 1922-2012

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

American author, publisher, businesswoman and editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years (from 1965 until 1997), Helen Gurley Brown, has passed away at the age of 90 years old. She passed away on Monday in New York; no cause was disclosed.

Brown was widely responsible for introducing candid conversations about sex in women’s magazines. The look of the contemporary woman’s magazine filled with salacious topics was due in large part to her influence. She maintained an interesting duality. She would dispense advice on how to “properly” carry on an affair. Meanwhile, Brown was married to her husband, film producer David Brown, for 51 years, until his death in 2010.

She was a self-described feminist but the debate and dialectic will endure on whether she helped or hurt the cause. Did she empower women and make them libertines or did she further aid and contribute to the process of viewing women as sex objects?

Regardless, Helen Gurley Brown was a complex woman who changed the game. The series Sex and the City would not exist without her. There would be no Carrie Bradshaw.

–@teemunny

• The New York Times: Helen Gurley Brown, Who Gave ‘Single Girl’ a Life in Full, Dies at 90
• The Washington Post: Helen Gurley Brown’s stiletto feminism
• Los Angeles Times, Jacket Copy: Helen Gurley Brown, author and editrix, dies at 90
• The New Yorker: Helenism (from May 11, 2009)
• The Huffington Post: Helen Gurley Brown Dead: Legendary Cosmopolitan Editor Dies At 90
• The Huffington Post: Helen Gurley Brown: The ‘Mouseburger’ Who Roared
• Forbes: Helen Gurley Brown and the Failure of Do-Me Feminism
• ABC News: Helen Gurley Brown Dies: Cosmopolitan Editor, Feminist Author
• Slate: Helen Gurley Brown: America’s most puritanical wild woman
• Yahoo! News: Helen Gurley Brown, the original Carrie Bradshaw
• The Guardian UK: Cosmopolitan’s Helen Gurley Brown dies aged 90

After the cancellation of The Jon Stewart Show but before he moved to The Daily Show, Jon Stewart hosted a series of this BBC talk show, Where’s Elvis this Week?. In the show, two British  panelists and two American panelists would discuss the current issues of the day. This particular show featured Dave Chappelle, Tony Hawks, Christopher Hitchens and Helen Gurley Brown.