TELEPRINTER: HELEN GURLEY BROWN, who transformed Cosmopolitan from a housewife's manual into a sex bible for single women in the 1960s, died on Monday aged 90, but her legacy is still emblazoned in day-glo fonts across magazine shelves, and beyond.
Some 15 years after Gurley Brown’s 32-year editorial reign ended, Hearst’s Cosmopolitan remains the most sex-focused of the women’s monthly glossies. The September issue of its US edition, for example, boasts the cover lines “25 sex moves he secretly wishes you’d try” and “The naughty orgasm trick couples love”, but also continues Gurley Brown’s fondness for work tips with the intriguing invitation to “Make your boss want to pay you more”.
The UK edition, meanwhile, aimed at “fun fearless females”, features a column called Sex and the Single Girl, mimicking the title of Gurley Brown’s 1962 book, which shocked America by encouraging unmarried women to not only have sex but to admit to enjoying it. Present-day Cosmo covers the bases, however, by also including a column called Sex and the Not So Single Girl.
Condé Nast’s Glamour, which like Cosmo targets a younger demographic than say Marie Claire, Elle or Red, is probably the glossy that comes closest to Cosmopolitan’s breathless sex reportage. (Its take on this month’s compulsory Fifty Shades of Grey feature is “50 Shades of... whatever. Bring on the Glamour Sex Wheel.”)
But Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan blueprint dates from a time when celebrity culture was much less firmly embedded in the editorial mix. Today, the ambitious “Cosmo Girl” reader, often represented by unknown cover models, has been displaced by a succession of more famous faces. Fashion takes centre stage in a range of titles that seek to emulate Vogue rather than much-mocked Cosmo, while the weeklies prioritise gossip over self-help.
Jessie Collins, editor of Harmonia’s Irish Tatler, says the kind of frank sex advice found in US and British magazines is “still a relatively unexplored area” in the more coy Irish market.
“I think people here are still a bit shy about it. We would be one of the few who cover sex quite regularly,” Collins says. Although there is no dedicated sex page, the magazine addresses sex topics in its issues more often than not.
“We did our first big sex survey in April and got a really good response,” says Collins. (It found that Irish women were generally a satisfied lot.)
Irish readers want both advice about their own sex lives and stories through which they can live vicariously, Collins believes. “Obviously the whole Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon has been so massive.”
Indeed, Irish Tatler’s September issue features the cover line “Sex: Fifty Shades of Green – the secrets of Ireland’s hidden sex scene”. It’s an extract from a book about swingers’ parties, according to Collins.
Seeking insight into “the male mind”, as Glamour terms this wonderful mystery, remains a hardy perennial for women’s magazines, and Gurley Brown blazed the trail for this genre, too. “It was interesting to see it was her husband who wrote the sex cover lines,” notes Collins.
One of these cover lines, from 1976, simply asked: “Is it true what they say about truck drivers?”
