IN PRAISE OF DIFFICULT WOMEN by KAREN KARBO : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW / HELEN GURLEY BROWN

 Subtitled Life Lessons From 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules.

 Mistress Manifesto Book Review:

The 29 Women given attention in this book are the favorites of author Karen Karbo so the list might not be what you'd come up with. What I found interesting was that a couple of the women she calls "Difficult" have been featured here at Mistress Manifesto. Personality wise I don't think all the women she lists and profiles were Difficult, for some of them surely must have been Charming, rather most of these women persevered through difficult times because perhaps in some cases they were trail blazers, doing what used to be called "man's work," or managing to make it in life despite starting out with disadvantages, or noteworthy because they stood for something. Others are simply fascinating or original or gained fame: Josephine Baker, the Black American exotic danger who became all the rage in Paris in the 1920's or Edie Sedgwick, artist Andy Warhol's muse for a year who made 18 films with him, and was an "It" girl, but also a drug addled eccentric who went through a fortune and died of an overdose. I find both Josephine and Edie interesting.

The women who were elected to both author Karne Karbo's panthenon as well as mine, are

CoCo Chanel and Helen Gurley Brown.  I'm also interested in Diana Vreeland and Martha Gellhorn but Martha is one woman I have yet to cover, though her relationship with writer Earnest Hemingway would qualify her as a Mistress of the the Month.

The profiles admit the foibles.  

I've done a lot on CoCo Channel here but not much on Helen Gurley Brown. So to retell her story :

At around forty, Helen was newly married for the first time, had just recently spent a fortune after scrimping and saving for years, on a used luxury car, and was the highest paid woman copy writer in the business.  Her husband, David Brown, who had been in the literary world and became a film producer, suggested she write Sex and the Single Girl. In 1962 it sold two million copies in three weeks and was considered controversial.  (Even if stats said otherwise, people were supposed to wait until married to have sex.)  In it, she suggested the book was supposed to be for women who, like her, did not come from having advantage. It was full of advice.

Helen Gurley Brown's book did get some bad reviews.

She was one of the first authors to go on a book tour and visited 28 cities in 13 weeks. Radio - Television - she got hate as well as fame and the movie rights were purchased by Warner Brothers.

However, besides working hard for years, it was her husband's connections that got her attention when it came to taking over the editorship of Cosmopolitan magazine.

"Helen was 43 when she took over as editor in chief. Her magazine experience was limited to reading them.  She might as well have been entering an operating theater to perform an appendectomy.  Every person on her staff had more experience than she did, including her own secretary.  She had no idea how to manage people, oversee editorial budgets, and translate her vision into magazine-ese. " (Page 145)

"To whatever degree she felt truly terrified or insecure, Helen never abandoned the central organizing principles of her life; to trust her gut and work harder than everyone else. Her gut said, If I care deeply about men, sex, love, money, and looking hot at all times, other women will too. Her premise was simple and answered the hoary old Freudian question" What do women want?" (page 145-146)

So, I do think this is a good book, and because each chapter features a mini bio of a woman, you can always skip the ones you are not drawn to read.  You might, however, discover there is someone you want to know a whole lot more about!

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You can bring up past posts that mention Helen Gurley Brown using the search feature embedded in this blog.  She wrote more than one book, beginning with Sex And The Single Girl, which at the time it was published in the 1960s was considered outrageous.