Not Pretty Enough: The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.98 (681 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0374169179 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 528 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-12-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
—Sara Nelson, The Book Review. It is to Hirshey’s great credit that she lets us see Helen being Helen in all her glamorous, glorious contradictions. A working woman before those words were a cliché, an unabashed believer in women’s rights to their sexual desires, and an all-around tough businesswoman who took care of her ailing mother and sister long after she’d left them far behind, the Helen Gurley Brown who emerges here is both an anachronism and a trailblazer all at once. An Best Book of July 2016:It reads like the plot of a B-movie from the 1950s. Plain girl from a
GERRI HIRSHEY has worked as a features writer, columnist, reporter, and essayist for The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, The Nation, and New York, among other publications. Hirshey also collaborated with ex-Ronette Ronnie Spector on Spector’s one-woman cabaret show “Beyond the Beehive.” Hirshey lives in New York City. . She is the autho
Elle Michion said Delicious. This book is so much fun. I grew up reading Cosmo in the '80s and ultimately moved to New York because I dreamed of working in women's magazines just like HGB. Readers who toiled in the New York publishing world in the 70s, 80s and 90s will recognize the many famous names and places in Hirshey's narrative. But even if you're not a media person, there's plenty to like in this nostalgic trip through the last half of the "Delicious" according to Elle Michion. This book is so much fun. I grew up reading Cosmo in the '80s and ultimately moved to New York because I dreamed of working in women's magazines just like HGB. Readers who toiled in the New York publishing world in the 70s, 80s and 90s will recognize the many famous names and places in Hirshey's narrative. But even if you're not a media person, there's plenty to like in this nostalgic trip through the last half of the 20th Century. It's all there--the women's movement, the sexual revolution, midcentury home decor,. 0th Century. It's all there--the women's movement, the sexual revolution, midcentury home decor,. Fun and well-researched read! As biographies go, this was a great read - the author's style manages to convey the essence of Gurley-Brown's personality with her breezy style of writing.I knocked off the extra stars due to the lack of photos in the Kindle version - a shameful omission considering the price.. "TRULY TERRIFIC READ!" according to A. M. Birnbaum. Gerri Hirshey deserves a dozen stars for this bio of Helen Gurley Brown. It's impossible to put down until you've read single word. No question HGB was indeed unique and the author does her justice. No reader could help but wonder at the life she came from, then created and led! Her story may shock some but it's a story that is utterly fascinating. I can't imagine there could ever be another HGB!
As the first magazine geared to the rising wave of single working women, it sold wildly. When Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl first appeared in 1962, it whistled into buttoned-down America like a bombshell: Brown declared that it was okay even imperativefor unmarried women to have and enjoy a sex life, and that equal rights for women should extend to the bedroom and the workplace. Today, more than 68 million young women worldwide are still reading some form of Helen Gurley Brown’s audacious yet comforting brand of self-help.“HGB” wasn’t the ideal poster girl for secondwave feminism, but she certainly started the conversation. When she died in 2012, her front-page obituary in The New York Times noted that though she succumbed at ninety, “parts of her were considerably younger.”Her life story is astonishing, from her roots in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, to her single-girl decade as a Mad Men–era copywriter in Los Angeles, which informed her first bestseller, to her years at the helm of Cosmopolitan. Helen Gurley Brown told her own story many times, but coyly, with plenty of camouflage. But more than two million women bought the book and hailed her as a heroine. Brown was also pilloried as a scarlet woman and a traitor to the women’s