By Maria Padhila
This past week marked the death, at age 90, of an icon that points out so many of the contradictions in women’s sexual expression. I’ve been calling Helen Gurley Brown, editor and founder of the modern version of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of Sex and the Single Girl and several other books, a feminist for about 30 years now, and that never fails to get at least a raised eyebrow.
What is it that people don’t like about what Brown did, said and advocated? Her detractors have some legitimate points. Many look at her accomplishments and wonder: This is progress? Really?
• She objectified males by using them as centerfolds and by making sometimes bizarre assumptions about what ‘men’ want.
• She and her magazine issued inane and repetitive ‘advice’ about sex, much of which centers on pleasing men.
• She and her magazine gave career advice that was more focused on looking the part than negotiating for real power. Real power doesn’t mean showing cleavage, right?
• The whole philosophy of her books, career and magazine (whose images were about as closely held as the Mars candy company) were bent on gaming the system through feminine wiles, not changing the system.
• Her products presented an image of only one kind of female beauty — made up, cat-eyed, big-busted, slender everywhere else. It’s the kind of beauty only your small disposable income can buy.
Why do I call her a feminist? Here are a few reasons:
• Her products taught hundreds of thousands of women in hundreds of countries (including Saudi Arabia) about at least some basics of their reproductive and sexual health. She has regularly pointed out and gotten behind, so to speak, masturbation, oral sex (on both sides) and anal sex, and even vanilla BDSM. And this was speaking to a mainstream audience as early as the 1970s.
• She advocated that good, pleasurable sex was for every woman who wanted it — she herself didn’t exclude on the basis of age, appearance or body issues. When she started out her solo career, she pointed out that she herself was over 40, flat-chested, and still had acne. She advocated that you should be healthy and clean and enjoy what you’ve got.
• She said what was sexy was confidence, ease and making your own way in the world.
• She advocated making your own money, paying your own way and working. Hard. She was pretty much a puritan when it came to hard work.
• She did not push marriage or monogamy as the be-all for women. While not an advocate of honesty or polyamory, her magazines pretty much said you don’t have to ‘settle down’ to have a fine life.
• Her books had some recipes for cocktails and snacks that still rock the house.
• As one commentator I can’t track down today put it, she “popularized the clitoris.”
I mean, I don’t know if it was lacking in popularity, exactly. Maybe it was just a matter of not knowing what to call it, or how to use it. In any case, she was as much a part of that revolution as anyone at Ms. magazine or Off Our Backs — whether or not she wore pantyhose and high heels and hair spray.
And another thing! Because she was much more public and well-known than her more radical sisters, she took a lot more heat. She was reviled by many in the popular culture and made a joke by many others. Women in publishing — even in women’s magazine publishing, for heaven’s sake — are a rare breed, and she was an original. If you’re going to see a magazine cover proclaiming the latest news about women’s orgasms while you wait in line to buy your cantaloupe, wouldn’t you at least rather have a women’s name at the top of the masthead?
What I liked most about her was how she exemplified the contradictions and the just plain damned fact that there is more than one way to be a women’s advocate and feminist in America.
Today, I’m puzzled equally by women who declare that no one who is a sex worker can be other than a poor exploited being or a fellow exploiter, and women who say “oh, I’m not a feminist because I’m not like that” (“like that” referring to anything from shaving legs to running for office).
I think there’s room for a Helen Gurley Brown or a Sarah Jessica Parker, whether she’s serving as just a ‘gateway drug’ to full change and self-discovery, or whether she’s ‘just’ entertaining.
Thank you, Carrie and Paolo, for your kind words!
And that painting, Paolo, perfectly illustrates the potential that exists for men and women to coexist, equally in power and appreciation of each other’s strengths. God did not create one sex to dictate over another, but then in the same vein, nor did he desire us to dictate over Nature. An imbalance of male over female energy has wrought the world we now have to deal with and try to save/heal. There surely must be ways to use feminine energy to effect the positive changes we desperately need.
Maria and Dawn, I couldn’t help but think of this painting by a wonderful artist here in BC just down the coast from me. I love her work dearly.
http://www.autumnskyemorrison.com/paintings/beloved.html
yes Dawn, perfectly and beautifully said. Carrie, I love your courage.
“I think, though, that we are at the point in our society, when issues relating to women’s lives need to stop being dealt with/changed by only, or mostly, women. It needs to become a different movement, a movement of Humanism, a banner that men could comfortably stand under and behind and not feel like they are disserving their sex.”
I totally agree. Perfectly said, Dawn.
Yes, we seem to coming at the issue from different viewpoints and personal experiences. We don’t, however, need to have lived any particular path in order to grasp the larger picture.
Yes, absolutely, Feminism has effected great strides in many areas of women’s lives. I am grateful to be living now, not in 1900 or even 1950. I am also, like most women, surely, very impatient to see change come about at a faster rate than it has in 100 years, eh, and stop backsliding, as it always seems to be on the verge of, since Margaret Sanger’s day.
I think, though, that we are at the point in our society, when issues relating to women’s lives need to stop being dealt with/changed by only, or mostly, women. It needs to become a different movement, a movement of Humanism, a banner that men could comfortably stand under and behind and not feel like they are disserving their sex.
It keeps us, a a society, segregated, not unified in mission. Feminism, Women vs Men keeps us embroiled in a battle that needs to stop.I think we need a different tack to get these Resistant Men to see the light, not that I know what that might be. All I see is that in 2012, our rights are *still* being threatened. This should not be.
Scroll through the Forbes Top 400, which is in fact 397. There are, at my count, 38 women. 9.57%. At this rate, it’ll be 200 more years before women control half the largest purses in the country. We cannot wait 200 more years before there are enough Women of Power and Means to effect change in top-level government via Financial Pressure. We need to find another way to effect change.
Hmm… Carrie, not sure where you are going with this. The question was: what has F done for you lately? My answer was: P’ert near a lot. But this gets all slippy-slidey if we don’t see that we’re talking horses and zebras – ‘Maria’ and HGB are talking one view of Feminism; I’m going with the generic definition (suffrage/reproductive freedom/equal opportunity in business & academics); and you are upset w/ a Feminism that you surmise excludes you. It is hard –maybe impossible– to have a logical discussion with so many versions on the loose.
Patty, I lived in Mexico until the end of 1982, had my (first) stroke on April 9, 1983 while the Philosopher Husband and I were separated. CIDHAL participated in an international conference in Mexico City on Women’s Reproductive Rights that year, and the decision was made to bar male reporters. You should have *heard* the noise! Given the tenor of ‘standard’ reporting on women’s issues at that time, it was a smart move, and didn’t diminish coverage in the least. But it probably did help ‘stimulate’ the clausurada.
I used to smuggle birth control into the country – harmless stuff: diaphragms, spermicide – but all very tightly controlled by the Feds. Despite the “official” dissociation between Church and State, the Catholic Church still set the b/c agenda. Now –30 years of *feminist* activism later– not so much.
Carrie, I can’t relate. I worked for 43 years and raised my family too, yes with babysitters and public schools. But, as a teen, I lived in a foundling home for a while too, which was a huge motivator. I met people who introduced me to ways of life that I would never have thought possible for myself. The grief of the situation never left me, but I sincerely thank God for those volunteers and feminists. I would never have given up independence to be a stay at home mom.
Patty,
For most low to middle income workers (as well as the working poor) spousal benefits are cost prohibitive when only one parent is working. My husband’s previous job paid 36K a year which was barely covering our expenses (there are six of us and yes, we could afford the kids when we had them; it was the downturn which changed all that) in the small house (maybe 1600 sq ft if I am lucky) we rent, food and utilities. They would have charged him $600 a month to cover me and/or the kids and that doesn’t include a $2000 deductable per year and 20% copays. We couldn’t afford to take that coverage and still pay our bills every month.
Calling food stamps and cash assistance and WIC “social safety nets” for women who stay home is not entirely true; after a child is 6 the stay at home parent has to work or they lose their benefits yet if they work they lose their benefits anyway because of the income. So imagine a family of four in which the youngest child is 7 and the parents both have to work but the jobs available are so low paying (or only allowing part-time so as to avoid paying benefits a la Walmart) and they cannot afford the health care offered or time off for caring for sick children or elderly relatives. Also, family assistance for a family of six was $526 a month; that didn’t even cover rent much less utilities.
The idea that welfare is a social safety net is ludicrous. The welfare of the post war boom was far wider, helped people get established (instead of only barely feeding them and holding them hostage to the system) and got a huge percentage of the population into steady and economically upwardly mobile lives. That welfare was not called welfare so it was not seen as a hand-out. Instead it was called the GI bill, the corporate regulations which forced companies to share a portion of their profits in what were called “rents” or benefits. Back then a person could work a job and it often included full health care and retirement benefits as well as paid leave (more than now) and paid sick leave (also more than now). A couple could raise kids, buy a house and live well on one income because companies were not allowed to offshore their factories or shut down and move where labor was cheaper. That kind of “welfare” made for a much more solid economy. If it had been extended to minorities, it would have been good for all people.
Dawn Brocco has it right; the capitalism we have now isn’t working for all the people so it is a failed experiment. Regulated capitalism worked well (for the white majority) for 50 years and some forms of democratic socialism work well for other foreign countries. All I am saying is things have to change for all people to be able to properly care for their children and elderly without losing any ground economically or in the health and well being of themselves, their children, and the elderly.
In my sociology class I was taught that the single biggest predicter of living in poverty in the United States is if a couple chooses to have children. It should not be that way. I also learned in that class that the best way to raise the economic status and well being of women and children is to invest in women’s issues; elevate the value of women and you elevate the value of children and caregiving to all (elderly, sick, children, etc.).
That’s what I am talking about.
Mystes, what year was that? I went with a missions group to Mexico where we worked with an orphanage and a couple of churches, doing manual labor. It was against the law to discuss religious choices too (our group was Protestant Christian) with anyone in Mexico at the time, which I believe was 1992. I wonder what else was illegal that we take for granted?
My offering earlier was simply to provide some perspective of the times (1960s), compared to the relative ease today of living life as fits the individual, not the way someone else dictates. I don’t see where stay at home mothers are devalued at all. In fact, I think the opposite is true. If you choose to go with spousal benefits, how is that keeping you out of the safety net? Certain other relationships can leave one or the other partner in a precarious situation, when one predeceases the other, or where partner health insurance wasn’t recognized.
Dawnbrocca… outside of the US I have only lived in Mexico – and have seen first hand what happens when the Women’s movement is in its incipient stages. The reproductive health clinic I worked in was raided by the federal government, the physicians *imprisoned* and clinic closed. Voila, no birth control (except gvt controlled b/c pills and tubal ligation) for a 200 square kilometer area. And all of this happened because Dra. Lupe dared to ignore the feds order to not practice medicine (she was properly licensed) in *their* territory: fertility and reproduction.
(It just so happened I was in the States the day the clausurado happened. I had a stroke the moment they hit the clinic. Literally. That’s how connected I was to the energy of what Carrie and others are denouncing as the failed “feminist” movement.)
But I visited France/Spain and watched how women were treated and how they treat other women *very* carefully. It was quite astonishing to see 70 year old women wearing high heels and full-on make up and miniskirts. Interesting, brave and a bit pathetic. (You can extrapolate from there. . . )
It is a head-scratcher that the very culture Carrie is denouncing is somehow capable of withholding her value in its marketplace. Either get on the horse, or get off. Riding with one foot on the ground, the other in the stirrup is not only silly but dangerous. No wonder you’re mad at “feminism.” It isn’t the horse, its how you are riding it.
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I have never lived in another country, but I think it’s little wonder that the countries I would prefer to live in, and not just because some are connected to some of my heritages, is that they all fall in the top 10 happiest counties list: http://247wallst.com/2012/05/22/the-happiest-countries-in-the-world-2/print/
Happy, because unemployment is low, national debt is low (in part surely from not finding (financially beneficial for some) reasons to jump into wars), support systems exist for caregivers, health care is more easily attained.
It is our misfortune that we (those of us who are Boomers) had, in general, Silents as parents, who were lulled by post-war prosperity and the desire to not only play house but be like the 3 monkeys. Women, after 20 years of being the undervalued Good Little Wife & Mother in our Male Dominated society finally had enough and decided to reverse the roles.
And maybe it had to go the way it did, but Reaction is never the best way to change things. Now, 30+ more years later, things are better, but still imbalanced.
Any society that does not value their humanity, and therefore, their caregivers, or rather values capitalism above humanity, will never be a successful, not to mention, a happy society.
So, although it’s good the feminist movement has finally seen who they left behind in their efforts to emancipate women, the problem is it’s still mostly the 50.8% of the population concerned with female rights.
Maybe if we changed the movement to Humanism, the other 49.2 % of the population might be cajoled into enjoining in the work to restructure our society, and might then see how it benefits us All, when we All are cared for.
But this may well mean knocking Capitalism off it’s Perch, just enough, taking back some of the Power that 1% yields.
America is an ongoing Republican experiment. It is not fixed in iron. And, as our history has revealed, we as a society are not fixed in iron. We have adapted and changed, and must adapt and change yet more, in what should be the quest of us all – a truly egalitarian society, where all are valued equally.
And there used to be laws on most of the states’ books that denoted how large a stick a man could use to beat his wife. The social safety net for those who don’t work includes medicaid, welfare, food stamps, WIC, planned parenthood, and so on. Most of those things were unavailable to me when I was an unmarried and pregnant teenager, although the Sisters of Charity worked wonders, as did Catholic Charities. Most Catholic hospitals offered free health care and hospitalization to those of us caught in that particular gap and the sisters gave us a place to live. The difference today, is that no-one really gives to charity with the intent of helping fund a person’s individual needs. In fact, how many people actually donate to charity? We look to government instead. I will never forget the good hearted Sisters and their work for women’s issues.
This is a tricky one, but I’m kind of coming down on the side of Carrie’s argument here. I do recognise that feminism has brought us to the table so that we can be having these kinds of discussions with men and be heard, so a huge debt of gratitude is owed to those women who fought and personally sacrificed just so that I can choose whether to indulge my masculine side or my feminine side (if such polarities even exist!).
However, as society evolves, so must political movements. It’s not enough now for feminism to urge us to keep behaving like men in the name of equality. This surely panders to the idea that different = less than? The fact remains that we are biologically and behaviourally different (and before anyone jumps down my neck, I acknowledge the bell curve outliers), and I for one would welcome a feminism that embraces the notion that women can embody all of their feminine qualities without it being seen as ‘letting the side down’ in some way. As we honour the masculine, so must we honour the feminine.
I have made the path. I just think we can do better for women and men who choose to invest in human capital by doing full-time caregiving. The whole reason feminism did all the things you are talking about is because women did exactly what I am doing; saw a problem and worked to change it. That’s what I have been doing and will continue to do and it doesn’t require me to be in a boardroom or a paid working position to do it.
“But what is making me twitch is that you have cut a line between yourself –a woman and by default a feminist– and the women in the trenches: boardrooms, tenure committees, city councils, Congress, manual laborers, doctors, nurses, teachers who have a HUGE commitment and stake in seeing women’s voices/ethos/presence made more salient in this culture.”
So are you saying that all women who stay at home and refrain from participating in the “boardrooms, tenure committees, city councils, Congress, manual laborers, doctors, nurses, teachers” professions are not in the trenches? Really? So I have no “commitment and stake in seeing women’s voices/ethos/presence made more salient in this culture” because I don’t work?
“You live with the fruits of this struggle. I’m sorry you feel undervalued in the marketplace, but isn’t that the same marketplace created by the values you deplore?”
I am not seeing this in terms of the marketplace. Perhaps that’s where we differ in view? As a non-working person, I am not in the marketplace but the marketplace surely benefits from what I do every day. I consume and my investments will vote (two already do) and consume, pay taxes, perhaps work, volunteer in their communities (as I have done), sit on committees or invest in their own human capital; all of which this society benefits from because my investment creates good citizens. Am I not a stake holder in this issue then?
I am not the one drawing lines, Mysti. I am only saying that so far, the feminist movements have not addressed what I (and millions of other full-time caregivers who do “traditional women’s work”) do and the value it has for the marketplace (since you prefer working with those terms) and the society in which we all live.
Of course I see America differently from most; though it is my passport country (of birth) it is not the only country I was raised in so I have several countries in me and a very world-wide view that doesn’t see my passport country as the only way of being.
I can step back and see the good and bad of several systems because of that nomadic life I grew up in.
Oh, I get it. You don’t think *American* feminism has done enough for stay-at-home moms. As someone who stayed with my kids the first three years, sure it would have been *swell* to have lived in Sweden or Germany or France during those years. Give with one hand, take with the other. I found that women’s roles in Spain and France were still curiously circumscribed and women themselves oddly incurious about their ‘positioning.’
But what is making me twitch is that you have cut a line between yourself –a woman and by default a feminist– and the women in the trenches: boardrooms, tenure committees, city councils, Congress, manual laborers, doctors, nurses, teachers who have a HUGE commitment and stake in seeing women’s voices/ethos/presence made more salient in this culture. How can you think you are not the beneficiary of our struggle? *Our struggle* – men & women who have put heart and soul and art and time and lucre into raising women who can *share* responsibility.
How are you not part of that? It’s like the old ‘Pub who says the gubmint should keep its grubby paws offen his Medicare. You live with the fruits of this struggle. I’m sorry you feel undervalued in the marketplace, but isn’t that the same marketplace created by the values you deplore?
I go with Helen Gurley Brown: make your way. Get busy doing that and you start seeing where life opens, not where it closes. It takes both shapes to make a path. Look for the path, not the obstacles.
Mystes,
Yes, feminism did all those things but as a woman (and a member of that class) I have the right to say I am not satisfied with what they have done. It is not just out of economic hardship that I say what I do.
We have zero paid maternity leave; that is a social safety net that working women deserve to have. Childbirth and caring for our children IS a traditional role that women have that is NOT supported in this country. We also have the highest infant mortality rate of all the First World countries. Nor is caring for our elderly parents; women are the majority of caregivers of elderly relatives but most have no paid leave to do so.
I have a right to say feminism hasn’t done anything for traditional women’s roles; even the folks at NOW agreed with me when I wrote to them asking what they are going to do for that part of women’s lives. Even local feminists agree with me when I bring it up. I never said feminism accomplished nothing. I said they didn’t do a lot for women who still do traditional “women’s” roles. And most feminists I talk to agree with me and say that this is the next area where they must focus.
When women’s traditional roles are valued, paid leave will be something women can demand because the work of caring for children or the elderly should be valued. The reason many women end up going back to work so early in their children’s lives is because economically they cannot afford to remain home because there’s no paid maternity or caregiving leave. Studies have shown that.
In some countries, women who leave their work to remain home full time are given “child money” to help offset the cost of remaining home and caring for their kids. The countries which do that see it as investing in the future generation and investing in human capital.
These should also include men who leave work to care for children or elderly family. Gender should not matter; all caregivers should be valued for their contribution. That is the issue feminism needs to work on.
Carrie, are you *serious*? What has a femin… what? has? a? feminist? done? for? you?? Do you vote? Thank Feminism. Can you speak openly of sexuality in public? Thank Feminism. Are your daughters going in to a University setting without having to fuck or buy (endowment level buying) their way into academics? Again, thank you Dame Feminism.
Can we CHOOSE to have children, or once impregnated, expel the embryonic matter that would eventually become a fetus? Thank Feminism. Can we enlist in the Armed Forces and National Guard as actual members of combat forces, not just pretty little things back in administration? Thank Feminism.
Just because you have some economic problems does not mean that the gains made by this movement have diminished your life. I shudder to think what life would have been like for my daughter *and* for my son without its impact.
Are we finished? Not hardly, as we say down here in the South. But it does no good to throw dirt on a movement that has spent the last 50 years undoing the damage of 2500.
Holy smokes!
I think she was a realist. She knew that despite the gains women have made in the world, it still is about looks, cleavage, and makeup and all that. That may dismay some feminists out there but a practical realist works with what IS.
I dislike feminism anyway because while it allowed women to do what men do to some degree, it never valued what women traditionally do: caretaking (of family, children, elderly). Traditional women’s work was so devalued that professional women often pay less for child care than we pay for trash collectors. That says a lot about what we value because we are a society which uses money to measure value.
Feminism also devalued traditional males to the point that most males are now potrayed in the media as stupid and clueless. Or men are seen as animals who cannot control their “base” urges. I call bullshit on that. This is not how I see males.
I am a traditional, full-time stay-at-home mother and wife. I have no social safety net despite my contributions to the social capital in this country. What has feminism done for women like me? Made us even less valued.