![]() First-edition cover | |
Author | Helen Gurley Brown |
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Language | English |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Publisher | Bernard Geis Associates |
Publication date | 1962 |
Publication place | United States |
ISBN | 9781569802526 |
OCLC | 51342662 |
Followed by | Sex and the Office (1965). |
Sex and the Single Girl is a 1962 non-fiction book by American writer Helen Gurley Brown, written as an advice book that encouraged women to become financially independent and experience sexual relationships before or without marriage. The book sold two million copies in three weeks, [1] was sold in 35 countries [2] and has made the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times and Time bestseller lists. [3]
In 1960 Brown's husband, David Brown, suggested she write a book that discusses "how a single girl goes about having an affair". [4] The book was rejected by several publishing houses until it was accepted by Bernard J. Geis of Bernard Geis Associates. [5]
The original title was Sex for the Single Girl, but this was changed because "it sounded like [it] was advocating sex for all single girls." [4] Brown had also written a section on contraceptive methods that was omitted from the final publication. [4] [6]
The book was advertised through a large-scale campaign created by Letty Cottin Pogrebin of Bernard Geis Associates in conjunction with Brown. The campaign involved print ads as well as television, radio and bookstore appearances; however, Brown often was barred from saying "sex" during her television appearances. [7] Cottin and Brown also attempted to have the book censored or banned in the United States as a marketing gimmick, but they were unsuccessful. [8] The book also was endorsed on the jacket by Joan Crawford and Gypsy Rose Lee, [7] and the 2003 edition is endorsed on the back cover by Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall.
Following the success of Sex and the Single Girl, Brown became the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in 1965, [9] and went on to publish several other books which include Sex and the Office (1965), Helen Gurley Brown's Single Girl's Cookbook (1969), and Sex and the New Single Girl (1970).
In the 2003 edition, Brown includes a reintroduction to her book and briefly outlines the static situations and changes that the single woman has faced from the 1960s to 2003.
The reviews that followed the publication of Sex and the Single Girl, "were either highly favourable...or highly negative" [42] and often attacked Brown's writing style and credibility. While several of Brown's concepts were "in common with the second-wave feminist arguments she precedes," [43] other second-wavers such as Betty Friedan "found Brown's message 'obscene and horrible.'" [44] When questioned regarding the criticism the book has received, Brown replied that:
This is how it was for me. This is how I played it. It's just a pippy-poo little book and people come back with this diatribe about its great social significance. Well it's just because nobody ever got off his high horse long enough to write to single women in any form they could associate with. If they had, somebody else would be the arbiter for single women at this point instead of me. [4]
Jennifer Scanlon, author of Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, argues that through Sex and the Single Girl Brown became "not only one of the founders of second wave feminism but stands as a key antecedent for the third." [45] Scanlon also argues that with Sex and the Single Girl, Brown would "cross the line between the fictional and the real", exploring the real single women that had been previously presented in fictional form in such novels as Peyton Place (1956) and The Best of Everything (1958). [46]
Julie Berebitsky explores the impact of Sex and the Single Girl on the pink-collar worker of the 1960s and Brown's blurring of the professional and the personal in a business environment, as she "directed women to seek professional advancement...to use gender, and to varying degrees, sexuality for their own gain." [47] Berebitsky also contrasts Sex and the Single Girl with The Executive Secretary, a guidebook published in 1959 by Marilyn Burke, secretary to Dale Carnegie and Dorothy Carnegie, [48] that cautions against demonstrations of female sexuality in the workforce.
Scanlon suggests that Sex and the City is "the most direct descendent of the sexual politics Helen Gurley Brown introduced in Sex and the Single Girl" [49] and Jane Gerhard argues that "Sex and the City pays direct homage" [50] to Sex and the Single Girl, as both present the "connection between women's financial independence and their sexual liberation." [51]
AMC's Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner frequently attributes Sex and the Single Girl and The Feminine Mystique as heavily influencing the creation of his characters and scenarios, especially involving the single female office worker Peggy Olsen. [52]
The Four Square paperback edition published (in London) in 1964 includes "£ove $tory", an unpaginated 32-page supplement by the cartoonist and illustrator John Glashan, between pages 128 and 129.
Warner Bros. paid $200,000 for the rights to the book that was made into a film of the same name (1964), starring Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall. The film version follows the main character, Dr. Helen Gurley Brown (Wood), who is based loosely on Brown, through several comedic situations resulting from the publication of her book Sex and the Single Girl.
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern societies are patriarchal—they prioritize the male point of view—and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the developed Western world from the 1960s to the 1970s. Sexual liberation included increased acceptance of sex outside of traditional heterosexual, monogamous relationships. The normalization of contraception and the pill, public nudity, pornography, premarital sex, homosexuality, masturbation, alternative forms of sexuality, and the legalization of abortion all followed.
Cosmopolitan is an American quarterly fashion and entertainment magazine for women, first published based in New York City in March 1886 as a family magazine; it was later transformed into a literary magazine and, since 1965, has become a women's magazine. Cosmopolitan is one of the best-selling magazines. Jessica Giles is the magazine's editor-in-chief since 2018.
Helen Gurley Brown was an American author, publisher, and businesswoman. She was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades, ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Patrick Califia, formerly also known as Pat Califia and by the last name Califia-Rice, is an American writer of non-fiction essays about sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry. Califia is a bisexual trans man. Prior to transitioning, Califia identified as a lesbian and wrote for many years a sex advice column for the gay men's leather magazine Drummer. His writings explore sexuality and gender identity, and have included lesbian erotica and works about BDSM subculture. Califia is a member of the third-wave feminism movement.
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The feminist sex wars, also known as the lesbian sex wars, sex wars or porn wars, are collective debates amongst feminists regarding a number of issues broadly relating to sexuality and sexual activity. Differences of opinion on matters of sexuality deeply polarized the feminist movement, particularly leading feminist thinkers, in the late 1970s and early 1980s and continue to influence debate amongst feminists to this day.
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Letty Cottin Pogrebin is an American author, journalist, lecturer, and social activist. She is a founding editor of Ms. magazine, the author of twelve books, and was an editorial consultant for the TV special Free to Be... You and Me for which she earned an Emmy.
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Sex and the Single Girl is a 1964 American Technicolor comedy film directed by Richard Quine and starring Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall and Mel Ferrer.
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Bernard J. Geis was an American editor and publisher who founded the now-defunct Bernard Geis Associates, which published and promoted several best-sellers in the 1960s and 70s, including Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls and Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl and David Wilkerson's The Cross and the Switchblade.