When I first picked up "Sex and the Single Girl," I assumed that since it was published in 1962 and written by Helen Gurley Brown, a woman famous for crafting cover lines about the 500 best ways to give blow jobs, it would be filled with a lot of antiquated and crass crap.
I was wrong.
Or rather I was partially wrong. There's antiquated stuff in there (a "homosexual" isn't "really a man," a woman shouldn't cook a guy a meal until he's taken her out 20 times -- take your pick) and her suggestion that single women should keep married men around as "pets" certainly qualifies as crass. But rather than being singularly focused on how women need to do everything in their power to try to land a man, her main point seemed to be that we should celebrate our singlehood. And I actually think that's a far better message than a lot of what the standard issue feminists today are saying.
I understand that Helen Gurley Brown's focus on sex -- not to mention her tendency to offer up anti bon mots about anorexia ("a touch of" it "may be necessary to maintain an ideal weight") and sexual harassment ("The problem is that we don't have enough men to go around for harassing"), among other topics -- make her an odd choice as a role model. And I understand that saying "celebrate your singleness" isn't an altogether new concept. Indeed, in our Oprah-saturated world, when we're all supposed to be celebrating our lives all the time, we can feel so drowned in that sort of talk that it fails to even resonate anymore. But when these messages are coming from people who don't seem to be honestly celebrating their own lives, how are we supposed to believe them?
To be honest, I'm bored silly by the so-called empowering women out there today, who seem to be either full of crap entirely, far more into self-promotion than they are into women-promotion, or hiding their other issues under the umbrella of feminism. (When I did a story with another writer for a magazine that wanted to shoot us rather scantily clad, the other writer pitched a fit, saying that she was a feminist and dressing sexy for a photo would be exploitative; after she left, everyone agreed that her real issue was with her weight and body in general. But why admit that when you can just lean on good old feminism instead?)
I say, rather than going around talking about how new TV shows glamorize something few actually believe is glamorous or getting hysterical about how not enough women are allowed to write op-eds or parading through the streets topless in order to protest the double standard, we should be talking about the way women are truly exploited today: the fact that we're consistently told that we're "desperate" and "lonely" if we're single. We should be fighting to change the perception that being smart and successful -- achieving all those things that these feminists are continuing to fight for -- actually makes us less appealing as partners.
I think most of what today's "feminists" do is at best a waste of everyone's time and at worst a dangerous distraction from where we really should be focusing. So I say that everyone else can have their Gloria Steinems and Susan Estrichs. I'll take Helen Gurley Brown, a woman who managed to become one of the highest paid copywriters in America without ever feeling like she had to burn a bra or de-sexualize herself for a photo.
But I actually think that things are worse for us in many ways than they were in Helen's time. Back then, girls either did or didn't sleep around and most didn't. But I was raised at the tail end of women's lib and told that I could do whatever I wanted. And yet there's no denying the fact that a lot of sexual encounters I've had have left me feeling ashamed. Sure, there have been obvious shame-inducers -- like the guy who told me that because of the structure of a woman's body, a man needed to feel like he really knew a woman in order to perform oral sex but the reverse wasn't true because "that version of the act just isn't as intimate." But a man doesn't need to say something like that for a woman to reproach herself -- many feel shame whenever they spread their legs outside of a deeply serious relationship.
And what is a deeply serious relationship anymore? These days, when people are acting out on Facebook and meeting a different potential mate every night of the week via OK Cupid -- in these times when there's typically no community or group of friends to vouch for a person, leaving them ever more free to flout basic rules of decency without consequences -- we often don't know a relationship wasn't serious until it's over.
But the worst news of all is that having it all doesn't ensure us any kind of safety or security today. Our husbands can still cheat on us and abandon us for flight attendants. Our having carved our way into alleged equality doesn't spare us from potential humiliation and abandonment. Just ask Huma Abedin, a woman who, when her husband was busted for his crotch shots, was consistently accused of having married for the wrong reasons -- as if his activities were somehow her fault.
We know that men are dumber today -- fewer are going to college and there are more women than men in medical school. But are women, too? And if we're not, what, then, is the word to describe the fact that our so-called advocates go around making a stink about issues that don't matter -- that have been focused on plenty already or are just plain ridiculous -- instead of talking about the ways we're truly being exploited?
Look, I don't have a solution to any of our real problems today, and I'm certainly not planning to create a Tumblr page about it. I just think we should talk about the actual issues, not the fake ones. That way, we may actually find a solution.
Or maybe we should just ask Helen Gurley Brown if she has a tip or two. Who knows? She may even have 500 of them.
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I'm gonna be straight with you; that's pretty offensive.
"I say, rather than going around talking about how new TV shows glamorize something few actually believe is glamorous or getting hysterical about how not enough women are allowed to write op-eds or parading through the streets topless in order to protest the double standard, we should be talking about the way women are truly exploited today: the fact that we're consistently told that we're 'desperate' and 'lonely' if we're single."
So you ARE allowed to write op-eds and presumably not unhappy with your physical appearance, but you're still a bit insecure about being single, therefore you think that's the only way women are still truly exploited?
I've been married, and had enough relationships to do things VERY differently the next time around.
No one who is inconsiderate of my needs, and my right to feel happy and safe.
No one who can't respect my personal values.
No one who feels someone else's opinion of me, is more important than what I have to say about myself.
I now think of being single as eluding capture.
There were structural problems during that time period, like sexism, racisim and lack of abortion access, and domestic violence. It is good we have LESSENED those events. But I will say my Mom was happy. She wasn't stressed out, burnt out and overwhelmed from competing responsibilites. She had the luxury of time to enjoy being a Mom, nurture her own creative impulses, and have fun.
In the 1980s, my Mom did get a clerical job. She stopped painting, lost touch with friends and the Happy Hours were over. She was no longer the boss of her day. Her life was not as rich, vibrant and happy. She was more fulfilled in 1967 than in 1985. While we made progress in many areas, we lost some things in our daily lives, too. Well, I have errands to run: it is Saturday :-)
Me? I'm 64. And for the record, I was a practicing attorney for 32 years (many of which were spent litigating civil rights cases for women) and (still) married. I remember the 60's well. It was an exciting time, but not "better for women." Maybe you should spend a little more time dishing with some of us old broads.
Give me a break. In a country where 1 in 3 women is raped or sexually assaulted, where violence against women is epidemic, where boys now get their sex education from woman-degrading porn and where men rule the corporations, the Congress, the government, the military, industry, the noosphere, religions and the world; in a world where women own less than 1% of the property, where millions of girls are sex traffickeed, where millions of women are subject to unanesthesized genital mutilation, where women are forbidden to drive, where rape is an instrument of war, and where girls widely go uneducated and undervalued, Ms. David thinks feminism is a waste of time. Objective analysts might conclude that David's boviations are the real time-waster.
In the 1960s, women were proud to hold their heads high and call themselves feminists. Today's young women, having succumbed completely to the patriarchal pornographic view of women, proudly call themselves sl*ts and refer to other women as sl*ts, b----s and worse. This is not progress, this is regress. At least in the 1960s women were making progress and cared about more than merely their sex lives. .
do not use the media archives as anything resembling real life for women in the early 60's. boomer girls were raised to be LADIES. we weren't-but we put on a good front for
our parents/authority figures. at work, you found your niche - the girl who blushed,
the girl who was ignored, the girl who could take a joke, and the girl who could be a guys pal. there
were always the trashy girls you knew were fooling around.
there was only 1 goal - have a family. get an education - a job - a man - a house - a kid IN EXACTLY THat ORDER. we see today just how well that worked out.
1960-1966 was not PAN AM/MAD MEN. there are a lot of women whose lives were shaped by the warped expectations of those 6 years. then in the blink of an eye everything
changed. some of us embraced it-a lot did not. now all these years later you see the dividing line
in every aspect of our lives - from the tea party/evangelicals to the progressive/unchurched.
In 1978, when I worked in an airport first class lounge, I had to wear 4" heels and I was told that when passengers grabbed my bottom, I was to smile and spin away. I would actually have been fired for smacking a guy the way our daughters would today. I had to pretend I enjoyed it and figure out how to avoid it the next time I served the guy. I've been goosed by the creme de la creme of Canadian politics and literature as well as a number of well known international figures... oh yeah, the good old days.
Hardly, being a young man in lates 60s-70s. Yeah there is certainly more equality. But I find men hardly any dumber ( that also was a poor word to use how about intelligence). A measure of a good man is hardly a college education (I have 3 degrees, but I do not call myself but average intelligence, engineer).
No women have it better today, but I am not sure what a feminist is today. I find a lot of whacked thinking and values in today's society. It is very much a me first selfish society, not a whole lot of compassion or caring for others and almost never before self. Very sad and causing lot of issues for society.
And just looking at her resume, we can see that Ms. I-Miss-the-Sixties-Vixen has already made her mark at FOX and vicinity.
I predict a bright, opportunistic future for this shrewd young woman. What one does not have in terms of intelligence and integrity, one can always make up with looks and ingratiating herself to the powermasters. Throw in a promise of sex, in any variation (sex expertise, etc.), and there is no limit to how far she can go. I suspect she knows it very well.
All of these wonderful and valid comments for the author and she doesn't have the courage of her convictions to come back and address any of them.
What a brave journalistic endeavor to drop a misogynistic bomb on a page and then run away without looking back. Actually, it's very HGB... she would make silly statements and never back them up or re-examine them also. (keeping a married man as a pet or a touch of anorexia being a good thing, for example)
It's hard to imagine that any woman could stand behind the statements in this article. The young women I know are so much smarter than that and have an awareness of where we came from and how far we have to go. Of course, they have intelligence and integrity on their side :)