Hollywood movie of Sex and the Single Girl

Because the book was so popular, Hollywood bought the rights to make a movie for hundreds of thousands of dollars and made up a story of a young working woman by the name of Helen Gurley Brown.  It was made into a comedy that had little to do with the book.  One of the most famous stars in Hollywood, Natalie Wood,  played Helen.  There is beginning to be a backlash to the sexual revolution.  Some people are waking up to the nightmare Helen Gurley Brown has created.  Recently I found the following critique of the movie by a woman who makes these perceptive comments,  "The book was written in 1962, the movie came out in 1964. The years 62-64 can be regarded as ground zero as the heart of the nice girls don't /most girls do transition that has influenced every aspect of American culture and society since."
 
"While we took that relatively quick change in stride, it really was a wrenching reversal of hundreds of years of an accepted morality. And yet, in it's own smarmy middlebrow way, the movie, which came out in 1964, takes fewer risks than the actual book, which appeared in 1962. No unmarried person ever actually becomes intimate in this movie, a good deal of which involves two of the characters trying to save their marriage. They were willing to exploit the outrageous premise of the book to make a movie, but they chose to make the movie itself coy and evasive. What troubles me is that since Ms. Brown's groundbreaking book first appeared in the 60's, everything has changed for women and men. We have become far more promiscuous, and very young teenagers feel tremendous pressure to not only become sexually active but to 'perform' like jaded sex professionals. In this movie, Natalie Wood's Ms. Brown paints an exciting vision of her future as a free woman -- 'I shall have as many affairs as I like, when I like...' and so on. As I watch the excruciating footage of Monica Lewinsky ('I'm going to get my Presidential kneepads') traipsing in and out of hearings and depositions, as I view her public humiliation and confusion, as I imagine the great esteem and self-worth boost she hoped to acquire by bragging to her friends about fellating the President -- and as we see how it has all blown up in her face, I note sadly -- we have not become more free. In the 36 years since this book came out, we have simply, as a society, become over stimulated, irresponsible and more prurient. That's progress?"

Brown's husband said of her influence that she was the "Author of the seminal book Sex and the Single Girl, she was a leader in liberating women's bodies and minds from the constraints of the past. She has changed the lives of countless women. More than that, her magazine, Cosmopolitan, is today carrying her message to countries outside the U.S." What message?  Liberation from the "constraints of the past"?  The opposite is the truth.  She teaches slavery in Satan's "freedom."

One person wrote: "The sexual revolution undermined the matrimonial strategy by encouraging women to engage in promiscuous sex on the same terms as men. As Judge Richard Posner notes in his book Sex and Reason,  'the freer women are sexually, the less interest men have in marriage.' Since their own interest in marriage was minimal, feminists encouraged women to abandon the ideal of chastity and even of marital fidelity. In 1965 Helen Gurley Brown, feminist extraordinaire, extolled the sexually active single girl, who, unlike a housewife, was 'not a parasite, a dependent, a scrounger, a sponger or a bum.' In 1993 Ms. Brown advised women to consider their friends' husbands as potential lovers. She herself never felt guilty, she said, about the wives who can't keep their husbands at home."

Christianity impotent

In the magazine Christian Century a woman reviewed Helen's book when it came out and became blinded by Satan saying, "Sex and the Single Girl is an old-fashioned, self-help book."  This shows how out of it Christianity is in fighting this cultural war. Christianity has been impotent in the cultural war of the 20th century.  Many churches have even become liberal and preach that the most vile of all sexual relationships, homosexuality, should not be condemned and accepted just as they feel Jesus would accept it.  When the famous lesbian and Hollywood star, Ellen, was asked her response to Jerry Falwell playing on her last name of Degeneress and calling her "degenerate" she replied on a national television interview that Jesus would accept her lifestyle.  She is wrong.  Jesus would condemn it harshly as Jerry Falwell correctly does. And Jesus would condemn Helen Gurley Brown too.

In a review of Sex and the Single Girl in Library Journal in June of 1962, an Irene Stokvis writes without any comment of condemnation that "the author's recommendations include affairs with men -- every type from the younger to the married" and concludes that she feels libraries should get the book and librarians should counsel readers in this way: "should be read by girls of 21 and older who can and should sift the worth from the mirth."  The book is trash and nobody could see it as destructive.  This reviewer was irresponsible in not being critical of the book.  This just goes to show how brainwashed America is from the propaganda of liberals.  It doesn't even occur to people that what the cultural elite write and show on film is wrong.  What would be an abomination just a few decades ago is now accepted as wholesome.  Now Americans incorrectly judge people of the past as ignorant, unfulfilled prudes who had no sense of humor and, of course, no good sex.  The public schools have joined in the praise of immoral lies writers like Helen Gurley Brown who get rich writing depravity.  For example, they praise Hemingway and Fitzgerald as being the best writers of the 20th century when these two writers are really pathetic, immoral men who write stories of sick, immoral people whose lives are as confused as the private life of the authors.  Fitzgeral drank himself to death and Hemingway killed himself.  Nevertheless writers like these and feminist writers like Helen Gurley Brown are given guru like status.  Their power for evil is awesome.

In 1964 Newsweek wrote that she had a record (this is before the day of tapes) called "Lessons in Love" narrated by Brown in which she encourages single women to have affairs with married men.  She has used the media like a master.  Her book had sold over a million copies. It was eventually translated into 16 languages -- even in Swedish, Greek, Japanese and Hebrew.  One reviewer wrote that the book "is not a study on how to get married, but how stay single -- in superlative style."  "Superlative style?"  The opposite is the truth.  She writes lies, not the truth.

No guilt feelings

In Life magazine in 1963 Shana Alexander writes a glowing article quoting Helen as saying, "For 17 years I actually had been quite a swinger."  Her book, she writes, is "a manifesto in favor of female single blessedness."  She writes, "'Theoretically a 'nice' single woman has no sex life.  What nonsense?'  Helen proclaimed in chapter one, 'She has a better sex life than most of her married friends.'  The moment her memoir was published last May it leaped onto the best-seller lists."  She says the book has some "bold talk about sex, but no orgies."  "Bold"?  How about immoral?  In this positive review she praises her saying, "Helen, the most indefatigably cheerful female ... conjures images of a liberated single girl, complete with capri pants, a sophisticated little apartment and a delicious absence of guilt feelings."  So much for conscience.

In 1967 she had a television show called Outrageous Opinions.  Years later Gloria Steinem would write a book Outrageous Acts.  Are women supposed to be "outrageous?"  Outrageous is just a euphemism for rebellious.

In 1970 she wrote another best-seller, Sex and the Office.  She is like a witch offering a poisoned apple to all the innocent girls.  One of her many tactics she teaches in her book is for women to leave the top buttons of their blouse unbuttoned in the office.  She loves immodest clothes.  Her magazine is famous for its covers that show plunging necklines and lots of cleavage.  You can't miss it at the grocery store.  The visual message alone has done more harm to young impressionable girls and boys than anyone can even imagine.

Cosmopolitan

Biography magazine says Cosmopolitan is "the woman's counterpart to Playboy magazine." It is "an international journal with 14 overseas editions ... the world's largest-circulation young women's magazine." Before Helen took the magazine over it was a wholesome women's magazine that wrote critically of Helen. Time Magazine wrote an article in 1965 saying "February's Cosmopolitan made disparaging remarks about an author named Helen Gurley Brown.  'Despite her book, Sex and the Office, which equates the office affair with a gay lark,' the article admonished, Mrs. Brown has the wrong slant. 'Career girls who have been burned, offer one loud word of advice, 'Don't!'  Now Hearst's Cosmopolitan seems to have changed its mind.  Last week Helen Gurley Brown, 43, was named editor."  The magazine, they say, now call her "the most exciting woman in the world."  She is really the most dangerous woman in the world.

One writer said, "The free-loving 60s ... most vocal proponent: The bone-thin Brown, a one-time secretary who wrote such seminal sexual revolution guides as Sex and the Single Girl and Sex and the Office, became the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, a then-foundering, prim women's magazine, in 1965. Under her stewardship, Cosmo turned into a forum for fresh discussions of female libertarianism and frank advice on, well, sex. Her approach propelled Cosmo from a stagnant circulation of 800,000 to giddy new heights of nearly three million, making the magazine an essential manual for a generation of Cosmo girls and setting the standard for today's women's magazines. "Fresh ... frank advice ... manual for a generation of girls."  This is the kind of positive feedback Helen has received for 40 years.

Brown was the first female editor to receive a Magazine Publishers of America Lifetime Achievement Award. One person wrote, "The woman widely credited with ushering in the sexual revolution was honored Wednesday night by her colleagues for a lifetime of achievement and for her focus on women's issues.  The most important names in the magazine publishing industry turned out to honor Cosmopolitan Editor-in-chief Helen Gurley Brown, who has been championing women's issues since the 1960s." One of the quests honoring her was Hearst Magazine Enterprises President John Mack Carter who said that her best-selling book's topic "was especially bold for 1962."  Another person who praised her was Ellen Levine, editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping who told of how Cosmopolitan magazine had been such a central part of her life growing up. She said "I was in college when it first started. And for all of us college girls, you just raced right out to get it."

In the speech accepting her award she said, "Sex and the Single Girl which was a best seller and I'm getting tons of letters from young women all over the country who never had anybody to talk to before -- no, you don't have to be married by age twenty-seven, yes, if you're single and having a sex life, it's probably better than that of your married friends, etc. I'm trying to answer all the letters and one night David looks at me typing and says, 'You know if you had your own magazine, you could answer everybody at one time.' We didn't know any better so he took our little magazine proposal all over New York. Nobody wanted to start a magazine but Richard Deems, president of Hearst Magazines, said we could try our format on their Cosmopolitan which had been a great magazine but was now losing money. We did. It worked. At age 43, knowing totally nothing about magazines, I got to be an editor. ... I've had a wonderful life..."

Another writer tells the story this way: "It was David who encouraged Helen to write the book about single life, and Sex and the Single Girl appeared in print in 1962. When she received thousands of letters from grateful readers, he then suggested she edit a magazine for young women so she could answer them all at once. In 1965 he helped her win the job of editor of the Hearst Company’s failing literary magazine, Cosmopolitan, though she had never worked at a magazine before.

 

Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer

The two most influential women in TV news are Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer. Both adore Helen Gurley Brown. Barbara says of her, "Helen’s message endures because it’s feminist and practical." She has also praised her as a mentor saying, "And what she emphasizes over and over again is: if I can do it, you can do it." And what is "it" that the often divorced Ms. Walters speaks so reverently of?  It is the feminist lifestyle that she lives -- the exciting world of fame, fortune and broken homes. Barbara says, "Helen works and lives in a highly competitive world, yet she hasn’t a mean bone in her body."

Another friend, Diane Sawyer, says, "Helen is a little voice in my head saying, ‘Not only can you do it, but it will possibly be fun.’"  That little voice is the voice of the Devil.  She doesn't hear the voice of the good angel in her other ear. Real "fun" is living within God's laws, not Satan's feminist lifestyle.

Barbara and Diane feel they have an exciting life, but they have not been able to have a successful marriage and children.  Barbara has been through many marriages and is now alone.  Diane has never had children. WOMEN WHO FOLLOW HELEN OFTEN EXPERIENCE THE "FUN" OF DIVORCE AND THE "FUN" OF NOT HAVING CHILDREN.

One person wrote, "Helen Gurley Brown cooks her husband breakfast and no, she doesn't allow this married man to sleep with other women. 'She’s as monogamous as a swan, and makes sure I am too,' admits her husband, an Academy Award-winning producer of such films as Jaws, The Sting and Cocoon. It was David who encouraged Helen to write the book about single life, and Sex and the Single Girl appeared in print in 1962. When she received thousands of letters from grateful readers, he then suggested she edit a magazine for young women so she could answer them all at once. In 1965 he helped her win the job of editor of the Hearst Company’s failing literary magazine, Cosmopolitan, though she had never worked at a magazine before; and he maintained a close connection to the magazine, helping Helen write coverlines throughout her reign. Her Cosmo was a newsstand sensation."

'She took over as editor in 1965 and opened its pages to frank discussion of sex and relationships. Circulation soared to three million, turning Brown into a publishing icon" that has a "fondness for extra-marital sex." Helen became a celebrity — considered one of the most successful magazine editors in history. Others call her a "legend."  Unfortunately, her legacy is having the dubious honor of making free love and immodesty legitimate.
 
One writer said that the magazine was "an international phenomenon. In the US it sells 2.5 million copies a month and has a total readership of 15.4 million. Cosmo editions have been launched in 31 countries—now including India, Thailand and the Philippines ... A New York Times columnist wrote recently that Gurley Brown and her magazine both had 'a case of arrested development.' But Gurley Brown’s message is even more popular now than when she took over US Cosmopolitan in 1965."

Time magazine in 1968 had an article about her titled "Big Sister."  They write that she has turned the magazine "into a sort of female Playboy.... Mrs. Brown likes to think of her magazine as a 'sophisticated older sister.'"  They go on to write how it gives advice on "How to be a successful mistress."  She is quoted as saying, "It is no longer a question of whether she does or doesn't -- She does."  They write that she is on a "crusade."  They make no judgment on her crusade against Biblical morals.  They end with these inspiring words, "As in Playboy, children are not pictured; they interfere with the free, untrammeled sex life.  'I'm a materialist,' says Editor Brown, 'and it's a materialistic world.  Nobody is keeping a woman from doing everything she wants to do but herself.'  Certainly not Helen Gurley Brown."


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