Cosmopolitan was NOT Playboy

Helen Gurley Brown is quoted as saying; "A guy reading Playboy can say, 'Hey, That's me.' I want my girl to be able to say the same thing." She claimed that she wanted her readers to see themselves as "upwardly mobile sexual agents," and imagined that she created a new place for her readers outside of the "male-oriented American Dream," but Brown actually perpetuated the social standard that a woman must marry and be supported by a man.

Brown's claim about Playboy struck me more than any of the similarities I saw between Brown's Cosmopolitan and the modern one. Did she really believe that the magazine was the equivalent of Playboy for a female reader? Was she simply deluded as to the end that her magazine achieved?

Playboy was leading the "male revolt," telling men that they did not need to share their success, but rather to lead licentious lives of excess. Cosmopolitan did not tell women that they could be independent of men and lead their own lives. Instead it was completely focused on how to "lure" the most "eligible" men. Granted, the magazine gave women unprecedented sexual license, however, that freedom was to be used to eventually snag a husband.

Cosmo's superficial attempts at presenting a Playboy image.