Cosmopolitan: What All Women Need to Know

Laurie Ouellette’s “Inventing the Cosmo Girl, Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams” investigates the impact that Helen Gurley Brown has made on feminine ideology, and discusses other perspectives relating to female identity. Brown published “Sex and the Single Girl” in 1962, which served as a self-help manual on appearance, budget, living arrangements, working and flirting. The book claimed that typical women can lead sexual lives outside of marriage, and appealed to those between “girlhood and marriage.” (118) In 1965, Brown became the editor-in-chief for Cosmopolitan, which quickly gained popularity. Cosmopolitan appealed to young, single white females in the working class, or pink-collar realm. Brown encouraged women to see themselves as “upwardly mobile sexual agents,” (120) and stated that identity was something one can change, and that all one must know is how to create the illusion of beauty. Due to the current trend of individuality and diversity, I doubt Brown could get away with an article suggesting girls ought to “change their type,” but it does demonstrate how she did not see things such as status and appearance as concrete. On page 121, the words “false” and “fake” appear seven times in one paragraph, displaying how much women were encouraged to alter their image. I found it interesting that Brown targeted women from the lower class and that the Cosmo Girl was often labeled as a “have-not.” Shockingly, Ouellette reveals on page 123 that a survey displayed that the sexual practices of Cosmopolitan readers were the most experienced group in western history at the close of the 1970s. In addition to sexuality, Brown promotes good work ethic and consumption. She claimed women should copy the members in the Bourgeoisie, or utilize cultural capital, and mimic upper-class customs. The reading concludes by examining man-woman relationships. Brown encouraged the exchange of female sexual favors for material comforts and luxuries provided by the male, who is ideally higher-class than the female. In the workplace, relations between female secretaries and male superiors were common. Offices were a great place for women to work, socially speaking. Secretarial and clerical work was better valued than factory work, and provided women with the opportunity to meet men of greater status, income and education than themselves.

This reading is similar to “Cosmetics, A Clinique Case Study,” by Pat Kirkham and Alex Weller in the sense that both passages deal with how to best effectively reach out to women. However, many differences are prevalent. The Clinique study deals with the marketing techniques that attract women (colors, front styles, etc) while the Cosmopolitan reading focuses on content that attracks women (how to flirt, act in the workplace, and dress). Furthermore, Clinique appeals to the middle and upper classes, due to its high price range and established reputation, while Cosmopolitan more appeals to the lower or working class, striving to imitate the middle and upper classes. I chose to provide the cover of Cosmopolitan from May 1965 as my image. This image is striking in various ways and supports both Ouellette and Kirkham and Weller. The heading, “Why Can’t a Women Be More Like a Man?” could imply that women deserve the influence and power that men have, which is supported by the woman’s confident and dominant stance and body positioning. Ouellette discusses how women in the sixties onward gained sexually power but were still oppressed in the workplace. The colors in the cover confirm Kirkham and Weller’s findings. The soft yellow background appeals to women. However, the woman is wearing dark blue, which is a masculine color. This supports the article titled, “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?,” by placing a female dressed in male colors against a feminine display. Another way that Ouellette’s argument is supported involves the caption, “When Dentists Are Hard to Find.” This targets the lower or working class, because more wealthy women would most likely have an established dentist whom they see regularly, or would at least have the means of contacting one.