From Classy to Trashy

"Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams"

I had always heard that Cosmopolitan was a "trashy" magazine, and after reading Laurie Oullette's analysis on Helen Brown's transformation of it, I understood why. From the beginning, I don't think Brown intended to imply the idea of having multiple identities to women, but after her first book "Sex and the Single Girl", she took her ideas too far. Brown took her own opinions and ways of doing things, and advised women all over the world to do the same thing. "Brown was one of the first mainstream figures to free women from the guilt of premarital sex by advising them them to disregard the patriarchal double standard," (Oullette, 117). Brown also created this idea of obtaining a perfect image by maintaing more than one identity. She was basically telling women that if they changed who they were completely, then they would get the man of their dreams. Helen Brown is the core reason behind how women are today, and she acquired this title by sending out a artificial message to women. The "pink collar" label gave women more confidence with men, and as Brown suggested, these men would be smarter and richer. To gain this label, women needed to "rework their identities on the basis of upper-class ideals, and to assess their current situations and future possibilities on the basis of those constructions," (Oullette, 126). Brown was telling women to marry for money and fame, and nothing else. I believe her entire message was referring to women more as objects than as actual human beings, and unfortunately many women bought into her advice.