Helen Gurley Brown, Former Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan, Dead at 90

The New York Times reports, "Helen Gurley Brown, Who Gave Cosmopolitan Its Purr, Is Dead at 90" (via Memeorandum). And at Blazing Cat Fur, "Helen Gurley Brown, longtime Cosmopolitan editor, dies at 90."

You can't miss Cosmo at the supermarket check-out lines.

And I can remember, when I was younger, my sisters usually had some copies of Cosmo around the house. I think it's basically an institution, more so than perhaps any other women's magazine.

It's interesting, though, that a lot of conservative women who comment here revile Cosmo. I've posted a couple of Cosmo covers as Rule 5 entries and those seem to generate comments on how vile the feminist movement has become regarding the sexual liberation of women. And there was an essay out a few days ago from Emily Esfahani Smith, who just hammers the magazine, "Cosmo Magazine’s “Wholesome Values”." There's no key pullout quote (the piece itself is mostly quotes) but the bottom line is "wholesome values" for Cosmo is sex, and lots of it.

Clicking over at Cosmo's homepage bears it out, for example, "How to Find Your G-Spot," and "75 Crazy-Hot Sex Moves." According to Esfahani Smith, Helen Gurley Brown laid out a philosophy of sex for the magazine. The magazine ostensibly pushes sex within relationships, between a woman and her boyfriend and between man and wife, and plenty of it, carefree and wild. (And not between two men or two women, thank goodness!) But Esfahani Smith doesn't buy it: "Are these seriously what pass for wholesome values these days?" And she's got a post from April on Cosmo's "values" as well, "“The” Sex Issue of Cosmo." Lots of recent Cosmo covers at that link. Personally, I was a little surprised when Selena Gomez made the cover of the March issue. She's 20 years-old now, so that's fine. The problem is that Selena still appears on Disney Channel's "The Wizards of Waverly Place." I'd expect a lot of parents might find contradictory messages between what Cosmo's selling and that of Disney. (And that reminds me, Scott Eric Kaufman libelously attacks conservative Rule 5 bloggers for alleged pedophilia should they post pics of those so-called 20 year-old "underage" hotties, the f-king loser.)

In any case, I'm not hung up on the feminist angle. It's up to parents to police their kids, and I'm against teens having sex until they're 18 years-old --- and for the record, I have a teenager who goes by that rule.

Oh, and that's Ashley Greene at the picture above, on the August cover. The Daily Mail had pics of her the other day, "How low can you go... Ashley Greene shows off her ample cleavage in a black maxi dress."

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