Birthday Girl : Style: The times are changing, but not Cosmo, still hot after 25 years.
For 25 years, you loved her or you hated her.
What you couldn’t do was ignore her.
After all, she would beckon to millions of readers from countless magazine racks every month. That magnificent face and figure deflating any hopes that you might ever measure up. That provocative pose and pout daring you to pick her up and take her home. Those clever cover blurbs seducing you to join her fantasy world free of sexual hang-ups, stress or cellulite.
So, c’mon, admit it. Today as much as then, you love to hate, or hate to love, That Cosmopolitan Girl.
Phew! Now don’t you feel better?
Well, such relief may be short-lived. Because That Cosmo Girl turns 25 next week when the magazine’s giant, 428-page silver anniversary issue reaches newsstands. Don’t expect any birthday surprises--heck, she’s too young for a face lift. Instead, Cosmo’s Mother Sexperior, Helen Gurley Brown, has kept the formula as familiar as the plunging necklines of the cover subjects photographed by Francesco Scavullo (Madonna, sporting a brunette bob), the pull-no-punches sexual advice (a lead article titled “How to be a Very Sexy Woman”) and the fat-be-damned fashions (mannequin-of-the-moment Cindy Crawford in Giorgio di Sant’Angelo Spandex).
Plus, there’s another male centerfold to follow in the tradition of Burt Reynolds, John Davidson, Jim Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger. This year’s is TV celebrity David Hasselhoff, who was picked after Donald Trump declined.
Still, even without full frontal nudity, the centerfold remains a symbol of sorts for Cosmo readers, who Brown felt deserved “to have a naked man of their own.” And it’s exactly that format of finding fun in not-so-innocent naughtiness--summed up perfectly by the pillow in Brown’s boudoir-like office proclaiming “Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere”--that has given Cosmopolitan its unique image in the crowded marketplace of women’s magazines.
But for how much longer?
Today, such formerly taboo subjects as multiple orgasms, masturbation and affairs with married men--long the mainstay of Cosmopolitan’s editorial pages--are virtual staples of many women’s magazines. And the advent of AIDS has made Cosmopolitan’s bed-hopping bombast seem dated. (A recent article proclaiming that AIDS was not a serious problem among heterosexuals drew fire from all sides and accusations of irresponsible journalism.)
Brown, 68--the longest reigning magazine editor in the country and known for her appearances on “The Tonight Show” wearing girlish strapless creations and flirting shamelessly--is talking about stepping down.
Even more unsettling is that Cosmopolitan itself is not the bete noire for the women’s movement it used to be.
But perhaps most surprising of all is that Cosmopolitan has stayed successful by being the same magazine it was 25 years ago.
“I haven’t deviated one inch since 1965 because there’s no reason to reposition it. Because I came in with a winning ticket in the first place,” boasts Brown, who speaks exactly like she writes: in italics.
“Oh sure, there are millions of women out there who are playing it differently. But Cosmo is not playing it differently than we did before. We haven’t adjusted for them. I won’t say that they’ve adjusted for us.
“I’d just say that more of them have come into our parlor and into our way of thinking about life.”
I started reading Cosmo when I was 20, and I still pick it up every month. I enjoy it. I like the articles, the fashion layouts, the new ideas. I’m a very independent single working woman, and they definitely aim their articles to people like that. They have a lot of things I can relate to.” -- Cindi Vattaks, 28, advertising account executive.
It’s geared toward a different mentality about womanhood than I care to think of myself possessing. I don’t believe that one should have to try hard to be a woman. One has to be what one is. The whole image of the Cosmo woman seems a bit tawdry to me. I don’t want to be that kind of woman.” -- Dana Breaux, 37, entrepreneur
Back in 1965, American astronauts walked in space for the first time and Helen Gurley Brown found space for That Cosmopolitan Girl when she became editor of one of the nation’s oldest magazines. Begun in 1886 by writer Paul Schlicht as a repository for articles on climbing Mount Vesuvius and the life of Mozart, Cosmopolitan was soon reincarnated into a sophisticated literary periodical under press baron William Randolph Hearst, who purchased it in 1926.
By the mid-1960s, however, Cosmo was trying to go after well-heeled women and circulation began slumping badly. Enter Brown, then a Los Angeles advertising copywriter.
Her 1962 best-selling book, “Sex and the Single Girl,” had been a scandalous sensation, and her newspaper advice column was generating bags of mail from young career women. With help from her movie producer husband David, Brown was determined to start a magazine aimed at this audience. Hearst gave her Cosmopolitan to revamp and resuscitate.
She recalls being so scared that she wept on Park Avenue on the eve of her first day at work and hid in a fetal position under her desk at home the day after. Nonetheless, the self-proclaimed “mouseburger” (defined as someone who’s not prepossessing, pretty, well-educated or born with special privileges) began assigning articles on How to Marry a Millionaire, Elizabeth Taylor and The Pill.
Almost immediately, circulation came back to life.
From the start, the magazine was a perplexing paradox. At a time when Betty Friedan was defining the women’s liberation movement with her book, “The Feminine Mystique,” Brown was describing what could only be called “The Feminine Plastique.”
Armed with false eyelashes (for batting at the boss), frou-frou furnishings (for making men feel at home) and peek-a-boo wardrobes (for showing off Mark Eden-developed bosoms), That Cosmo Girl was a Barbie-come-to-life whose primary interest wasn’t career or cause but coupling. And Cosmopolitan was dedicated to helping her not only find a man to pamper but also pleasure herself in the process.
And, always, Brown imbued it all with an inspirational, almost evangelical, fervor that the Cosmo reader could have it all--better sex, richer men, bigger bank accounts--only if she was prepared to worship at the magazine’s altar and follow every how-to article to the letter. Or, as Brown once declared in an interview, women had to “become a better cupcake to be gobbled up.”
And, if all else failed, there was always a roll of Johnson & Johnson 1-inch white masking tape, and a jar of Vaseline, to create the illusion of cleavage (the secret of all those pneumatic Cosmo cover models).
Once admitting that she was editing the magazine for herself when she was in her 20s--”the girl with her nose pressed against the glass”--Brown has as clear an image of who That Cosmo Girl is now as when she started out.
“I suppose that I always actively or subliminally had in mind a girl who’s 23 years old, who’s probably a secretary or assistant or in some other not-big job but who’s on her way,” Brown explains. “She’s a woman who loves men, loves children and loves sex, and is traditional in many ways. She’s just a female’s female. But her work life is also important because that’s where she gets her recognition. She doesn’t want to live through other people. And she reads Cosmo because the magazine is very earnest in terms of its goals for young women. We tell our reader that she should have a role.
“And if she tries to chicken out, we say, ‘Go for it. We’ll help you.’ We never let the Cosmo girl off the hook.”
My first memory of Cosmo was when I was 19 and picked it up and there was this article (that) women don’t have to fake orgasms. My jaw dropped. Because I didn’t know women were even having them. I think their frankness about sex was very liberating for women and extremely beneficial.” -- Carol Hemingway, 42, KGIL radio talk show host
A year ago was the last time I picked it up. There was this weird sexuality article and I just felt turned off. The sexuality thing is really a problem for me with Cosmo. It’s highly manipulative game playing. Maybe the world works that way, but not my world.” -- Gina Pack, 33, production company manager
By the early 1970s, feminists were loudly decrying what they saw as the magazine’s soft-porn message of exploitation and manipulation.
Most annoying in their view, aside from those Scavullo sexpots, was that while they were fighting to get women a foot into the boardroom, all That Cosmo Girl cared about was luring her boss into the bedroom. Just as bad, in the feminists’ view, was Cosmo’s blueprint for inequality urging women to put on a girlish, almost geisha-like, act around men.
And when Cosmopolitan did discuss women’s lib, feminists argued, it was usually to offer decidedly unliberated pointers, like “Hire a lover and install him in a cute little apartment around the corner from your office.”
Brown still recalls with wonderment the time a clique of “very militant feminists” arrived on her doorstep in the early 1970s demanding that she give them space in the magazine every month. “I said we would be glad to publish articles they wrote, but I would have to assign them and they would have to be well written. But I said I’m not giving them a section of the magazine because I don’t own it.”
Today, that feminist reviling has undergone some revisionist thinking. And while those busty ingenues on the cover still don’t sit well with some (nor do many of the articles for that matter), the magazine is winning more kudos than condemnation these days for having served a valuable purpose in helping women to recognize, explore and enjoy their sexuality.
“Cosmo certainly wouldn’t be considered a feminist’s bible, but it was sexually progressive. It sort of rejoiced in women’s sexuality,” notes feminist Susan Estrich, who served as campaign manager for Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential run and is Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California.
Betty Friedan, who once decried Cosmo as “quite obscene and quite horrible” because it embraced the idea that women are nothing but sex objects, today calls Brown “a very smart and gutsy lady” who may even have been a feminist pioneer.
“In general, I’ve found her to be all for the main agenda of the women’s movement. Whether I actually approve of the ethos of the Cosmo girl, well, that’s another matter,” says Friedan, who has written occasionally for the magazine on the problems facing working women.
“But at a crucial moment when we still had some hope of getting the ERA passed, I asked Helen if the Cosmo girl could come out for the ERA. And she ran the most wonderful ad in which the Cosmo girl said that any man that wasn’t for the ERA needn’t bother messing around with her. And it had a profound effect at a time when the media was trying to dismiss the feminist movement as all a man-hating crackpot extreme fringe.”
Asked about this change of heart, Brown can only shrug. It’s her view that while feminists were busy fighting for equal pay and equal jobs, they were secretly pleased to leave the fight for sexual freedom to her.
“Feminists have just never been able to get a very good case going against me,” she declares. “It’s just unrealistic always to have thought you could separate feminism from being a woman. Because one part of your life is sex and men, and another part of your life is work and achieving. And where I sometimes get into trouble is saying that your work is just as important as your love life. But no feminist--not Gloria Steinem, not Betty Friedan--ever inculcated me with that idea. I came up with that myself, and it’s on every page of Cosmo.”
I read it diligently when I was 18 until about 26, and I still pick it up sometimes. It presented a very glamorous image to me. It was a magazine I could relate to very easily. For instance, whenever I took some of those quizzes they had, I always did very well on them.
-- Warren Barber, 36, receptionist and mother of two
I was never a reader because I never related to it. I always thought it was simply ridiculous, everything from the artwork to the stories. To me, it was offensive. I couldn’t get past the cover. It represented negative presentations to and about women.
-- Eileen Austin, 40, financial consultant
Cosmopolitan is the undisputed cash cow of the Hearst Corp. magazine group. With a total paid circulation of 2.7 million and estimated readership of 11 million, it posted a 3% gain in ad pages and 9.7% gain in ad revenues in 1989 while other magazines were suffering declines.
And, from the looks of things, Cosmo girls are still being turned out: with a readership of mostly 18- to 34-year-olds, the magazine has been the No. 1 bestseller in college bookstores for 10 of the last 11 years.
As she has for 25 years, Brown reviews every word that goes into the magazine. Her husband still edits her personal column, “Step Into My Parlor,” and writes all the cover blurbs--297 sets so far, including “I Was a Passed Around Girl,” “How to Turn Him On While You Take It Off,” “Why I Wear My False Eyelashes to Bed,” “What You Can Learn From French Girls (They Start With Less and Make It Ooo-La-La),” or, “Who, Me? VD?”
Brown also has to approve every story idea. And aside from what many might think, it’s not all just sex, sex and more sex. “It’s a very successful, shrewd, well-worked-out format, and I really don’t deviate too much,” Brown explains. “And I’m not sure whether to tell you what it is because anybody could copy it. I’m surprised that they don’t.”
This magic formula consists of a major man-woman relationship article; a so-called emotional article about anxiety, greed or some other modern-day deadly sin; a health article about the latest anti-depressant drug or new diet plan; a novel excerpt. And of course those sexual advice columns with headlines lurid enough to have to hide from your mother (or at least from the stranger sitting next to you on the airplane).
Pieces about jobs and careers run infrequently because they’re simply “not all that interesting,” Brown claims. And articles about children are infrequent--unless it’s something along the lines of, “How to Ingratiate Yourself With a Divorced Man’s Children If You Want to Marry Him.”
Meanwhile, rumors abound--most of them emanating from ex-staffers and former contributing writers--that the editorial integrity of Cosmo leaves something to be desired. Published reports have alleged improved quotes, made-up case histories, composites in place of real people and rewritten Letters to the Editor among other no-nos.
The real question is whether readers care. After all, they’re only reading Cosmo for the promise of sex it holds within its pages, aren’t they?
“Somebody interviewing me recently asked, ‘If your management would let you run a male nude centerfold and terrifically precise sex articles every month, would that be your hope and wish?’ ” Brown says with a laugh.
“And I have to say the Hearst management are pussycats in terms of what I can do or not do. They trust me after all this time. But I don’t want to do more sex articles or centerfolds than I’m doing. That would be too much of a good thing.”
Besides, she notes in a confidential tone, “It’s hard enough to come up with great new sex articles every month anyway. “
I read it when I was in my 20s basically to keep up to date about beauty, make-up, fashions, and I still read it. An article about mother-daughter relationships caught my eye recently, and I thought it was great. They also have interesting articles about things I’ve been dealing with lately.
-- Cindy Raposa, 38, bartender.
I used to pick it up when I went on vacations with a girlfriend about 10 years ago. Or buy the Love Guide issue and sit with my sister and joke about it. It was strictly for relaxation when you didn’t want to focus on anything too heavy. It was sort of trashy reading.
-- April Webster, 34, casting director
In 1981, Cosmopolitan suffered its first flattened circulation figures, prompting Brown to commission a national survey, drop some columns, change some others and include a reader’s questionnaire in the magazine.
Despite these minor changes, no substantive revisions were deemed necessary. Not even changing editors.
After signing an eight-year contract in 1982--on the heels of the publication of her successful advice book, “Having It All”--Brown pledged to pick a successor by 1985. She still hasn’t. And she’s still editor.
“It’s a privately owned corporation and there’s no mandatory retirement age. So I don’t have a specific date when I will be leaving,” she says. “And we just have a sort of understanding that when the magazine isn’t doing well, then they would have to think about finding somebody else. Because then I wouldn’t have any fun. I wouldn’t want to be here.”
She is starting to feel, however, that she should step down and “give back something,” maybe doing philanthropic work.
Still, she sees the ‘90s as a tempting challenge for Cosmopolitan, given the effect of the AIDS crisis on sexual mores. While women are as interested in sex as ever, she maintains, she has found that one night-stands and multiple lovers and the like have decreased considerably.
“We’re not as naughty as we were in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And it’s all right to have a different style of enjoyment,” she declares. “But I am assiduously trying to encourage women not to let their sex drive diminish.”
OK, HGB, but what about the other issue. Now that she’s 25, isn’t it time, finally, to let That Cosmopolitan Girl become That Cosmopolitan Woman?
Brown looks stricken at the very suggestion of it.
“I’ve never felt any guilt calling a Cosmo woman a girl. She is both. We all are. I think women continue to think of ourselves as being girlish, as being a love object, as being a sex object. Because the womanly side is being grown-up and making sensible decisions and not being childish.
“But the term, That Cosmopolitan Girl, I think is right. And I think as long as I’m here, she’ll always be That Cosmopolitan Girl.”
