How to Win Men and Influence People : The how-to book ‘Feminine Force’ begs the question: Do we really want to become Georgette Mosbacher?

Every now and then I like to curl up with a how-to book. I favor those that promise to reveal the lowdown on love and the secrets of success. In the 1980s, Helen Gurley Brown’s “Having It All” was the best known guide to men, money and making the most of yourself. For the ‘90s, Georgette Mosbacher is promoting “Feminine Force: Release the Power Within to Create the Life You Deserve.”

Both books are semi-autobiographical and ask us to accept the author as a role model. Should we “mouseburger” our way to the top with H.G.B., or “Mosbacher” our way with Georgette? Their backgrounds are alike. Both grew up poor--H.G.B. in the Ozarks, G.M. in an Indiana steel town. Their fathers were killed in accidents when Helen was 10, Georgette 7. By their early 20s, both were single women chasing fame, fortune, and happiness in Los Angeles. Brown is editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. Mosbacher became the chief executive officer of La Prairie Cosmetics. Neither has children.

In spite of the similarities between these highly successful businesswomen, their books are very different. Brown tells us how wonderful we can be; Mosbacher tells how wonderful she is. Brown explains how to get and keep a man; Mosbacher recounts how she stalked her three rich-richer-richest husbands. “As you succeed, keep a low profile,” Brown advises; “I grab attention and make waves,” Mosbacher asserts. Brown writes wryly about her flat chest; Mosbacher claims when she moved to Washington with her commerce secretary husband, “No one wanted to talk about anything but my decolletage.” One is funny; the other, phony.

For Brown, sex is joyful and revitalizing; for Mosbacher, it’s just another way to seize power: “My personal philosophy is to make him earn it. The harder he works to have intimacy with you, the more he’ll value it.” Brown’s favorite word is you, while me is Mosbacher’s preferred pronoun. A commercial, acquisitive instinct pervades Mosbacher’s world as she goes about stamping mine on everything within reach.

For more than 30 years, Brown has been devoted to her husband, David Brown, a man who was not wealthy when they married but became so. Each of Mosbacher’s husbands has been powerful, well-heeled, useful and 20 to 30 years her senior.

Brown gives us advice she has followed herself. Mosbacher tells us what we should do--while she does otherwise. If your boss is married, she declares, “he’s out of bounds.” Yet when she met George Barrie, CEO of Faberge, both he and she were married to others. It didn’t stop Mosbacher from making him her second husband. Although we are often cautioned by Mosbacher that “a clear head makes good decisions,” listen to her explanation of why she decided to marry Barrie: “ ‘Georgette,’ I said to myself, ‘You’re going to have to marry the guy to divorce him.’ ” Say what? Is this how she defines unmuddled thinking? Or is marriage merely a prelude to a profitable divorce?

Mosbacher’s philosophy of marriage is also a little sad. She proposed to all three husbands, although “none of them said yes the first time.” (Sometimes first responses are best.) After you catch your man, Mosbacher warns us to “make sure you have money of your own that he doesn’t know about. It doesn’t matter where it comes from.” This amoral lack of concern for the source of one’s independence is not what Virginia Woolf had in mind when she said a woman must have money and a room of her own.

At times, Mosbacher’s advice is just plain wrong--such as her handy hints on the art of conversing with men. She suggests starting with something simple like, “Do you have your own company?” How many of us are in a social circle where this would be anything other than a joke? If you’re interested in a distinguished history professor, she proposes that you “get the ball rolling by telling him you were lousy in history . . . that’s a great conversation opener.” Sure.

Some of the counsel she gives is sound, but obvious. She recommends women not wear sequins to the office. Thanks, Georgette.

But more than her egotism, it’s her isolationism that disturbs me. Mosbacher reiterates, “When you tap your Feminine Force, you learn you need no one but yourself.” Yet to lean on others and have them lean on us is good. Though it’s fine to be ambitious, self-sufficient and committed to a career, Mosbacher is so busy projecting herself externally that little is left within. Certainly no serenity--nor kindness, sweetness, receptivity.

Her point of view becomes tough as she continually imitates and competes with men. Even in her language, we find a macho spirit: “taking the bull by the horns . . . biting the bullet . . . guts of steel . . . iron fist.” It’s hardly liberation of feminine force to wrap a male ego in a female body.