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6 reviews for:
Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman
Brooke Hauser
3.71 AVERAGE
6 reviews for:
Enter Helen: The Invention of Helen Gurley Brown and the Rise of the Modern Single Woman
Brooke Hauser
3.71 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Hauser paints an engaging, well-rounded portrait of Helen Gurley Brown, portraying her as a flawed but likable and powerful woman who was not part of the feminist movement and was even somewhat befuddled by it. Gurley Brown is a paradoxical figure, and this book does a great job of capturing her contradictions -- for example, she embraced female sexuality but had an eating disorder and rigid ideas about what the female body should look like. While I didn't particularly come away from the book liking Gurley Brown, I did come away from it with an appreciation for her importance and contributions.
Entertaining book on the intriguing, fabulous and at times contradictory Helen Gurley Brown. I had heard her name but knew very little about her apart from the basics. I now know what a towering and polarizing figure she is for women, feminists, and the publishing industry.
It’s so easy for us at this point in time to laugh at and spoof Cosmo magazine but at the time, Helen Gurley Brown did something so groundbreaking, in making it ok for women (or ‘girls’ as she called them) to have desires, not just for romance and sex, but in the workplace.
In a way, being ahead of her time was what made her amazing but also what made it hard for her to fully understand the feminist movements of the late 60’s and beyond. That said, no matter her blindspots and sometimes out-dated ideas, she was a force to reckoned with and I’m glad I got to know her a bit through this book.
It’s so easy for us at this point in time to laugh at and spoof Cosmo magazine but at the time, Helen Gurley Brown did something so groundbreaking, in making it ok for women (or ‘girls’ as she called them) to have desires, not just for romance and sex, but in the workplace.
In a way, being ahead of her time was what made her amazing but also what made it hard for her to fully understand the feminist movements of the late 60’s and beyond. That said, no matter her blindspots and sometimes out-dated ideas, she was a force to reckoned with and I’m glad I got to know her a bit through this book.
Feminists come in all shapes and sizes, Helen Gurley Brown was no exception. The author does not shrink away from Helen's imperfections or at times grossly anti-feminist viewpoints, but instead shows her life and work as it was, complicated and multifaceted.
Regressive politicians in USA this year make this book a timely reminder of where we came from, how far we've come and how often we've had to fight to keep the rights acquired and how easy it would be to lose them if we are not vigilant.
This was incredible. I'm only just venturing into biographies and non-fiction (if I've read maybe 200 books in my lifetime, I'd say I've read 40 that aren't fiction, at best), but this was such an interesting deep-dive into a really complex figure in the feminist movement and the sexual revolution