Kirjahaku

The biography of the revolutionary magazine editor who created the "Cosmo Girl" before Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw was even born As the author of the iconic Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for over three decades, Helen Gurley Brown (1922-2012) changed how women thought about sex, money, and their bodies in a way that resonates in our culture today. In Jennifer Scanlon's widely acclaimed biography, the award-winning scholar reveals Brown's incredible life story from her escape from her humble beginnings in the Ozarks to her eyebrow-raising exploits as a young woman in New York City, and her late-blooming career as the world's first "lipstick feminist." A mesmerizing tribute to a legend, Bad Girls Go Everywhere will appeal to everyone from Sex and the City and Mad Men fans to students of women's history and media studies.

A demanding feminist, devout Christian, and savvy grassroots civil rights organizer, Anna Arnold Hedgeman played a key role in over half a century of social justice initiatives. Like many of her colleagues, including A. Philip Randolph, Betty Friedan, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hedgeman ought to be a household name, but until now has received only a fraction of the attention she deserves. In Until There Is Justice, author Jennifer Scanlon presents the first-ever biography of Hedgeman. Through a commitment to faith-based activism, civil rights, and feminism, Hedgeman participated in and led some of the 20th century's most important developments, including advances in education, public health, politics, and workplace justice. Simultaneously a dignified woman and scrappy freedom fighter, Hedgeman's life upends conventional understandings of many aspects of the civil rights and feminist movements. She worked as a teacher, lobbyist, politician, social worker, and activist, often crafting and implementing policy behind the scenes. Although she repeatedly found herself a woman among men, a black American among whites, and a secular Christian among clergy, she maintained her conflicting identities and worked alongside others to forge a common humanity. From helping black and Puerto Rican Americans achieve critical civil service employment in New York City during the Great Depression to orchestrating white religious Americans' participation in the 1963 March on Washington, Hedgeman's contributions transcend gender, racial, and religious boundaries. Engaging and profoundly inspiring, Scanlon's biography paints a compelling portrait of one of the most remarkable yet understudied civil rights leaders of our time. Until There Is Justice is a must-read for anyone with a passion for history, biography, and civil rights.

Until There Is Justice tells the complex, moving story of the remarkable civil rights figure Anna Arnold Hedgeman, who played a key role in more than half a century of social justice initiatives. Hedgeman ought to be a household name like her colleagues, including A. Philip Randolph, Betty Friedan, and Martin Luther King Jr., but until now she has received only a fraction of the attention she deserves. Through a commitment to faith-based activism, civil rights, and feminism, Anna Arnold Hedgeman participated in and led some of the 20th century's most important developments, including advances in education, public health, politics, and workplace justice. She worked as a teacher, lobbyist, politician, social worker, and activist, often behind the scenes but always crafting as well as carrying out policy. She repeatedly found herself a woman among men, a black American among whites, and a secular Christian among clergy, but she found ways to maintain all of those conflicting identities and work with others to forge a common humanity. Hedgeman cared deeply for the dignity and welfare of all people, acting most passionately on behalf of the dispossessed. She helped black and Puerto Rican Americans achieve critical civil service employment in New York City during the Great Depression, directed national efforts for permanent fair labor legislation after World War II, coordinated the first organized attempt by black Americans to influence a presidential election, orchestrated white religious Americans' participation in the 1963 March on Washington, and introduced a broad and inclusive agenda as a founder of the National Organization for Women. Here finally is the story of this dignified woman and scrappy freedom fighter, devout Christian and demanding feminist, accomplished political operative and savvy grassroots organizer, proud American and insistent African American voice.

Born in Arkansas to a family of modest means, Helen Gurley Brown worked at countless secretarial jobs and was an advertising executive before writing the 1962 international bestseller Sex and the Single Girl, marrying the love of her life, becoming the diva of the New York magazine world, and editing Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years. In her farewell column in 1997, Brown offered her Cosmo readers three pieces of advice: every woman has something that makes her unique and gifted; men are not the enemy; and sex is among the best things in life. With these brief directives Brown summarized the philosophy that made her such an important and contested figure throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Imagine the life of a single woman in 1962. Women were encouraged to attend college primarily to obtain an Mrs. degree, newspaper ads listed jobs by sex, women could only obtain credit through their husbands, and unmarried women became suspect by the time they reached their mid-twenties. Along came a firebrand named Helen Gurley Brown, who had remained single into her late thirties and who had the audacity to encourage her unmarried sisters not to grab a husband, or to hide their single status, but to live, instead, in what she called "superlative style." Her 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl, became an overnight and international sensation for its frank look at single women's work lives, financial lives, and, of course, sex lives. To conservatives, Brown's books and magazine released the single woman from all social and sexual constraints, making her a threat to the institution of marriage. To many in the women's liberation movement, Brown's views enhanced men's rather than women's lives by turning women into sexually available playmates rather than making them powerful in their own right. For her legion of fans, however, Helen Gurley Brown represented another path, one that let women pursue heterosexual relationships yet remain independent, work at being beautiful yet call themselves feminists. Jennifer Scanlon's book is the first biography of Helen Gurley Brown, an icon of contemporary women's history and popular culture. Brown's irreverent and daring life and work challenge the stereotype of second-wave feminists as frumpy and humorless, while foreshadowing the sex-positive, lipstick-wearing--Cosmo-reading--third wave. Because Brown both bought into and utterly transformed advertising and consumer culture, this book will interest not only a female trade audience, but scholars in women's studies, American studies, popular culture studies, sociology, and history.

Inarticulate Longings explores the contradictions of a social agenda for women that promoted both traditional roles and the promises of a growing consumer culture by examining the advertising industry in the early 20th century.