What Made Helen Run?

Pussycat, I just want to tell you about a book that’s all about me, me, me! Who is “me,” I hear you crow. How funny. I never knew!

It’s called Not Pretty Enough: The Unlikely Triumph of Helen Gurley Brown (Sarah Crichton Books, $27). And the author, Gerri Hirshey—barred by my former employer, the Hearst Corporation, from quoting verbatim from the ample archives under its control—was never going to be able to help you figure me out, either. How adorable is that? So what you get is a mere five hundred pages on all my cute feminine wiles and wherefores, my stratospheric rise from mouseburger to

culture Dec/Jan 2016

Footloose Feminism

Earlier this year, I gave a speech in New York advocating female supremacy. At the end of it, I told the men in the audience to hand over all their cash to the women nearest to them. (My feeling is that this should be done on a global scale.) There wasn’t universal compliance, but some money did change hands. It was my first experience of activism, and boy, was it fun! So I can almost see how, once you get the bug, you can’t stop.

Gloria Steinem can’t stop, and that’s a great thing. She was the right person in the right places at the right times—flexible, modest, generous, indefatigable, and