Enter Helen (47 page)

278
  
Susan didn't especially like Helen: Susan Edmiston and Donna Lawson Wolff provided background on Helen's relationship with young staffers, including art director Judith Parker.

278
  
“on the blink”: “Eye's Alright,” “Eye,”
Women's Wear Daily
, May 17, 1968, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.

279
  
“I remember hearing that they were on acid”: Donna Lawson Wolff, interview with the author, June 2015. Additional background information from Sheila Weller's book
Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation
(New York: Washington Square Press: 2008), p. 265; Jeanette Wagner spoke of the locks being changed in “Master Class: Jeanette Wagner,”
Women's Wear Daily
, February 1, 2001, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.

279
  
“Perhaps they were handicapped in handling the boat”: Susan Edmiston, email exchange with author, May 2015.

280
  
Along with Richard Deems, Helen personally interviewed: Helen Gurley Brown to John R. Miller, August 9, 1968, 7:30 p.m., HGB Papers, SSC.

280
  
Sitting at her desk one night at seven thirty: Ibid.

280
  
Helen estimated that
Eye
was taking up nearly a third of her time: Ibid.

280
  
“Dear John, I'm in trouble”
and following
: Ibid.

281
  
“Where is George Walsh”: Ibid.

281
  
“John, I have told you before”: Ibid.

282
  
Hearst suspended publication after the May 1969 issue: “A Dropout,” “Eye,”
Women's Wear Daily
, March 26, 1969, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.

38: A
G
ROOVY
D
AY ON THE
B
OARDWALK

283
  
“As they glide back and forth”: Penelope Orth, “There She Is . . . ,”
Eye
, April 1968.

283
  
Helen eventually used
Cosmo
's newsstand success as a bartering chip: Helen Gurley Brown to John Miller, September 27, 1968; and to Richard Deems and Miller, November 26, 1968, HGB Papers, SSC.

283
  
In 1968, a civil rights activist: Susan Brownmiller gave an excellent account of the hatching and actualizing of the idea for the Miss America protest in her book
In Our Time: Memior of a Revolution
(New York: Dial Press, 1999), pp. 35–41.

283
  
“the Annual Miss America Pageant will again crown ‘your ideal'”
and following
: Robin Morgan, “No More Miss America!” August 22, 1968; the press release available at www.redstockings.org/index.php/42-uncategorised/65-no-more-miss-america.

284
  
“woman-garbage”; “Lots of other surprises”: Ibid.

284
  
“Ain't she sweet, makin' profits”: Lyrics by Bev Grant. Reproduced with permission.

285
  
“Atlantic City is a town with class”; “WELCOME TO THE MISS AMERICA CATTLE AUCTION”: Background is from Marcia Cohen,
The Sisterhood: The Inside Story of the Women's Movement and the Leaders Who Made It Happen
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988), p. 150; and “Miss America: People & Events: The 1968 Protest,”
American Experience
, PBS, pbs.org/wgbh/amex/missamerica/peopleevents/e_feminists.html.

285
  
Elsewhere, a woman wearing a top hat and her husband's suit: Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time
, pp. 35–41.

285
  
“Step right up, gentlemen”: Ibid. Brownmiller wrote about the mock auction, performed by an artist named Florika and another protestor, Peggy Dobbins. For online footage, see: “Miss America, Up Against the Wall” (also known as “Ms. America, Up Against the Wall”), a women's liberation documentary available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=awCRaGkowjY.

285
  
Later that night, the first Miss Black America: Judy Klemesrud, “There's Now Miss Black America,”
New York Times
, September 9, 1968.

285
  
“How can people live together more peaceably?”: Miss America 1969—Judith Ford, Pageant Center, pageantcenter.com; Alumna Judi Ford Nash, Miss America 1969, ultoday.com (covering the University of Louisiana and the UL District), October 12, 2011.

286
  
“No more girdles, no more pain!”; “Down with these shoes!”: Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time
, p. 39; Charlotte Curtis, “Miss America Pageant Picketed by 100 Women,”
New York Times
, September 8, 1968.

286
  
A woman sick of doing the dishes: Charlotte Curtis, “Miss America Pageant Picketed by 100 Women.”

286
  
“Why don't you throw yourselves in there!”; “Go home and wash your bras!”: Ibid.

286
  
“Women use your minds”: Jacqui Ceballos, interview with the author, October 2014.

286
  
Someone else threw in a copy of
Cosmo
: Robin Morgan, “No More Miss America!”; the press release invited protestors to throw out their copies of
Cosmopolitan
.

286
  
Hanisch and another protestor hung a banner: Susan Brownmiller vividly recalled this scene in
In Our Time
, p. 40.

287
  
nobody ever set fire to one: Ibid., p. 37.

287
  
“The WLM can put down bras all they like”: Deedee Moore, “Take It Off, Push It Up, Fill It Out: The Mad, Mad Bra Industry,”
Cosmopolitan
, March 1969.

39: B
EFORE AND
A
FTER

288
  
“We had all these young assistants”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.

288
  
She wanted to be with her girls: Liz Smith, eulogy for Helen Gurley Brown, October 18, 2012, available at “Liz Smith Remembers Helen Gurley Brown,” wowowow.com/culture/liz-smith-remembers-helen-gurley-brown/, October 24, 2012.

288
  
“I have not been single for years”
and following excerpt
: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help,”
Esquire
, February 1970.

289
  
“one of the first things I ever did in which I found my voice as a writer”: Nora Ephron to Helen Gurley Brown, undated (possibly circa 1996), HGB Papers, SSC. Background on threatened lawsuit by Fairchild per Ephron in her introduction to her reprinted essay, “
Women's Wear Daily
Unclothed,” in
Wallflower at the Orgy
(New York: Bantam Books, 2007), p. 60.

289
  
“nighttime look”; “de ringlets in de front and de shaggy in de back”: Nora Ephron, “Makeover: The Short, Unglamorous Saga of a New, Glamorous Me,”
Cosmopolitan
, May 1968, SSC.

289
  
“not pretty-pretty”; “Told me my face too narrow”: Ibid.

290
  
“Ringlets have lost curls”: Ibid.

290
  
“What'll I do? My hair's a mess”: Edited by Mallen De Santis, “The Great Hair Disaster . . . And How to Recover!”
Cosmopolitan
, February 1968.

290
  
“The simple process was to make them look as awful as possible”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.

291
  
“a pretty little mouse of a girl”: “Mouse into Sexpot,”
Cosmopolitan
, September 1968.

291
  
Other girls simply needed some fine-tuning: Background provided by Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012; and Barbara Hustedt Crook.

291
  
“same age, same dreams, same potential”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,”
Cosmopolitan
, February 1968.

292
  
“All the senior editors knew it was kind of a lark”: Mallen De Santis, interview with the author, October 2012.

40: A
V
IPER IN THE
N
EST

293
  
“You can't really talk about bosom techniques”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,”
Cosmopolitan
, October 1969, SSC.

293
  
Helen's recent request for her own private john: “The Press,” “Eye,”
Women's Wear Daily
, October 7, 1969, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.

293
  
“Nobody took it seriously”: Gloria Steinem, interview with the author, December 2013.

294
  
“Robin, would a
Cosmo
girl think like this?”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,”
Cosmopolitan
, April 1968.

294
  
“Give me your definition of a bitch”; “Have you ever dated a very wealthy man?”: From Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help,”
Esquire
, February 1970.

294
  
“Has a woman's magazine”
and following
: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,”
Cosmopolitan
, June 1969.

294
  
“TO—Girl Staff Members”
and following excerpt
: Helen Gurley Brown, to Girl Staff Members, undated [“(1969)”? notation], HGB Papers, SSC.

295
  
“If we do this tastefully”: Ibid.

295
  
“This is your personal reminiscence”: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help.”

295
  
Linda Cox had just started working as an assistant art director: Backstory and career details provided by Linda Cox, interview with the author, June 2015.

296
  
“It was passed around”: Per Linda Cox, who wrote up an account of the bosom-memo debacle and shared it with the author, June 2015.

296
  
“feathery touches”; “no feeling-the-melons pinching”: Barbara Hustedt Crook, email exchange with the author, October 2014.

296
  
she assigned two different writers: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help.”

297
  
“BROWN STUDY: Eye is in receipt”: “BROWN STUDY,” “Eye,”
Women's Wear Daily
, March 13, 1969, access to article courtesy of ProQuest.

297
  
“She was
outraged
”: Barbara Hustedt Crook, email exchange with the author, October 2014.

297
  
“The person responsible would be immediately fired”: Linda Cox account, June 2015.

297
  
“WHAT MEN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WOMEN'S BOSOMS”:
Cosmopolitan
, June 1969.

298
  
“She said she would right away”: Linda Cox account, June 2015.

298
  
“Helen was still livid”; “I could never, ever face Helen”: Ibid.

298
  
“This big brouhaha started”: Nora Ephron, “Helen Gurley Brown Only Wants to Help.”

298
  
“The actual use of anatomical words bugs them”: Ibid.

299
  
“We've decided to wait”: Helen Gurley Brown, “Step Into My Parlour,”
Cosmopolitan
, October 1969, SSC.

299
  
the boys, he explained, wanted it to be “a stag affair”: Richard Berlin to Helen Gurley Brown, June 25, 1969, HGB Papers, SSC.

41: W
OMEN IN
R
EVOLT

300
  
“One of the first things we discover”: Carol Hanisch, “The Personal Is Political,” in
Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation—Major Writings of the Radical Feminists
, ed. Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt (New York: Radical Feminism, 1970), available on Hanisch's website, www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html.

300
  
On March 21, 1969, nearly three hundred people filled the basement: Background is from Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time
(New York: Dial Press, 1999), pp. 107–9; Susan Brownmiller, “Everywoman's Abortions: ‘The Oppressor Is Man,'”
Village Voice
, March 27, 1969; and Jennifer Nelson,
Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement
(New York: New York University Press, 2003), chapter 1.

300
  
“the real experts on abortion”: Redstockings. Jennifer Nelson gave a thorough account of the disruption in
Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement
, chapter 1.

301
  
“I bet every woman here has had an abortion”: Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time
, p. 109.

301
  
“I was one of those who kept quiet”: Ibid.

301
  
Gloria had gotten an abortion in London: Ibid.

301
  
After the event, she typed up her article: Gloria Steinem, “After Black Power, Women's Liberation,”
New York
, April 4, 1969.

302
  
“Suddenly, I was no longer learning intellectually what was wrong”: Gloria Steinem,
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, 1995), p. 21.

302
  
A few days after the speakout: Susan Brownmiller, “Everywoman's Abortions.”

302
  
“Everyone was saying the same thing”: Judy Gingold in Lynn Povich,
The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), p. 52.

303
  
They compiled newspaper clippings: Background on sexism at
Newsweek
from Lynn Povich,
The Good Girls Revolt;
and Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison, “Young Women, Newsweek, and Sexism,”
Newsweek
, March 18, 2010.