Helen Gurley Brown's Advice to Men on How to Have an Affair

Helen Gurley Brown died this week at age 90, but oh what a ride she had before leaving this world. For such a tiny woman with a delicate voice, the Cosmopolitan magazine and Sex and the Single Girl author certainly made a loud impact on American culture in the 1960s.

As the feminine counterpart to Playboy editor Hugh Hefner, she encouraged young women to work hard in their careers, obsess over their figures, and manipulate men with sex. I wouldn't be surprised if Mad Men's scriptwriters pore over old issues of the magazine in creating the characters who inhabit the show's secretarial typing pool.

You either loved or hated Helen Gurley Brown: just read the comments in The New York Times' obituary.

Here's one: "Former Cosmo Girl copy editor here. CG was hands-down the best job I ever had, and I've been around in publishing. I'm about as mouseburger as you can get, but working there made you feel like a million bucks. If you only read the cover lines at the supermarket, you don't understand the tone of Cosmo. It's about being happy that you're a woman--and yes, sex IS an important part of that. I'm a lesbian and a very different kind of feminist than HGB was, but she spoke to women who might not have been entirely happy with who they were, especially in the early days. She didn't brainwash them, she told them they weren't mouseburgers—they were absolutely fantastic and deserved to have fun."

Here's another: "HGB was a woman without morals and basically one who cared not at all about other women. She had a brief affair with my father in the 50's and pursued him relentlessly!
I asked my 90 yr old mother yesterday why she was so passive while feeling so hurt and heartbroken and her response was that it was economic. She had 4 small children to care for and no real job skills. Obviously my father was lacking in character and morals too but what kind of woman does that to another woman? Where is the sisterhood?"

But to really get a feel for her, the best way is to listen to her in her own words. Here's Helen Gurley Brown's advice to men on how to have an affair, taken from a recording circa 1962 after the publication of Sex and the Single Girl:

Now, I'm not for promiscuity, but I think it's ridiculous to pretend that it doesn't exist, and I think there's far less hurt and more joy for everybody if certain rules are followed.

So first, how to get a girl to the brink, and second, how to keep her there when you're not going to marry her. I believe most girls are attainable by somebody, really most girls, but you have to work at it. I think the reason you don't always succeed is that you want everything now, this minute, tonight's the night.

Rule One is, take time to court her. 

Rule Two, love her out of bed. Laugh at her jokes. Women have fantastic egos too, you know, even pretty little slips of girls just love to be thought fascinating and funny. Make her talk to you, and you listen. No matter how shy she is, make her feel that with you she's a dynamo.

Rule Three, admire her character, even if she doesn't have any. You like the way she handles her jobs, her friends, her family, her money. When bedtime comes, you'll have her thinking that with you, at least, she can't do anything wrong.

There's much more, including the advice that "brute force isn't sexy," here at YouTube.

Nina Arianda to Play Janis Joplin Role

Ever since I desperately tried and failed (long boring story, won't bother to tell) to buy a Broadway ticket to the sexy comedy "Venus in Furs," I've been equally desperate to witness a Nina Arianda performance.

Nina Arianda is fabulous, by all accounts. Judy Holliday, Sophia Loren and Lady Gaga all rolled into one.

Sadly, I've only seen her in Woody Allen's movie "Midnight in Paris," which was a disappointment -- and her talents were overlooked in her small role as some random guy's forgettable wife.

But. The good news, according to Reuters, is that Nina Arianda is now scheduled to play the role of Janis Joplin in a film called, what else?, "Joplin," an independently produced film that tells the story of the blues-rock diva's final year of life. I'm excited! Can't wait to see what Nina A. does with the role.

Janis Joplin died way too young, of an overdose in 1970 at the age of 27, but oh, what a voice while she lived. You can see what an endearingly sweet Texas girl she was, heroin addiction aside, in this clip from the Dick Cavett show:

Long Live Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe died fifty years ago today. Long live Marilyn Monroe.

The idea of what makes a woman a woman keeps changing, but she's eternal. Beautiful, talented, sexy, fun, glamorous, mysterious, vulnerable, and even, yes, tough.

Fifty years, and we all still have a personal relationship with her. And we keep trying to learn more. The Official Marilyn Monroe website, managed by The Estate of Marilyn Monroe LLC, plays to this desire with a "news" page, which suggests that she's more than just a memory. (This just in: Baked by Melissa recently celebrated Marilyn’s birthday with a portrait made of 2,048 cupcakes.)

I don't often recognize Marilyn here at Bad Girl Blog, fabulous as she is. She really wasn't a bad girl, was she? (For a true bad girl of Marilyn's era, check out Mamie Van Doren). Marilyn Monroe may have been a promiscuous pill-popper, and a difficult diva on movie sets, but there was always something of the victim about her....

....The lost girl in need of rescue. Which is why we keep trying to revive her, feeling that if we pay enough attention this time, things will turn out different.

Best. Blog. Ever.

It's been a long time since a blog has mesmerized me as much as Underground New York Public Library has. (OK, I admit, it's been awhile since I've scoured the webernets for new blogs.) Makes me proud to live in NYC. If you every worry that nobody reads anymore, just check out this blog.

The premise is simple: photos of people reading books in the New York City subway system, with captions stating the book title and author. Plus comments by readers as well as the blogger, a photographer named Ourit Ben-Haim. That's it.

Yet the variations are endless. And the blog is addictive.

I hope someday to see myself pictured there. Reading Middlemarch, perhaps. Or A Visit From the Goon Squad. Here's someone reading The Iliad:

Obama or Romney: Who's Your Sugar Daddy?

So what do you think? Which U.S. presidential candidate has more promise as a sugar daddy? Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? If you picked Obama, congratulations! Your vote is in line with the overwhelming 3-to-1 majority in a poll taken by SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as the world’s largest sugar daddy dating website, with 1.5 million members.

Ladies, ignore the wedding ring. This man is sugar daddy material!

The site posed the Obama vs. Romney question to more than 30,000 of its female Sugar Baby members this past week, and found that Obama beat Romney in all key swing states and even some Republican strongholds, capturing the hearts of Democrat, independent and even Republican female voters.

A good-looking guy. But a sugar daddy? Not so much.

A visit to the SeekingArrangement site shows that it views a modern sugar daddy as a man who is always respectful and generous. But beware, he can also be a super-demanding paramour: "You only live once, and you want to date the best. Some call you a mentor, sponsor or benefactor. But no matter what your desires may be, you are brutally honest about who you are, what you expect and what you offer."

Oh, a mentor, so that's what they're calling it these days. Somebody ought to get back to Elliot Spitzer on this.

The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post and Vanity Fair magazine, by the way, have all reported stories about SeekingArrangement.com, which has a sister website called SeekingMillionaire.com.

Fact is, Romney is certainly a mega-millionaire. So you'd figure that he'd make a better sugar daddy than Obama, a simple Harvard-educated lawyer and bestselling author who managed for years on a humble state senator's salary, right?

Not so, say the SeekingArrangement poll results.

• 34.1% said they would prefer Obama as their sugar daddy
•  11.9% said they would prefer Romney as their sugar daddy  
• 11.1% said they would be happy to have either Obama or Romney as their sugar daddy 

"Barack Obama was by far the preferred sugar daddy. Obama beat Romney by a knockout of 3 to 1,” says Brandon Wade, founder and CEO of SeekingArrangement, in a statement. “While many unfairly stereotype Sugar Babies as gold-diggers who would gladly accept any wealthy man as their sugar daddy, our survey shows the contrary. Sugar Babies are extremely picky about the men they date.”

Indeed, nearly half, or 43%, said they wouldn’t choose either Obama or Romney for a sugar daddy. But for those who do want a presidential-caliber rich guy in their lives, Obama was the clear winner by double-digit percentages over Romney. The ladies loved them some Obama, from New York to Ohio to Texas to California and even to Romney's home state of Massachusetts, where the vote went 32.8% toward Obama versus only 20.2% for Romney.

“According to our survey, most women say they chose Obama because he is more trustworthy, charismatic and sexy," says Wade, an MBA from MIT. "Obama is funny and is known to be a good dancer. Unfortunately, Romney is still viewed by many as the ‘vanilla’ candidate."

Here's a tip for the Romney campaign: get your candidate to take some dancing lessons.