Sex and the Single Girl is a non-fiction book by American writer Helen Gurley Brown , written as an advice book that encouraged women to become financially independent and experience sexual relationships before or without marriage. The book sold two million copies in three weeks, [1] was sold in 35 countries [2] and has made the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times and Time bestseller lists. In Brown's husband, David Brown , suggested she write a book that discusses "how a single girl goes about having an affair".
Geis of Bernard Geis Associates. The original title was Sex for the Single Girl , but this was changed because "it sounded like [it] was advocating sex for all single girls.
The book was advertised through a large-scale campaign created by Letty Cottin Pogrebin of Bernard Geis Associates in conjunction with Brown. The campaign involved print ads as well as television, radio and bookstore appearances; however, Brown often was barred from saying "sex" during her television appearances. In the edition, Brown includes a reintroduction to her book and briefly outlines the static situations and changes that the single woman has faced from the s to The reviews that followed the publication of Sex and the Single Girl , "were either highly favourable While several of Brown's concepts were "in common with the second-wave feminist arguments she precedes," [43] other second-wavers such as Betty Friedan "found Brown's message 'obscene and horrible.
This is how it was for me. This is how I played it. It's just a pippy-poo little book and people come back with this diatribe about its great social significance. Well it's just because nobody ever got off his high horse long enough to write to single women in any form they could associate with. If they had, somebody else would be the arbiter for single women at this point instead of me. Julie Berebitsky explores the impact of Sex and the Single Girl on the pink-collar worker of the s and Brown's blurring of the professional and the personal in a business environment, as she "directed women to seek professional advancement Scanlon suggests that Sex and the City is "the most direct descendent of the sexual politics Helen Gurley Brown introduced in Sex and the Single Girl " [49] and Jane Gerhard argues that " Sex and the City pays direct homage" [50] to Sex and the Single Girl , as both present the "connection between women's financial independence and their sexual liberation.
AMC 's Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner frequently attributes Sex and the Single Girl and The Feminine Mystique as heavily influencing the creation of his characters and scenarios, especially involving the single female office worker.
