Not Pretty Enough

In Not Pretty Enough , Gerri Hirshey reconstructs the life of Helen Gurley Brown, the trailblazing editor of Cosmopolitan , whose daring career both recorded and led to a shift in the sexual and cultural politics of her time. When Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl first appeared in 1962, it whistled into buttoned-down America like a bombshell: Brown declared that it was okay— even imperative—for unmarried women to have and enjoy a sex life, and that equal rights for women should exten