Helen Gurley Brown - Sex and the single girl

To David

WHY REPUBLISH SEX ANDthe Single Girl at this stage of our lives? Because my friends Carole and Lyle Stuart of Barricade Books thought it was a good idea to reprint the little classic and I took the why not approach along with them! The book caused something of a commotion at the time of its original appearance in 1962. Through the years women have come up to me in restaurants, at airports, on the street, to tell me the book changed their lives (for the better) so why not republish?

We decided not to update in any way, though some of the original observations may sound a little quaintGregory Peck the quintessential desirable man? Rudi Gernreich the unqualified best creator of single-girl wardrobes in the world? Yet many of the basics do hold up.

I dont live totally in a single-girl milieu, as was the case when the original was written, but I do know lots of single women, work and live with them and will make a few comments about this group now if I may. I havent conducted an official survey of single women nor did I do one for the original bookjust dealt with what was happening to my girlfriends and me. This time Im only dealing with friends. May I continue?

How is it with single girls these days? (Forgive my continuing to call women girls but I think in many ways we continue to be girls all our lives.) At around age 25 we often take on adult responsibilitiesmarry, have children, create homes for other people but I think the basic girl is still in there whooshing aroundloving fun, being spontaneous, mainlining on enthusiasm, dont you? How it is with single girls/women these days I think is good. We surely hope so so many out there! The U.S. Census Bureau reports that single women over the age of 15 now represent 48 per cent of the female populationnearly half. Since I wrote S & S G, three things have improved for this category of female:

1. She isnt perceived to be a loser if, by age 30, she isnt married.
2. She doesnt have to feel guilty (sluttish) about participating in and enjoying sexau contraire, she happily participates.
3. Career opportunities for all women have staggeringly improved. Not many female presidents of companies or countries yet, but nobody says you cant be one just because of gender. Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher did lead their countries and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleeza Rice are major somebodies. Single or married, women are encouraged to have terrific jobs, helped by others to succeed in them, financially rewarded.

Something else kind of wonderful has happened to single women. You dont have to be so beautiful anymore to be cherished and adored. When I was growing up in Green Forest and Little Rock, Arkansas and later in Los Angeles as a single girl, pretty was what you were supposed to be if you had a brain in your head. Im being funnyhaving a brain in your head wasnt what it was about, beauty was whether you had the attribute or not. Know what? Brains have become almost as treasured as beauty almost! Oh, I know, the fabulous-faced one is still utterly desired. His happiness blonde is what a friend of mine calls the young gorgeous creature a substantial male friend of ours married recently.

If you had to or could choose one or the other, I would almost choose smart! People like to be with you, you get it, and your brain can be a nifty asset for the company you work for. Not that everybody doesnt appreciate beauty as much as everwe worship beautiful! Mercifully you can get more beautiful with incredible cosmetic and dermatological procedures these days and, of course, your body can be okay with the discipline of exercise and not cramming down chocolate-ripple cheesecake. Im happy to celebrate this new development for single and not single women. Among my single friends I find virtually nobody desperate to marry just for statusthe act must evolve from a long or short-term relationship. At some point both parties agree they want to make it official. A relationship could have lasted for months or years, of course, both parties loving and respecting each other and still may sunder. She meets a great new person, he takes a job in the Belgian Congo making continuing intimacy difficult or its just over the good has been extracted.

Among single women I know, being with a man in a loving relationship is as natural as grape juice though they may not live together and the loving may not lead to marriages.

Is there lots of dating? Is the Mississippi a river? Is Elvis Presley a legend? A date can be anything from coffee and danish at Starbucks, AIDA on Broadway or checking out the Weimaraners at the Westminster Dog Show.

Sex, as we have said, is enjoyed by single women who participate not to please a man as might have been the case in olden times but to please themselves. A fewperhaps not few enoughyoung women perform fellatio as a way to endear themselves to a baby hunk, enjoy or dont enjoy the act all that much. Does a single woman worry that a new partner might be HIV positive? She asks but, after he declares he isnt, she may still request that he use a condom during the first few weeks of their sexual friendship until she can ascertain whether he tells truths or lies. If truths win out, birth control is probably then up to her, the pill being popular and reliable.

After a night of carried-away unprotected sex, if shes worried about having conceived, a trip to the doctor next morning may eradicate a possible pregnancy. The finally F.D.A.-approved abortion pillRU 846for eradicating pregnancy didnt become as popular as some of us thought it might, the procedure is actually more expensive and requiring more time than an abortion. Several visits to a doctors office are needed as you take the pill.

Okay, thats the group that doesnt want to make babies. Theres also the group that does. An attractive woman I know asked a friendhandsome, healthy, brainyif he would consider impregnating her. If successful and a baby made, he would bear no responsibility whatever for parenting, wouldnt even have to see mother or baby if he didnt wish. He turned her down cold.

She next went the artificial insemination routenot as science-fiction as you might think. Sperm can be ordered on the internetCalifornia and Virginia have the best banks. Cost variesmay be $200 a vial and you will need about 12 vials in order to keep trying for impregnation until the procedure takes (you wouldnt want to go back to the bank mid-procedure only to find daddys sperm deposit had been depleted). You are supplied background information on the donorage, race, background, measurements (height, circumference of neck, ankles, etc., = no, not penis size!) You are not shown a photograph but a CD of his voice is available.

Now you take your sperm vials to a fertility doctor for the impregnation, the procedure is successful only about 10 percent of the time. If baby-making doesnt take, you could next go for in vitro fertilization, a procedure often used by married couples having trouble with conception. The price of in vitro is $10,000. The whole life-creating adventure can run between $25,000 and $30,000.

My friendage 41actually got pregnant with donor sperm (helped along, perhaps, with hormone shots at the doctors office every day for three weeks and blood tests to make sure everything was going smoothly), then regrettably had a miscarriage. Shes resting up a bit before adventuring again.