THE SEXUALLY CHARGED OFFICE:
AN ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND GENDER
RELATIONS IN THE WORKPLACE BETWEEN 1940-1975
University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of Humanities
Martina Van Cimmenaede
MA-Thesis in History: American Studies
Studentnumber: 5925924
Supervisor: Dr. George Blaustein
June 30, 2015
For my grandfather Kazimierz Cieluch
And my dearly beloved Kiki
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction 5
1. Sex in The Office During WWII: The Dialectical Relationship Between
Empowerment and Subordination of Women 10
2.
Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Office: A Critical Analysis ofThe “Cosmo Girl” Discourse 25
3. The Lingering Nostalgia of the 1960s: Sexual Harassment and Gender
Relations in Mad Men 42
Conclusion 62
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are a number of people I would like to thank for their unconditional support during the often stressful, but at times also fun process of writing this MA-thesis.
First of all I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. George Blaustein for his enduring patience, time, support, and faith in me. I am forever grateful that you did not give up on me.
Thank you to my partner George Soeters, whose love and encouragements kept me going during those moments of total despair. Your editing skills rock.
INTRODUCTION
In an episode of Mad Men entitled “Severance” of the seventh, and final season, Joan and Peggy attend a tense business meeting with three men of McCann-Erickson to discuss the possible launch of Topaz-pantyhose in a high-end department store. Despite the fact that both women have accomplished a lot in their professional careers during the course of the show---Joan is now a millionaire office manager and Peggy a creative advertising professional---and are at McCann-Erickson’s to talk strictly business, Joan has to endure a stream of condescending, sexist remarks from the three men across the table.
David: Do you wear them Joan? Joan: I do.
David: Well, if you would talk to Don I would start with that.” (laughter erupts between the three men) Joan: Well, I think that anyone would equally be interested in the price per unit, which could be reduced
significantly if the demand were higher. David: Why aren’t you in the brassiere business? Joan: Excuse me?
David: You should be in the bra business…you’re a work of art.1
Joan’s facial expressions as she sits across the table from the three chauvinistic men, express feelings of helplessness, disgust, and anger that many women of that generation felt.
Today, we would have labelled the behavior of the tree men as “sexual harassment,” but back in 1970, the year this episode was set, there was no official legal term to describe sexist behavior. The term “sexual harassment” was first coined in 1975 by a group of feminists who worked in the humans relations office at Cornell University. One day, Carmita Wood, who worked in the science department of said university, walked into their office to file a complaint against her boss, a prominent scientist. He had subjected her to such vulgar and humiliating sexual advances that the stress Wood faced had become unbearable. Wood recalled how her boss would often ogle her body, corner her and put his hands up her dress to touch her skin, or
masturbate in her presence. Eventually she could not stand it anymore and quit her job as she had by the end developed a nerve disorder in her neck due to all the stress and lack of support from
her immediate supervisor. He had done nothing when she complained about the boss’ inappropriate behavior. Unable to find new employment, she applied for unemployment insurance, which the insurance review panel denied on the grounds that she had left her job voluntarily. According to them, there were other options available besides handing in her
resignation, and therefore concluded that Wood’s reasons for quitting her job were “personal and non-compelling.” Wood appealed this ruling to the New York State Department of Labor, but the Department of Labor dismissed her claim. The feminists at Cornell University were so outraged with Wood’s story that they initiated the first ever demonstration against the problem that up until then had no name, but became known as sexual harassment. 2
After feminists had exposed the realities of sexual harassment and brought it to the attention of the public, scholars began to study it from a psychological, sociological, and legal perspective. In her book The Sexual Harassment of Working Women, Catharine MacKinnon argued that sexual harassment was a case of sex discrimination, and in 1980 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) put up guidelines that followed MacKinnon’s arguments, and described sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination under the 1964 Title VII Civil Rights Act. It was not until 1986 that the Supreme Court ruled that any unwanted sexual remarks, jokes, physical contact, or any other form of sexual coercion were “actions” that “constituted a form of sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”3 In the 1980s, a lot of research had uncovered that gender-based expectations and unequal power relations are at the base of sexual harassment. A psychological study by Veronica F. Nieva and Barbara A. Gutek found that dominant notions of femaleness are equated with both female sexual attraction and the expectation of passiveness while stereotypes about men revolve around their strong sexual desire
2 Julie Berebitsky, an interview with Megan Wood, “The Future of Sexual Harassment: We’ve Come a Long Way In Our Attitudes About Sex and The Office---But Not Far Enough. An Expert Explains,” March 10, 2012,
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/10/the_future_of_sexual_harassment, details about the Carmita Wood case were drawn from these sources: Fred Strebeigh, Equal: Women Reshape American Law (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2009.), 231-232; Gwendolyn Mink, Hostile Environment: The Political Betrayal of Sexually
Harassed Women, (Ithaca Cornell University Press, 2000), 1-37; “Women Fight ‘Intimidation,’” Ithaca Journal,
April 5, 1975, 4; Catharine MacKinnon, The Sexual Harassment of Working Women (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 42, 78-80; New York State Department of Labor, Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board, Appeal no. 207,958, October 6 1975.
3 Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of gender, Power, and Desire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 3. Books and articles that brought sexual harassment to the attention of the public include Lin Farley, Sexual
Harassment: The Sexual Harassment of Women on The Job (McGraw-Hill, 1978); Barbara A. Gutek,
“Understanding Sexual Harassment at Work,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy 2 (1992), 335-358.
Participants of this study assumed that men initiate sex.4 Gwendolyn Mink has argued that “power always excites the harasser” and that “a harasser uses sex to control a woman’s status when he threatens his target’s dignity, safety, and self-determination. In these ways, harassers enforce women’s inequality.”5
To this day, scholars continue to study the definition of sexual harassment, the factors that cause it to, how it affects women, how it is dealt with, and importantly, its role in the struggle for gender equality. However, scholarly works on sexual harassment tend to focus on the period after 1975, which is why I am interested to focus on the issue of sexual harassment before it became a criminal offence in the eyes of the law. Sexual intimidatin as a tool of inequality in the work sphere has a long history, from enslaved women to domestic workers, and also women working in factories. In 1978, historian Mary Bularzik published the first article about the history of sexual harassment. Her work primarily focused on the “historical conditions of sexual
harassment” of working class women in northern American cities before the 1940s. Bularzik’s stories of sexually harassed young women in sweat shops and factories showed there was little distinction between the “woman willing to sell her labor power with the woman willing to sell herself.”6 Since Bularzik’s article, other historians have delved into women’s experiences of sexual harassment, but have mainly focused their attention on work settings like plantations, sweatshops, and factories. So far, little research has been done to historicize sexual harassment in the white-collar office. Because sexual harassment in the white-collar office has a unique history of its own that differs from other occupations, it is interesting to investigate how particular notions of gender as found in the office have affected women’s experiences of sexual harassment.
Historian Julie Berebitsky’s recent book about the evolution of sexual harassment from the first generation (circa 1860) to the female office workers of today is the first comprehensive scholarly study that historicizes sexual harassment. Drawing on a multitude of sources, from advertisements, popular culture, and advice guides to actual first hand accounts of both male and female office workers, Berebitsky has uncovered the long history of sexual power dynamics in the office, and who “really needs protection from the predatory intentions of the opposite sex— women or men?” 7 As Berebistky has shown, women engaged in romantic relations in the office 4 Veronica F. Nieva & Barbara A. Gutek, Women and Work: A Psychological Perspective (Connecticut: Praeger, 1982.)
5 Gwendolyn Mink, Hostile Environment: The Political Betrayal of Sexually Harassed Women , 24;
6 Mary Bularzik, “Sexual Harassment at the Workplace: Historical Notes,” Radical America 12 (1978), 25-44. 7 Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of gender, Power, and Desire, 287.
were seen as either victims, vamps, flirts, or gold diggers. Since the topic of sexual harassment in white collar offices before 1975 has only just begun to receive critical analysis from historians, I hope this thesis will add to the historiography of historicizing sexual harassment. The time period that I will discuss in this thesis, from the 1940s to the early 1970s, deserves attention, not just because the majority of women who worked outside the home were working in offices, but because many of these women had (unwanted) sexual relations despite the fact that middle-class ideals of womanhood denied women sexual pleasures. Also, as Berebitsky has pointed out, ever since the nineteenth century, “people were saying: factory owners are coarse men, they might try to extort sex from the women who work under them, but middle class business men wouldn’t.”8 In reality however, this was far from the case, as will be explained in this thesis. Sexual
harassment became increasingly prevalent with the large influx of women into the public sphere of the office.
It was through Berebitsky’s book, along with watching the daily struggles Joan and Peggy faced in a sexist office on the television show Mad Men, that made me interested to learn more about sexual harassment in the office in the period until the second feminist movement really took off, before there was even a term to describe unwanted sexual advances. My research differs from Berebitsky in that I want to uncover some of the hidden contradictions and complexities beneath sexual harassment by looking at different feminist discourses that emerged at the time of the second wave feminist movement, and their positons on sexual harassment. This analysis will help to answer the following questions: how can we explain how sexual harassment affect women’s fight for empowerment in the office before the second wave feminist movement really took off? Why did some women feel inclined to arouse their male-coworkers and what did this mean for female liberation in the workplace? And how does an understanding of sexual
harassment before the emergence of second wave feminism help explain today’s attitudes toward sexual harassment? I will argue that traditional hegemonic ideals of womanhood that subordinate women and perpetuate sexual harassment, at the same time, are used by women for their own empowerment, and thus to a certain extent undermines patriarchy. By doing so, I will show that the “Cosmo Girl” model is in actual fact more subversive, and that the means of achieving gender equality are not that straightforward.
8 Megan Wood, an interview with Julie Berebitsky, “The Future of Sexual Harassment: We’ve Come a Long Way In Our Attitudes About Sex and The Office---But Not Far Enough. An Expert Explains,”
Consequently, in Chapter One I will argue that as women were becoming more
emancipated by joining the ranks of the traditionally male office in ever larger numbers during World War II, they subverted the traditional female roles. However, the corresponding increase in sexual harassment undermined gender equality and hardened traditional notions of femininity and womanhood, in particular the view that women are defined as either ‘pure’ or ‘whore.’ The primary sources used in this chapter include letters to the Ramspeck Committee and Mary Haworth’s advice columns, and reveal that although sex in the office attracted a lot of public attention, support for sexually harassed women was not easy to come by. The second chapter focuses on Helen Gurley Brown’s book Sex and the Office, which was first published in 1964, and promotes a type of feminism that can be best termed the “Cosmo Girl” discourse, which seeks female empowerment through stereotypically female attributes. Brown was an important figure in this movement that celebrated women’s sexuality and using it to their advantage in the office. As I will explain the “Cosmo Girl” advice offered by Brown offered women more sexual freedom, but was shaped very much along traditional gender lines that did not dismantle male patriarchy. I will further explain how this discourse defines sexual harassment and its
implications for attitudes towards sexual harassment in the office in the 1960s. The third and final chapter deals with a discussion of the representation of sexual harassment in Mad Men, a popular contemporary TV-show that has tapped into a popular trend for nostalgia, and focuses on a 1960s advertising agency office filled with booze, cigarettes, sex, and, importantly sexual harassment and discrimination. The focus will be on Joan and Peggy’s interpretation of, and response to, sexual harassment at the office through a critical analysis of the “Cosmo Girl” and liberal
feminist discourses that these characters embody respectively. The goal of this final chapter is to demonstrate how Mad Men cleverly complicates these feminist discourses by giving no clear cut answers to how best to achieve female equality.
Chapter 1
Sex in the Office During WWII: The Dialectical Relationship Between
Pleasure and Burden for Women
During World War II, the Pepsi-Cola Company brought out an advertisement of a young secretary sitting on the lap of her old, bald boss in his office. The boss has his arm wrapped around his secretary’s waist while they both sip a drink from their bottle of Peps-Cola. On the right hand side there are two female co-workers, peeking around the corner, looking to see what is going on. One of them is laughing, while the other has a look of disgust and concern on her face. The desk of the boss is almost empty, except for a telephone and three pieces of paper. None of them seems to be working very hard. The tagline below the advertisement states: “He says as long as he’s going to be tied to a desk for the rest of the war, he may as well relax and enjoy it.”9
The image of the Pepsi-Cola company advertisement as described above was a reflection of a sexualized office that sought to titillate the consumer. Although the secretary and the boss are truly enjoying this romantic moment together, selling the image of a sexy office, the reality was that sexual relations in the federal offices were subject to heated debates in the public domain. From 1939 onwards, when Congress appointed more money for defense, the number of women who came to work for federal agencies in Washington alone increased dramatically, (from 27,468 in 1939 to 157,710 in 1944)10. The flux of women into the public sphere changed office dynamics, as sexual relations between co-workers became more widespread. This mingling of the sexes in, what was once thought to be men’s domain, ignited a national discussion about the immorality and possible poisonous atmosphere in the office. Already in 1939, when the number of employees in the Department of Defense swelled, Congress received complaints from employees and civilians about funds that were being wasted on things that were immoral (such as office parties) and, in their eyes, posed a great concern for the war effort. On October 1942, the House of Representatives authorized a Committee to investigate the employment in Civil
Services, led by Georgian Democrat Robert Ramspeck: “as chairman of the House Civil Service
9 Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of gender, Power, and Desire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 146. Courtesy of Shore Antique Center.
10 U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Women in the Federal Service 1923-1947: Part I. Trends in
Employment, Bulletin no. 230-1 (Washington D.D., 1949), 16; U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, Employment of Women in the Federal Civil Service, 1923 to 1939, Bulletin no. 182 (Washington, D.C., 1941), 49.
Committee, it is my job to look into this “chaos of bureaucratic Washington” you’ve been about —to accumulate evidence about it and to suggest ways to make our government more efficient.”11 Many civilians responded to his appeal to send in letters about any malfunctions, discrimination, “personal patronage” and inefficiency in the office.12
In this chapter, the primary focus will be on two different types of sources that can be used as evidence into the inquiry of sexual relations within the federal government throughout the country. Firstly, I will discuss a small portion of the letters that were sent to the Ramspeck Committee to examine the thoughts of federal employees on sexual relations in the office. Whether all of these letters were truthful is, of course, questionable, since the respondents might have written them out of revenge, or some other motive. Nevertheless, due to the amount of letters (hundreds) that were sent in, they are very useful to analyze employees’ grievances about sex in the office. In order to come to a better analysis of these letters I have also included a small discussion of newspaper articles to support my findings. 13 Secondly, I will analyze advice columns of Mary Haworth’s (whose real name was Elizabeth Young), known as “Mary
Haworth’s Mail,” published in The Washington Post between the 1930s through the 1960s. The discussion about romantic relations in the office was not only limited to the confines of
Washington offices, but were also readily debated in the media. As David Gudelunas has argued in his book Confidential America: Newspaper Advice Column and Sexual Education, advice columns are an important source to look at the issues people dealt with at a certain time in history.14 Haworth’s column was widely read, also by those women who had come to work in Washington and who wanted advice on “the pleasant and continuous association with young men.”15
Consequently, I will argue that the growing number of female workers in federal
government demonstrates a dialectical relationship in terms of female sexual empowerment. On
11 Robert Ramspeck, “Civil Service Wonderland,” Colliers Weekly (May 15, 1943), 26, 60.
12 National Archives, Washington D.C., Records of the House Committee on the Civil Service Pertaining to the Investigation of Civilian Employment in the Federal Government, 1941-1944, RG 233. Box 14, folder 4-5, February 24, 1943, and March 29, 1943.
13 Robert Ramspeck, “Civil Service Wonderland,” Colliers (May 15, 1943), 26,60.
14 For this thesis I have examined approximately 40 letters, from 1941-1944; Martin Weil, “Wrote on Domestic, Romantic Problems: Ex-Post Columnist Mary Haworth, 80, Dies,” Washington Post, Novermber 2, 1981. For a compelling investigation into the advice columns and the way in which these columns played a role in educating people about sex see David Gudelunas, Confidential to America: Newspaper Advice Columns and Sexual Education, (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 2,29. In his book Gudelunas argues that newspaper advice columns have not received serious attention by academia, but that they in fact serve as a “cultural benchmark” of society concerning sexuality.
the surface, WWII gave women more opportunities and freedom to work and have sexual
relations with men. However, despite the fact that traditional gender boundaries were challenged when more women came into the office, the sources reveal that gender stereotypes were
reaffirmed, demonstrating the contradiction in terms of female empowerment and the attitudes toward sexual harassment. Various scholars have linked anxieties in times of war to a longing for traditional gender roles. For example, Sara M. Evans has demonstrated that domestic patriotism was used to sustain women’s old gender roles as care-givers in 1942.With more men absent, women had a very important role to play in “the gigantic task of self-preservation” that the country was “embarking on.” Therefore, “the women of America” cannot “let down their men.” Instead, they “must keep up the morale of their men and still continue to be their guiding star.”16 My aim is not to demonstrate a possible link between the war effort and reinforcement, or erosion, of normative views on gender and sexuality. Rather, I treat WWII as a catalyst, a new context, that sparked a renewed interest to an old discussion about appropriate sexual behavior, exposing the dialectical relation of continuities and transformation in attitudes towards sexual harassment.17
Before Helen Gurley Brown published her book on how to use one’s femininity, beauty and looks on how to get ahead in the office---which will be discussed in the following chapter--- women were already seen using these tactics and challenging traditional boundaries of women as housewives and men as the breadwinners. However, the letters to the Ramspeck Committee show that women did not get very far in challenging old stereotypes. Hazel Moore Boardman letter is a good example that women’s presence in the office did little to eliminate sexism. She was one of the few who wrote to condemn the sexual discrimination of women in the office. Ms Boardman was appalled that despite “the period of overtime” she had put in, she never received “one penny overtime compensation from the housing Authority of the City of Portland.” During her transfer to another Regional Office branch she was given a “job formerly handled by a P-5 Engineer ($5600 per annum).” Although Ms. Boardman received an “efficiency rating of Good” she was
16 “Smart Stuff,” True Romances, May 1942, quoted in Sara M. Evans, Born For Liberty: A History of Women in
America (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1997), 227. See also: Angus McLaren, Twentieth-century Sexuality: A History (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publisher, 1999), 143-144.
17 As Julie Berebitsky has pointed out, the letters to the Ramspeck Committee had the unprecedented effect of disclosing the thoughts and feelings of government workers about the sexual culture in their offices. WWII was an impetus to bring concerns about sexual relations in the office to the forefront. For an in-depth-study of the attitudes toward sexual harassment prior to WWII see Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of gender, Power, and
only “paid but $1800 per annum. Disgusting, isn’t it?” When she filed a complaint she was “maliciously discriminated against for so doing.” Also, she had to endure “filthy and dirty remarks” from a male co-worker she complained about. Ms. Boardman was certain that jealousy was the root cause why her male co-workers were undermining her: “The catch? I wear skirts. Pretty rotten business for a government to be so discriminatory against women.”18
One common denominator to explain this disdain for young women was the disapproval of favoritism. Men were not the only ones who felt threatened by the growing presence of young women in the office. Many allegations about unjust sexual office politics came from older women who complained about the “weakness for good looking females and the little cutie, fresh from business school.”19 In 1943, an anonymous older female employee wrote to Senator
Ramspeck to request an investigation into the promotion of a certain young lady. The author of the letter was offended that she, who had worked at the same department (the Federal
Communications Commission), and had always done her work thoroughly, had been surpassed in favor of this young girl with no experience at all. The writer speculated that the girl’s beauty had helped her a great deal in this promotion. For this lady, this was an unacceptable form of
favoritism, and it was “very bad for the morale of the government to say nothing of the individual who is discriminated against.”20 Another lady, Ms. Oba Jan Gibson, wrote a letter in connection to the “promotion of civilians who have neither merit not qualifications for the job.” She wished to call attention to a Miss Ruth Hilda Osborne, a young girl with only a High School diploma, had been promoted to CAF-6, as a supervisor. In Ms Gibson’s opinion, the only reason for this promotion was because the Office Chief, “in charge of the Claims division, appeared to be very much attached to her personally.”21 Yet another incident that was brought to the attention of the Ramspeck Committee concerned incidents regarding the exclusion of job applications of older, highly-qualified women. The incident, as described by an anonymous writer, claimed that The Civil Service Commission in charge of applications had that the government officials had admitted that it was “a disadvantage to be qualified and willing to work, that the government officials do not want people of that type.” Whether this rumor was true or not, the writer strongly
18 RG 233 box 26, folder “National Agency,” July 7, 1944. 19 RG 233 box 15, folder 4-7, August 31, 1943.
20 RG 233, box 24, folder Federal Communication Commission, anonymous, April 3, 1943. 21 RG 233, box 16, folder 4-10, July 26, 1943.
believed that these government officials wanted “glamour girls to sit in their offices, and whether or not these girls can do work is of no consequence.”22
According to Berebitsky favoritism struck such a nerve with the employees because it undermined the foundations that American society was built on. The foundations of American society were, after all, based on equality and democracy. Everybody was equal and had an equal shot at achieving success. Older women found themselves in an unequal position at work. Historian Julie Berebitsky has explained the objections of older women as a “system of
meritocracy,” since it was contrary to the “principles of equality and democracy.”23 However, in my opinion, the anxieties these women felt concerning young female colleagues had nothing to do with supporting the notion of liberty and freedom for all. If that were the case, they would not have objected to promotions of their female co-workers. It was the simple fact that more women had entered the federal offices.
Change will always fuels anxiety in those people who fear change. What is particularly interesting is the difference in how people cope with change. As stated above, during WWII, the reaction to an increase of female workers in government agencies exposed discontent with the latest change. To deal with this change old stereotypes were promoted, and an often heard argument to fire good looking young women was that by using their sexual attractiveness to gain favors, they had ‘failed’ as the moral guardians. A little jump back into history will make this more understandable. In the 1800s, the idea arose that women did not have sexual desires, as opposed to men. As many historians have pointed out, society believed women’s behavior had to be proper.This put a huge responsibility on the shoulder of women as they became the moral guardians of sexual morality. In other words, men’s sexual escapades were normal, part of their nature, and it was up to women not to arouse men and to keep men’ sexual urges in check. By the 1920s, the ideal of the innate purity of women ceased in favor of recognition of female sexual desire. However, it was still a woman’s responsibility to retain a chaste image and to resist temptation.24
22 RG 233, box 11, folder 4-0-1, spring 1941. For similar complaints see RG 233, box 16, folder 4-11, August 3, 1945, RG 233, box 18, folder 7-0-0, n.d. RG 233, box 20, folder 7-15-10, December 13, 1944. For another example of hostility between 2 women see RGG 233, box 20, folder 7-12-0 (4), October 26 and November 2 1942.
23 Berebitsky, Sex and The Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, 143.
24 Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 2002), chapter 8; Estelle B. Freedman, “Sexuality in Nineteenth Century America: Behavior, Ideology and Politics,” Reviews in
The fraternization between both sexes in the office once again redefined the sexual boundaries. Young single female government employees had more freedom to explore their sexuality. However, the idea that women were the moral guardians of society, that they had the power to control sexual relations was a persistent ideological control on women’s sexuality. Women who had supposedly flirted with their male boss would not elicit much sympathy, and was considered to be sexually loose. Men were not questioned for surrounding themselves with attractive women; it was the woman who had an important role to play in guarding morale by rejecting sexual advances of their male colleagues. As Berebitsky has shown, complaints from employees about their bosses’ preference for young, attractive women has a long history that goes back to the nineteenth century. The preferences for attractive women was already
considered immoral back then, but with the significant difference that men were also judged by their immoral behavior.25 The letters to the Ramspeck Committee, however, show that a bigger emphasis was put on women as the moral guardians. A letter about a big pay raise of a young Miss J. supports this thesis. She was believed to have received this raise on account of “letting her” drunk boss, Mr. S, “kiss her on the dance floor of all the employees present. It is one way to get ahead.”26 What is noticeable about the hostility towards Miss J. is the assumption that she must have enjoyed Mr. S’ kiss. There is no question about who orchestrated this kiss, and whether it was consensual. She did not recoil in disgust, she was not injured, and she seemed to enjoy the kiss. No attention was paid to Miss J’s true feelings, had she really enjoyed the kiss or was she afraid and did not know what to do?
The same standard was applied to Miss M, who had become pregnant with a male colleague twice her age and who worked in the same office. A social worker recorded her talks with Miss M. The social worker recalled Miss M. as a rather shy, insecure young woman who had been brought up in a small town where she had been guarded by her father, who, according to the girl was a true “Victorian.” Therefore, the girl could not stand the idea of her family and friends back home finding out that she had become pregnant. She had come to the office worker to discuss the possibility of adoption: she had gone there secretly, nobody knew about it due to her strong feelings of shame. Nobody from her home community could know that she had become pregnant with her boss because people might think it was actually her fault, that her
25 Berebitsky, Sex and the Office, A History of Gender, Power, and Desire,144.
26 RG 233, box 11, folder 3-17-18, “Disgusted,” n.d. For other examples see RG 233, box 13, folder 4-3, November 19, 1942, RG 233, box 24, folder Federal Communications Commission, “An Interested Observer,” August 18, 1943.
pregnancy was a consequence of her promiscuous behavior. Being labeled a promiscuous girl meant that something must be wrong with her. On top of that was the fear for exposing her failure to control her boss’s sexuality, since that was expected of women. Eventually, Miss M. gave up her baby, and seemed on the surface to have regained her happy spirits. However, the social worker was convinced that this happiness could easily turn into a depression and eventually suicide if her family ever found out.27 Thus, the emphasis was placed on how women navigated sexual relationships and how they responded to sexual advances.
Women who suffered from sexual harassment held little power have because men had the power in the office, and could use this power not just to grant the girls favors, but to destroy their careers if they objected to sexual advances. The only real power women yielded in the office was the power of their beauty and age to get what they wanted. The situation was seemingly mutually beneficial for both parties. However, as some other letters show, there were plenty of instances in which sexual advances were unwanted. And as some of the letters show, women had little power to do anything about it. Lula B. Krupp’s letter, for example, is an example of this difficult situation. She wrote to the Ramspeck Committee because she had “about reached the limit” of her “ability to take the malicious, petty persecution” she had been “subjected to from the
Adjutant.” Ms. Krupp was “at a loss to understand it. He harasses me at every opportunity and I had a particularly humiliating incident with him today.” The fact that she spent nine paragraphs defending her good work, “my immediate superiors have the highest regard for my ability and opinion,” implied the need for her to defend herself. But it also exposes the limited possibilities to stop unwanted attention, placing a huge burden on women: “I would like to be able to resign, but it is necessary for me to work.”28
Since women were judged by how they responded to sexual advances, it implied that men and women held equal power. However, the following letter from Mrs. Bessie A. Bagley
undermines the view that women had a certain degree of agency. In 1943, she wrote a 6-page-long letter explaining the sexual harassment she endured from her boss, Commander Delpino. She recalled a morning in July 1942, when she was dusting Commander Delpino’s desk as usual, and how he “engaged me in conversation with the flattering remarks that it was a pleasure to have me.” He then “aggressively moved forward” and “slipped his arm around my waist and said, ‘you
27 “The Case of Miss M, 1944-1945,” Dorothy Hutchinson Papers, Box 1, Folder 3, Dorothy Hutchinson Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, available from http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/archive/CaseofMissM.htm.
are so lovely, so desirable, I must have you.’” Mrs. Bagley had no desire to engage in any sexual relations and they “struggled and as I pulled myself away I felt Commander Delpino’s hot breath and sensuous lips touching my cheek.” She made her objections about his behavior very clear by “slapping his left cheek,” and saying that if he ever touched her again she would “knock” his head off.” However, as she continued in her letter, her rejection of Commander Delpino’s advances.resulted in humiliation and punishment from her boss. He started to give her low performance rating, and eventually told her to quit her job. When she tried to address her problems to a superior he was of no help because it did not matter who the guilty party was:
He said, that doesn’t make any difference-Commander Delpino is of the Navy and that I wasn’t-who the guilty person was made no difference-and he repeated I was not of the Navy and had to get out. Failing to convince me that my constitutional rights were not equal to his he ordered me to go home telling me that he would not have me annoying Commander Delpino. I cried and pleaded with him telling him I didn’t want my character ruined. Finally he permitted me to return to my desk with the remarks ‘against my better judgment.’”29
Commander Delpino continued to abuse her, and despite Mrs. Bagley’s continuing attempts to report the harassment, she was not taken seriously. Instead, she was told she was the cause of the disruptions in the office.
The nineteenth-century ideal of female purity that had in some way protected a woman’s status against unwanted sexual advances---only if the lady had acted in a ‘pure’ way---continued during WWII. This ideal put women into one of two categories: they were considered either ‘pure’ or ‘whores.’ It explains how sexual harassment was viewed and dealt with.30 In 1944, a seventeen-year-old girl named Dorothy Berrum from Wisconsin, who was an employee of the War Department in Washington and a resident at the Arlington Farms Dormitory complex, was brutally raped and strangled by a Marine she had met on a street in Washington. According to an eye-witness Berrum had “laughingly accompanied him,” when he took her arm. According to her friends from her hometown in Wisconsin she had never dated before, and only after her move to Washington had she started to attend dances. After this tragic incident, Maj. Edward J. Kelly and
29 All quotes come from RG 233, box 18, folder 7-4-0, February 26, 1943.
30 Estelle B. Freedman, “The Response to the Sexual Psychopath: 1920-1960.” The Journal of American History 74, no. 1 (June 1987): 83-106; John Eric Dingwall, The American Woman: An Historical Study (New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc. 1957), 216; Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America, 182-183; Berebitsky, Sex in the
Inspector Robert J. Barrett wanted to convince women, especially young government workers, not to date men “unless they knew such men well.” These men took the case of Berrum as an example to warn the girls what could happen if they dated men they did not know well.31 For weeks, letters and editorials filled the newspaper with different views on the case of the girl. Some of these opinions revealed that people thought of women in terms of virgin or whores. As one person stated: “girls from church homes” would be better at avoiding “risks because they would be able to avoid the temptations the city offered.”32 Women were expected to bare a big responsibility for protecting themselves and they were warned that things could end badly for them if they immersed themselves in ‘immoral behavior.’ Some commentators believed that the government did not do enough to protect the massive influx of young women to Washington, but others also questioned whether these girls were “psychologically unbalanced, prone to sexually amoral behavior.” An editorial writer from the Washington Evening Star linked the psychological instability of women with promiscuous behavior: “it has been argued, of course, that it is mostly girls of naturally unstable personality who become sexually amoral or who get into serious trouble in Washington.”33 A former government worker recalled the Bellum case in an interview stating that Bellum was “a little promiscuous” and had “led a marine too far.” 34 In other words, the blame was put on Bellum. From this point of view, the behavior of the female victims were the problem, not the men. Murders and rapes could be prevented if women took more precautions and did not supposedly lead men on, and by doing so, would uphold their purity. The
responsibility to keep up a ‘chaste’ image and resist sexual male temptations lay with women.35
The expectations that women were moral guardians is filled with contradictions. On the one hand women had the responsibility to keep men’s sexual behavior in check and not be too promiscuous. But on the other, newspapers, for instance also published articles that advised a “girl workers” needed “pleasant and continuous association with young men” to avoid any feelings of loneliness.36 Romantic relations were made incredibly tricky for women. As women’s
31 “Young Women Urged To Avoid Meeting Little Known Men,” Washington Post, October 9, 1944. 32 Washington Evening Star, October 14, 1944; October 16, 1944.
33 Washington Evening Star, October 19, 1944.
34 Berebitsky, Sex and The Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, 145. Page Dougherty Delano, “Making Up for War: Sexuality and Citizenship in Wartime Culture,” Feminist Studies, 26 no. 1 (Spring 2000): 45-46. The notion that female office workers had a neurotic tendency for craving male attention was not a new phenomenon. Already in the 1930s, personnel managers ‘warned’ about this type of behavior, see, for example, Marilyn S. Quayle,
As Told by Business Girls: Problems in Personal Adjustment (New York: Woman’s Press, 1932), 81, 95-96, 107.
35 All quotes from Margaret C. Rung, “Paternalism and Pink Collars: Gender and Federal Employee Relations,” The
Business History Review, vol. 71, No. 3 (Autumn, 1997), 409.
presence in the office grew rapidly, government agencies struggled with how to deal with relations between men and women in the office. Despite the fact that some of the letters were critical about women’s supposed failure to maintain a professional work environment, the Rampeck Committee also gave women who had been sexually harassed a chance to call for investigations if immoral behavior occurred. Investigations, however, were not necessarily guaranteed. Any letters that contained hints of personal vendettas, for example, were dismissed by committee investigators. It is also unclear which letters were taken seriously, and whether the committee took actions to investigate the complaints.37
MARY HAWORTH’S ADVICE
The question whether women were primarily responsible for men’s unwanted sexual advances was a hotly debated topic. Mary Haworth Advice. Advice columns served as a public forum and the questions sent in to the Mary Haworth’s column ranged from issues around
intimacy-etiquette, dating, relationships, marriage, and infidelity. According to David Gudelunas, advice columns “serve” as a “cultural benchmark” that can identify and help to “shift social norms pertaining to human sexuality.” An examination of these columns will highlight how discussions “shaped and reinforced societal attitudes” towards sexuality at that time. Columns like “Ann Landers,” or “Dear Abby” also discussed these matter, but what made “Mary Haworth’s Mail” different from some of the others was that she did not rely solely on her own advice, but she also turned to professionals, such as psychiatrists, for her answers. Haworth’s column was more than a simple “question-answer” format. Some of Haworth’s columns were devoted to letters from readers who felt they wanted to comment on certain issues that were being discussed. The dilemmas of sexual relations and how to deal with unwanted sexual advances from men was a regular topic in Haworth’s advice columns.38 Her answers and the letters of the Rampseck Committee are similar in that most of the letters clearly support the idea that women who had benefited from sexual relations with their bosses lost sympathy and support from their coworkers even when it turned out the sexual relations were in fact unwanted. Only a small number of readers expressed their sympathy towards their fellow women and chastised men’s lack of manners when making inappropriate sexual advances. They believed that the boss was the one in
37 Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, 144.
a position of power, and that he should therefore have also behaved accordingly, instead of women being solely responsible to keep men at a distance.
The idea that men were sexual creatures and that their sexual behavior was a natural given still dominated during this period. Women had an obligation to protect themselves from
unwanted sexual advances, as reflected in Haworth’s advice and the letters from readers. A married woman named Beth who believed she had excellent morals wrote to Haworth to ask her advice about an uncomfortable situation with the married man she worked for. This man, whom she referred to as Mr. Blank, was married, had two children, and a nice wife whom she had also met. A few weeks into her new job, he proposed to take her home even though it meant going 25 miles out of his way. Beth had taken him up on this offer and everything had gone fine. But then, on another ride home “three” days ago, when he stopped in front of my house, he refused to let me go. At first, I couldn’t imagine what it was all about. Then his actions left no doubt.” Beth had slapped him and luckily a soldier had come to her rescue. After this incident Mr. Blank acted as if nothing had happened, but Beth was in a constant state of fear. She asked Haworth what to do about this situation and if she should mention it to her husband. Haworth’s response started with “Trouble Had Origin in Girl’s Attitude,” and further stated that Beth “had played with fire” in the first place, and now got burned. In other words, had she behaved in a moral and dignified way as she ought to have, this mess could have been prevented. Haworth continued to criticize Beth’s acceptance of a ride home claiming she should have known that this would give Mr. Blank the impression she was ‘easy:’
Failure to deport yourself in all circumstances with punctilious, self-reliant detachment, now that you are an adult female temporarily on your own, must inevitably lead to trouble with men, if you are reasonably attractive, -since lacking your husband’s protective presence, the only armor you have to deflect
experimental insolence is your essential attitude, exemplified in manner (…) At the time Mr. Blank committed his faux pas, he was acting confidently on a “miss-que” your reaction had supplied. You had been accepting a special, sub-rosa favor from him, in the way of a nightly, unethical chauffeuring service— an acceptance that implied a certain lack of principle. (…) Is it surprising that he ventured to assume your standards might be equally lax in all respects? Let’s be fair to the boob, and allow that your consternation at his forward pass was probably no greater than his consternation at your face-slapping comeback. As for living in constant fear of Mr. Blank, since the other night—don’t be ridiculous. I hardly think he is of monster caliber. He, or the situation that has developed would only be dangerous if he were a psychopath, and that seems unlikely, in view of his generally normal social behavior. (…) I advise you to quit your job
with him, before he has a chance to eliminate you, possibly with detrimental allegations about your character or efficiency. If you are afraid to make a move without trustworthy backing, take the story to an Employee Counselor, and ask help in getting transferred, for the sake of the office morale.39
Thus, Haworth’s answer was in line with what numerous government agencies and other commentators had stated, namely that women were to blame for unwanted sexual liaisons. Beth (and others who wrote to Haworth with similar stories) was accountable for this messy situation, while Haworth and readers downplayed men’s behavior as just temporarily losing their heads, and that they should not be seen as dangerous. The lesson here was that women should remain businesslike at work at all times. Clearly, as Haworth’s response exposes, women were the moral guardians and they were the ones who would suffer if they failed in their prescribed roles as moral safe keepers. The dominant belief that men were in essence sexual creatures meant that it was easy to justify men’s unwanted sexual advances as “courtship misunderstanding.”40
However, it should be noted that some supervisors did look at the role men played in charges of sexual harassment. But the main reason behind these investigations was the negative impact it had on work productivity, and even more often than not, these charges would land on deaf ears. It seems that individual cases of sexual harassment were usually dismissed, since the work
environment as a whole was not affected by it..41
The office relations between secretaries and their bosses continued to feature prominently in Haworth’s columns as more and more women went to work in federal agencies in Washington and across the country. This, as “Homemaker” suggested in 1943, meant that office relationships were “the most challenging subject in this country, next to winning the war.”42 Some secretaries wrote to Haworth for advice on their attraction to (often) married bosses. Haworth’s replies strongly advised the girls to think about the wives of these men, and to ask themselves whether it was an honorable thing to become a mistress, since usually the girls would get pregnant and be left behind to raise the child alone, or give it up for adoption. With the stigma both these options entailed, Haworth stressed the importance that these girls be responsible in their encounters with men, as men were described as “often not knowing what they were doing.”43 Either way, Haworth
39 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, March 17, 1944.
40 Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, 7, 152. 41 Ibid.
42 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, February 18, 1943. 43 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, March 24, 1944.
and office wives expressed their dissatisfaction about these young girls, depicting young secretaries as predators, consciously on the outlook to destroy marriages. The “Homemaker” stated her aversion to girls of a “predatory nature” with “loose morals” who made the situation “truly dangerous.” “Homemaker” was clear what the best solution was for sexual relations that destroyed marriages: “I believe for the good of everybody that women must return to the home or enter professions for which they are specifically suited, and let men run business by themselves without female distractions.”44 As this anxious letter from “Homemaker” showed, the secretary-boss relations posed a threat to ‘civilized’ family life. Women perceived as predatory were viewed as the “problem”, and as we have already seen, women were defined by the dominant view of womanhood: a ‘good’ woman who was chaste could elicit sympathy, the predator woman was ’bad.’
Winning the war was used as an appeal to women to ‘behave themselves.’ “T.S.N” recalled how during the last war, when she herself was young, she had taken great pride in doing anything “to help my country,” and this meant doing her job as best as she could without
‘painting the town red.’ She appealed to the girls’ honor and the need to do everything to keep the country safe
if your boys must face slaughter, disease and death, uncertainty, home sickness, hunger etc., to keep our country safe, surely our girls can behave with simple honor on the home front. If not, what are we fighting for? What will they come back to? Bear that in mind girls: and spend a thousand lonely days and evenings alone, rather than venture one sneak date with a married man—even though he isn’t in love with his wife (says he!!).45
“T.S.N.,” like many others, put the responsibility of upholding proper office relations on the shoulders of women. Another “Officer’s Wife” joined “T.S.N.”’s plea for young women to behave themselves, stating that it was time that public opinion raised awareness of the
“inconsistent behavior” of female federal employees, putting a brake on the immoral situations in which women showed men good times “even if he belongs by marriage to other women.”46 Needless to say, secretaries who wrote to Haworth condemned the blaming of young women. The wife vs. secretary debate triggered responses by young secretaries who stressed the fact that
44 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post , February 18, 1943; March 3, 1943; April 30, 1944. 45 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, April 4, 1944.
wives should take charge of their own lives and stop being so insecure for the sake of the country. Also, as “Working Wife” stated in response to “Homemaker’s” assumption that all secretaries were predators, this idea “is a bit naïve.”47
The clash between office-wives and secretaries was also found in discussions about of the office parties. Although businesses had long organized leisure-events for its employees and families Haworth shone a light on specific issues of office wives concerning the office party.48 As some letters reveal, often wives of government employees were not invited to these parties. This created animosity between women. According to the wives these parties were immoral, and were only used for the entertainment of girls in order for them not to get lonely. Again, there was a contradiction in the way women’s behavior was perceived. On the one hand government agencies had encouraged these parties in order to increase office morale with their female employees. On the other hand, Haworth and her readers strongly opposed the “extremely vulgar” office parties where wives were excluded.49 Just like the letters to the Ramspeck Committee, the overall consensus of those investigating office morale was that the office parties were a waste of resources that could be used for the war. For example, it was common for men to drive home their female colleagues; sometimes these rides were a detour, and a man had to drive an extra fifty miles, using gas that could be used for other important things.50The “hussies,” as the young women were called, also posed a threat to the stability of marriages and could therefore count on little sympathy if she experienced unwanted sexual advances. Once again, men were easily let off the hook. Instead, the office girl was labeled as a predator, a play-girl who knew exactly what she was doing. Haworth’s simultaneous support of the wives and disapproval of the single girls who were ‘stealing husbands’ supports the argument that women still encountered very traditional ideas about specific gender roles. In a reply to “T.K.” who had asked Haworth what to do about her marriage now that she had found out that her husband was cheating on her with the secretary, Haworth replied that the “trollop’s hook” had “seriously exhausted” him “due to the viscous circle of the anxious frustration into which the girl had led him.”51 It would take another twenty or so years before repressive sexual standards began to loosen and a little sexual flirtation in the office would get Helen Gurley Brown’s blessing.
47 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, February 24 1943. 48 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, April 26, 1944
49 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post, February 18, 1943;April 16, 1944. 50 “Mary Haworth’s Mail,” Washington Post , April 16 1944.
Chapter 2
Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Office: A Critical Analysis of
the “Cosmo Girl” Discourse
“Based on my own observations and experiences in nineteen different offices, I’m convinced that offices are sexier than Turkish harems, fraternity house weekends, Hollywood swimming parties, Cary Grant’s smile or the Playboy center-fold, and more action takes place in them than in a nymphet’s daydreams. Office romance not serious? Dynasties are toppled, new beneficiaries named in wills, stock issues plunge, new corporation heads are elected---not to mention girls getting pregnant, and sexually defunct” men getting funct.” 52
The office, Helen Gurley Brown proclaimed happily in her book Sex and the Office in 1964, was a hotbed for romantic liaisons. Her announcement was not entirely new or shocking, but her open celebration of office affairs certainly was. Two years prior to this book Brown published Sex and
the Single Girl, an advice book for single young women who liked work, men, money, and sex.
In her signature writing style---chatty, popular, lively, personal, and direct----Brown recognized women’s entitlement to a fulfilling sex life and that a woman did not need to get married to enjoy sex.53With chapter titles like “Where to Meet Them,” “How to Be Sexy,” and “The Affair: From Beginning to End,” this book was controversial at the time. Conservative reviewers argued that Brown’s message was a “breaking down of moral values” that was leading “Western civilization into decline,” but legions of women made the book an instant bestseller.54 Whether one loved it or
hated it, it was a book that people talked about.
Looking for ways to continue her fame and fortune in the aftermath of Sex and the Single
Girl, Brown published a sequel titled Sex and the Office. In this book, Brown used the same witty
writing style and elaborated on the importance of a successful career, a satisfying sex life, and the connection between the two. Brown urged young women to take their jobs seriously, and openly
52 Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Office (New York: Bernhard Geis, 1964), 183.
53 The book had actually been her husband’s idea. David Brown, who had come across a bundle of Brown’s old love-letters to a previous beau, thought Helen was a talented writer and, ever the businessman, he urged her to write a book. See Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009, 57-78; Jennifer Scanlon, “Sensationalist Literature or Expert Advice? Helen Gurley Brown’s
Sex and the Single Girl in its publishing context,” Feminist Media Studies 9, no1, (2009) 1-2.
54 The book was a bestseller, and a bigger commercial success than The Feminine Mystique, selling over 2 million copies during the first three weeks. See Stephanie Coontz, A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and
American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (New York: Basic Books, 2011); Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl (New York: Bernard Geis, 1962); Berebitsky, Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power, and Desire, 177.
promoted the view that a sexy attitude and appearance could help enhance a woman’s career.55 Brown’s celebration of sexual freedom, and its link to professional advancements has been termed “lipstick feminism,”56 a precursor to Third Wave feminism. This type of ‘playful’
feminism refers to women who believe they can dress in a sexy manner, enjoy sex with men, and still be considered as equals. Brown’s feminist concept, the “Cosmo Girl” discourse, differed from the liberal feminist that has become known as the second wave feminist movement. This type of feminism---which has long been known to have emerged with the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique,57---was for the well-educated white, middle-class housewife
who had the resources to pursue a Master’s degree in Art, but did not appeal to the secretaries of the steno pool who simply could not afford to burn their bras and who, instead, saw in Brown their spokesperson. Brown’s feminist contemporaries, like Gloria Steinem, mocked her for her anti-feminist advice that enhanced the lives of men rather than women’s by “turning women into sexually available playmates.” Brown, in turn, wished she could help Steinem to lighten up: “you can be a feminist, but you don’t have to look like everybody died.”58 According to Brown, women could derive power in the office from being sexual agents; they no longer had to deny their sexuality, nor did they have to protect themselves from disreputable reputations.
In this chapter I will examine why Brown was such a controversial figure as well as a product of her time. In my analysis of Sex and the Office I will cast a light on Brown’s views regarding sexuality in the workplace, and the possibilities for change in women’s economic and
55 After the publication of Sex and The Single Girl Brown embarked on a number of other ventures to expand her “Sex and The…” formula. She secured a column called “Woman Alone” which she wrote during the course of two years for The Los Angeles Times, and she published a record in 1963 titled Lessons in Love. Neither business adventure proved to be financially rewarding though. Since she had a contract for three books with her publisher Berney Geis Brown opted to write a book about a setting she knew a lot about: the office. Jennifer Scanlon, Bad
Girls Go Everywhere, 112-122. See also Judith Thurman, “Helenism: The Birth of the Cosmo Girl” New Yorker,
May 11, 2009, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/helenism ; Julie Julie Berebitsky, Sex and the
Office: A History of gender, Power, and Desire, 178.
56 Also known as “Gurley Feminism,” Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere, x. I these terms represent the “Cosmo Girl” discourse that I will discuss in this chapter.
57 See, for example Sara Evans, Born For Liberty: A History of Women in America, 243-286. Of course, in recent years scholars have debunked the myth that Betty Friedan was the one person who had single-handedly started the second wave movement with her book The Feminine Mystique. A good example of this demystification is A strange
Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz, and
Kathleen A. Laughlin et al., “Is It Time to Jump Ship? Historians Rethink the Waves Metaphor,” Feminist
Formations 22 (Spring 2010), 98, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/feminist_formations/v022/22.1.laughlin.html. 58 An example of the clear distinction between these two types of feminism can be seen in differences between two women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan (with Brown as editor-in-chief) and Ms. Magazine run by Gloria Steinem. See article Ms. Versus Cosmo by Stephanie Harrington. Brown’s wish to lighten things up was her response to Ms. Magazine, quoted in Nancy Lloyd, “Helen Gurley Brown: Still the Same Ol’ Tease.” Modern Maturity, May/June 1997, 56.
sexual independence before the rise of the women’s liberation movement and sexual revolution. Brown was a firm believer in the “self-made woman,” who could land her dream job and have the lifestyle she wanted with a lot of hard work and determination. In her own words: “to have the best of all possible times in the office you do have to work hard!”59 An analysis of Brown’s advice sheds a light on the construction of the “working girl” as a social identity. A theory from Laurie Ouelette, a cultural studies scholar, is helpful in this respect. Ouelette argues that an analysis of Brown will show “the intersection of ideas and forces that shaped her cultural resonance at a particular historical juncture.”60 The “American Dream” mythology is a vital component of Brown’s messages and was especially appealing to her audience of pink-collar women. Brown gave these girls strategies to access middle-class men and a middle-class lifestyle, therefore giving them a different way of viewing themselves. They could transcend from
prescribed class roles, while at the same time feeling sexually liberated. However, despite the fact that Brown’s advice offered more sexual freedom for women, it legitimized ’capitalist
exploitation’ of women and ultimately did not challenge male patriarchy in the office. 61
Consequently, Brown’s view of what constitutes sexual harassment in the office was based om her philosophy of sexual liberation. In her eyes, women were sexually and economically independent women who were perfectly capable of dismissing unwanted attention with a stern “no.” In this respect, sexual harassment remained a private problem, rather than a problem that attracted serious public attention from an icon like Brown.
An examination into the historiography of feminism reveals that Brown has largely been omitted, or mentioned only as a small footnote in comparison with the more ‘important’ feminists of white, middle-class women that challenged gender relations at that time. For example,
historian Jane Gerhard has argued that Brown did indeed give single girls “the permission to do it,” but that she did not offer a more in-depth philosophy that could challenge male patriarchy.62 Others saw in Brown a female version of Hugh Hefner, promoting consumption and making a
59 Brown, Sex and the Office, 5.
60 Laurie Ouelette, “Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class identity and girl-style American Dreams,” Media, Culture & Society 21 (1999), 360.
61 Ibid., Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, 169.
62 Jane Gerhard, Desiring revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought,
1920-1982 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 11,76. Other scholars simply downplayed Brown’s
importance by casting her book as a “little book.” See Gail Collins, The Amazing Journey of American Women From
1960 to the Present: When Everything Changed, (New York: Back Bay Books, 2009), 35-36; Micki McGee, Self-Help Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 40; Barbara Ehrenreich, Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986), 56-60.
woman a sort of commodity in the process. Even in this examination of Brown’s role in feminist history she is portrayed as having a secondary role to Hugh Hefner: a copycat, rather than an innovator.63 Historians have also dismissed her work due to a lack of intellectual philosophy, referring to her work as “little books,” and a “gushy guide to self-improvement,” compared to Betty Friedan’s “first-class-journalism,” and “more serious scholarship.”64 These interpretations overlook that Brown was one of the pioneers of the sexual and feminist revolution. Only recently has Brown received some academic attention as a pivotal figure in the women’s liberation
movement. Historian Jennifer Scanlon’s biography of Brown, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The
Life of Helen Gurley Brown, is one of the recent publications that seeks to highlight Brown’s
contribution to the women’s movement.
Brown’s feminist philosophy was tightly interwoven with her own life. The drive and inspiration for Sex and the Office, and her future career as editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, stemmed from her upbringing in a working-class family in Arkansas in the 1920s and 1930s. As many other Americans, the Gurley family suffered hardships during the Great Depression. The death of Helen’s father in 1932, and her sister Mary’s contraction of polio in 1937 strengthened Helen’s ‘take the bull by its horn’ approach to life. She recalled later in life that she “didn’t like the look of the life that seemed to be programmed for me.” Her upbringing in a family with scarce economic resources led Brown to believe that “if you have some daily anguish from some cause that’s not really your fault---a rotten family, bad health, serious money problems---rejoice! These things are your fuel!”65During her youth Brown became aware that social class mattered. Her father’s position in the Little Rock legislation meant that the young Brown did have contact with, and developed friendships with wealthy children. These friendships made her aware of the differences between her “ordinary, hillbilly, and poor family” who did not shy away from a pee-break in the bushes on their way to church, and the “splendor of luxurious surroundings” of her rich friends. Eager to escape Arkansas, she eventually moved to Los Angeles, where she had eighteen secretarial jobs before she became a copy writer.
Her attitude towards women’s economic independence and the importance of work had its roots in her childhood. Brown had witnessed firsthand the economic struggles of her mother after
63 Beth Bailey “Sexual Revolutions,” in The Sixties: From Memory to History, ed. David Farber (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 248-249.
64 Ehrenreich, Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex, 59; McGee, Self-Help Inc.: Makeover Culture in
American Life, 40.
65 Quoted in Jennifer Scanlon Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, 10. Berebitsky, Sex and
her father’s death, and Brown internalized the view that women could not depend on men for economic security.Throughout her twenties and early thirties Brown was determined to stay single---apart from the occasional sexual fling. She had an aversion to the traditional role for women of her generation, i.e. a future as a mother and housewife. Throughout her years as a single woman, Brown had had some affairs with married men and enjoyed all the financial benefits that came with it---lovely presents and a portfolio of stock bonds---but resisted becoming too dependent on men. Not entirely insensitive to the idea of marriage, Brown contemplated settling down in her thirties, but only to a successful man, not just some “ordinary man she might have to help support.” When she heard of the glamorous and successful movie executive David Brown, she asked her friend for an introduction, and the two started a relationship that Helen felt was based on equality. At 37, Helen Gurley became Helen Gurley Brown.66 What her career had taught her up until then were the visible gender inequalities that existed in the workplace, and as a result she resorted to a “if you cannot beat them, join them” strategy that consisted of flirting oneself to the top:
We’ll start sneaking up on the boys career wise (don’t worry, we’ll be so gentle and ladylike they won’t mind a bit. In an ideal world we might move onward and upward by using only our brains and talent but, since this is an imperfect world, a certain amount of listening, giggling, wriggling, smiling, winking, flirting and fainting is required in our rise from the mailroom.) We’ll learn how to look gorgeous while all this is going on and how to deliver a modest acceptance speech as we’re handed “the key to the men’s room” in recognition of our achievement.67
Sex and the Office, then, offered a step-by-step guide on how to use sexuality to advance
up the corporate ladder. The advice was based on four important ideas: upward mobility through self-improvement, a re-creation of the self and the illusion that this identity is self-made, the
66 Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, 1-56. Helen Gurley Brown Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (hereafter HGB Papers), Amanda Izzo, “Inventory Biographical Note,” box 1, folder 6. For more on Brown’s upbringing, her teenage years, her jobs, and life as a single young woman see Helen Gurley Brown, I’m Wild Again: Snippets From my Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 3-25, Although Helen advocated economic independence and sexual
liberation, her own marriage contradicted this advice. David was a supporter of Helen’s professional career, and they both tried equally hard to navigate a marriage based on equality. But Helen herself admitted to being the one who took more responsibilities in the household. Also, Helen’s advice to single girls often included the approval to sleep with married men, but she herself demanded fidelity from David, threatening him with a possible divorce. See Judy Bachrach, “When It Comes to Having It All, HGB Wrote the Book---With a Little Inspiration from Her Dear David,”
People, November 1, 1982, 54-61, HGB-SSCSC, box 28. Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, 72-73.
