Edition: U.S. / Global

ON TOUR WITH: Helen Gurley Brown; Go Ahead, Say It: Sex And the Senior Woman

Published: April 1, 1993

HELEN GURLEY BROWN is a wreck. Her flight from Atlanta is late and now, at 7 P.M., she is just arriving in Boca Raton, Fla., for the start of a full schedule at 7:30 P.M. to promote her new book, "The Late Show: A Semiwild but Practical Survival Plan for Women Over 50" (William Morrow, $23).

Actually, Mrs. Brown is 71, and none too happy about it, thank you, having made her reputation as "that Cosmo girl," the sexy embodiment of Cosmopolitan magazine, which she has edited since 1965. But alas, the Cosmo girl's new advertising agency recently promoted her to the Cosmo young woman. Like it or not, the rest of the world is growing up, and books on subjects like menopause are hitting the best-seller list and staying.

But don't even mention the word menopause to Mrs. Brown because she says that with the high doses of estrogen she takes, and recommends, she never experienced its side effects. She's much more focused on what women can do to feel younger (sex, cosmetic surgery and more sex), picking up where her last best-selling advice book, "Having It All" (Simon & Schuster, 1982), left off. She's on a back-breaking book tour, visiting 10 cities in 14 days. In the Miami area, she has a ready-made audience, and she knows it.

She practically runs off the plane, remarkably energetic. Thin to the point of emaciation (5 feet 4 inches, 100 pounds) she seems swamped by her black suede coat. Next to Mrs. Brown, even Edith Piaf could look fat.

"Delta wouldn't let me into their club in Atlanta because I wasn't a member and that hurt my feelings," she says in her girlish voice. "So I started to cry. Then they gave me a conference room and I exercised there. And took a nap."

It is now 7:10 P.M. and a huge rainstorm has hit. Mrs. Brown's first stop, Liberties, a bookstore in Boca Raton, is almost an hour away. It is clear that she wants to get there pronto, but the direct approach is not Mrs. Brown's; she never wants anyone to stop liking her. She enters 500 popularity contests a day and is desolate if she loses even one. So she breathlessly informs her escort: "I just love maniacal driving. I'm quite restless with careful drivers." The car takes off like a shot.

In the back seat, Mrs. Brown wastes no time. "This book took six years to write because I could only work weekends and vacations," she says. "The New York Times Book Review gave me what is considered a good review, but it called me savvy and silly." Her voice rises to a petulant high pitch. "I don't think I'm silly," she says, seeming to grow smaller inside her coat, like Alice after drinking the potion.

Mrs. Brown is the first to credit rampant insecurity as the motivating force of her life. She coined the term "mouseburger" to describe herself, as a plain-looking person of ordinary intelligence who must work relentlessly to improve her appearance and succeed professionally. In her books, she exposes every fear, no matter how personal, and dwells on every tiny detail (tattooing her eyebrows, torturing her thin hair to an always elusive fullness), which endears her to women everywhere while begging the question of how her 77-year-old husband, the movie producer David Brown, can tolerate a level of self-absorption more common to adolescents.

Quite well, apparently. Their marriage has lasted 34 years, and Mrs. Brown is secure enough to recommend in "The Late Show" that older women take a fresh look at their friends' husbands as potential lovers. "Husbands are a source of supply," she says calmly as the rain slices at the speeding car. "I never feel guilt about the wife, if she can't keep him at home. I'm espousing 'never let sex disappear no matter how old you are.' There are many married women in sexless marriages or not in one at all. Certainly, if you have any sense you don't fall in love with the man."

Here's the Helen Gurley Brown her readers know and love. Let's get down to basics. What do older men want in bed? "They really want to be 25, to be admired and encouraged," Mrs. Brown says. "They want to make you happy, too, as a sign of their success and virility. And you would have to know to take some time."

She then offers an elaborately detailed discussion of the older man's sex organ, her tone a curious mixture of excitement and duty, like slipping a hot stock tip into a set of instructions on pet care.

What do older women want in bed? "I think many women don't want sex at all," she says. "By a certain age they heave such a sigh of relief to be done with it.

"My own philosophy is if you're not having sex you're finished. It separates the girls from the old people. When older women do have sex, they're not going for multiple orgasms anymore, but the intimacy, the touch, the experience to be body to body with someone. Which is even true for me. The intimacy of being with another person keeps you alive, if not young. And it doesn't have to be all the time. If, say, it's been four months, call an old lover, an ex-husband, somebody ."

Mrs. Brown endorses cosmetic surgery as a confidence builder and acknowledges having had a face lift, eye lift, nose job and silicone injections in her face. (In "The Late Show" one helpful hint to minimize wrinkles is to apply a blend of moisturizer and Preparation H.)