Helen Gurley Brown clothes and had an unabashedly good time when those clothes came off." After being gently let go, in 1996 at age 74 due to her increasing disconnection from young women, Helen Gurley Brown went on to be editor of the international "Cosmopolitan" magazines. Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique", disliked what Brown had done in her book and in the magazine. Friedan said that what Brown was doing was "anti-feminist" and an "immature teenage-level sexual fantasy". Feminist views of the magazine were re-evaluated in the 1990s, however, with "New York Times" media reporter Randall Rothenberg writing, "In retrospect, the
Helen Gurley Brown magazine played an important role in helping young women redefine their roles in society." Audie Cornish from NPR said that Helen "has been called a bad girl, a pioneer in Prada, a revolutionary in stilettos." Brown looked at herself as a feminist, but this description was contested by several others. After a brief hospitalization, Helen Gurley Brown died August 13, 2012 at the McKeen Pavilion at New York–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia. She was 90. In a statement announcing the news of her death, Hearst Publications noted that "Helen was one of the world's most recognized magazine editors and book authors, and a