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
Cosmopolitan (magazine) from the point of view that women could and should enjoy sex without guilt. The first issue under Helen Gurley Brown, July 1965, featured an article on the birth control pill, which had gone on the market exactly five years earlier. This was not Brown's first publication dealing with sexually liberated women. Her 1962 advice book, "Sex and the Single Girl", had been a bestseller. Fan mail begging for Brown's advice on many subjects concerning women's behavior, sexual encounters, health, and beauty flooded her after the book was released. Brown sent the message that a woman should have men complement