Cosmo Editor Breathed Fun Into Feminism

For proof of the burgeoning reconciliation between second- and third-wave feminism, look no further than Michelle Obama, who thrives as a thinking woman's fashionista. For that, Obama and other feminists can thank Helen Gurley Brown, Naomi Wolf argues in a Washington Post review of Bad Girls Go Everywhere, Jennifer Scanlon’s biography of the former Cosmo editor.

The second wave, epitomized by Betty Friedan, was a humorless, sometimes intolerant movement, but Brown’s third wave made feminism—and sex—fun, Wolf argues. Still, “a saucy tattoo and a condom do not a revolution make,” concedes Wolf, who hopes for a Friedan-Brown synthesis: “If Michelle Obama's generation is getting closer, maybe Sasha's and Malia's generation will find it at last.”
(More Helen Gurley Brown stories.)