Helen Gurley Brown, Sex, and Cartoons : The New Yorker
►http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/2012/08/helen-gurley-brown.html
Back then, sex was an accepted droit du C.E.O., which, as this cartoon would have us believe, was not only tolerated (note the smile on the secretary’s face) but welcomed. What we now correctly consider sexual harassment was then viewed, by Brown and many others, as a kind of fair-trade agreement.
From Brown’s Times obituary:
She went on to hold a string of secretarial jobs—17 by her own count—and discovered the measure of security that sex could bring. At every office, or so it seemed, there were bosses eager to fondle and dandle. In exchange, there might be a fur or an apartment or the wherewithal to keep her family going.
For Helen Gurley Brown, there was nothing inherently wrong with patriarchy. Any woman could benefit from it… as long as she had a friend with benefits, who was a patriarch.