By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Pandora Young (2012) · Wayback archive →
In mid-August 2012, Helen Gurley Brown — the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and the author of the 1962 best-seller Sex and the Single Girl — died at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital at age 90. The Los Angeles connection — Brown was an LA native — gave the FishbowlLA tribute its angle.
Then
Brown had run Cosmopolitan from 1965 to 1997 — a 32-year editorship that transformed the magazine from a struggling family publication into one of the most widely-circulated women’s magazines in the world. Sex and the Single Girl had been a cultural event — selling millions, getting a 1964 film adaptation, and shaping the broader 1960s discussion of single working women.
Now
The Cosmopolitan brand has continued through multiple subsequent editorial regimes — Bonnie Fuller, Kate White, Joanna Coles, Michele Promaulayko, and Jessica Pels. Hearst announced in 2024 that Cosmopolitan would move to a quarterly print schedule, with the brand’s primary cadence shifting to digital. The broader category Brown helped create has fragmented across the post-2010 magazine ecosystem.