[해외논단] 여권운동가의 두 얼굴

출세 위해 섹스 이용한 걸리 브라운
밖에선 여권해방, 집에선 남편 신봉

다년간 코스모폴리탄 편집장을 맡았던 헬렌 걸리 브라운이 얼마 전에 죽었으나 그녀가 미국 여자들에게 남긴 해로운 유산은 계속 살아 있다.

재니스 쇼 크라우스 美 비벌리라헤이연구소 연구원

원하는 것을 얻기 위해서 사회제도를 이용했던 그녀는 인간관계를 조종하는 데는 달인이었으나 인간적 모범으로서는 최악의 사례였다. 그녀의 전체 인생은 한 시대를 풍미했던 ‘나’세대의 전형이다. 저명한 작가, 뉴욕의 명사, 30여년의 코스모폴리탄 편집장으로 활약한 그녀는, 여자가 앞서기 위해서는 스스로 성공을 찾고 규칙을 만들며 제도를 이용해야 한다는 개념을 부추겼다.

브라운의 전기를 쓴 제니퍼 스캔런은 브라운이 돈과 선물을 받기 위해서 남자들을 조종하고 목표 달성을 위해 섹스를 다양한 방식으로 이용한 사실을 상세하게 묘사한다. 그녀는 방탕한 성생활이 멋진 행동이며 현명한 여자는 출세를 위해 섹스를 이용한다는 개념을 몇 세대의 여자들에게 주입했다.

브라운이 남자와의 관계를 이기적으로 조종한 방법은 믿기지 않을 정도로 끔찍하다. 성적인 해방을 옹호하고 실천하면서 35년을 보낸 뒤 그녀는 자신의 사라지는 육체의 매력을 결혼과 바꾸기로 결정한다. 브라운이 출세를 위해 섹스를 이용한 기간은 생물학적 조건에 의해서 한계가 정해져 있었다.

그녀의 인생철학과 실용적인 직장생활 방식에 비추어볼 때 자신이 남달리 성공한 직장인에서 상류사회의 명사로 도약하기 위해서는 사회적 간격을 메워 줄 남자가 필요한 것으로 판단한 것임이 분명하다. 그런 남자와 결혼하지 않고는 신분상승이 불가능하다고 생각한 것이다.

영화제작소를 경영하는 부자인 데이비드 브라운이 그런 역할에 적임자였다. 그녀는 그의 자격조건을 사랑하게 되었다. 브라운이 그녀의 직업적 성공을 높이 평가할 뿐 그녀를 사랑하지 않는다는 것을 알았으나 그의 아내가 되기 위해 실망으로 점철된 오랜 노력을 시작했다.

뉴욕의 출판사업 성공을 발판으로 할리우드에 진출한 브라운의 가문과 성공 및 문단과의 연줄이 걸리 브라운의 최후 목표 달성에 필요했다. 그녀의 인생을 좀 더 깊이 들여다보면, 브라운 같은 남자와 결혼한 것은 그녀가 상류층으로 상승하는 데 목적이 있었다.

스캔런이 설명하는 바와 같이, 걸리 브라운은 남성과 여성 관계의 전통규범을 무력화시키지 않고 옛 규범의 응용을 통해서 새로운 진로를 개척했다. 두 사람의 혼인에 따른 거래는 간단했다. 남자가 여자의 직장생활을 돕는 대신 여자는 남자의 가정생활에 봉사하는 것이었다. 그녀는 노골적으로 이렇게 주장했다. “여자의 직장생활을 돕는 남자는 육체미나 다른 장점을 지닌 남자보다 성적인 매력이 훨씬 많다.”

결혼을 통해 남편은 아내의 저서 기획과 집필 및 판촉과 출판 등을 총체적으로 감독하여 1962년 걸리 브라운의 공전의 히트작인 ‘섹스와 독신녀’를 탄생시켰다. 여자의 독립을 주장했던 여자가 명성과 부를 얻는 도약대가 된 작품을 만들려고 남자의 신세를 진 것이다.

데이비드 브라운과 결혼함으로써 걸리 브라운은 자신의 프리섹스 환상을 국제적으로 선전하는 발판을 마련했다. 그녀는 또한 자신의 인생과 미래를 온전히 통제하여 성공한 여자라는 이미지를 널리 알리게 되었다. 그녀가 구차한 출판업계의 뒷골목에서 벗어나 막강한 뉴욕 출판업계에 진출한 점이 무엇보다 중요한 사실이다.

걸리 브라운이 베스트셀러 책을 쓸 수 있는 재능과 감각을 지닌 것은 사실이다. 그러나 경험과 연줄을 통해 할리우드의 후광과 뉴욕 출판업계의 지식을 제공한 데이비드 브라운의 적극적 협조가 없었다면 저명한 베스트셀러 작가의 지위에 도달하는 것이 불가능했을 것이다.

섹스 해방의 여왕이 결혼하여 남편에게 정절을 맹세한 것은 참으로 역설적이다. 다른 여자들에게 남자의 필요성을 느껴서는 안 된다고 경고하는 일로 출세한 여자가 결혼하여 남편을 행복하게 해주는 것이 자신의 행복이란 사실을 깨달은 것은 더욱 역설적이다.

재니스 쇼 크라우스 美 비벌리라헤이연구소 연구원


워싱턴타임스·정리=오성환 외신전문위원

Helen Gurley Brown’s pernicious legacy
By Janice Shaw Crouse

Helen Gurley Brown, former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, passed away this week, but her toxic legacy for the American woman lives on.

To put it kindly, she lived a life focused on getting what she wanted by working the system. She was the embodiment of the worst female stereotype as a master manipulator. Her whole life was a stunning example of how the “me” generation flourished. Everything that Gurley Brown wrote in her extraordinarily prolific career as a celebrity author, glamorous New York personality and three-decade editor of Cosmopolitan promoted the idea that women have to look out for themselves, make their own rules and work the system in order to get ahead.

And work the system she did.

In her biography of Gurley Brown, “Bad Girls Go Everywhere,” Jennifer Scanlon describes the unbelievable variety of ways that Gurley Brown manipulated men to get money and gifts and how she used sex to reach her goals. In her signature style ? breezy, irreverent, playful, sexy, humorous and confessional ? Gurley Brown sold several generations of women on the idea that libertine sexuality is cool and that smart women use sex to move up in the world. Ms. Scanlon describes in fascinating detail the myriad ways that Gurley Brown “evened out” the gaps in male-female income by making men pay for everything.

Gurley Brown’s parsimonious manipulation of her relationships with men is both astounding and appalling for its unapologetic selfishness. After living the sexually liberated life that she advocated for 35 years, Gurley Brown decided she was ready to trade her fading charms for marriage.

Obviously, her days of using sex to get ahead were limited by a nonnegotiable biological imperative that radical feminists still decry, however futile the exercise. To an objective observer, it seems obvious that she also realized ? perhaps unconsciously, but given her philosophy and pragmatic approach to her life and career, it was probably a deliberate decision ? that she couldn’t make the jump from phenomenally successful executive secretary to member of the upper-crust professional class without marrying someone who bridged that chasm for her. Wealthy film studio executive David Brown was the perfect candidate; she “fell in love with his credentials.” While she knew that he didn’t love her, it was enough that David respected her financial and career accomplishments. She set out on a “lengthy and frustrating” crusade to become his wife.

Brown, whose New York publishing career paved his way to Hollywood, had the pedigree, record of success and literary connections that were necessary for Gurley Brown to reach her ultimate goal. Reading between the lines of Gurley Brown’s life, it is obvious that only marriage to a man like Brown ? “charming, smart, and wealthy” ? would enable her to move up to the level that she thought was her due. As Ms. Scanlon describes it, the Browns “forged a new path by manipulating rather than negating the old norms of masculinity and femininity.” Their marital bargain was simple: He would “support her, unequivocally, in her professional life, and she in turn would serve him, unequivocally, in their domestic world.” She blatantly argued that “men who help women with their careers are sexier than men with flat stomachs, large biceps, and other remarkable assets.”

Their partnership provided a new challenge for David Brown ? overseeing the “planning, writing, editing, marketing, and publication of Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 smash hit, ‘Sex and the Single Girl’.” The girl who advocated female independence was beholden to a man for the work that became the springboard for her fame and fortune. For Gurley Brown, the marriage led to an international platform to promote her fantasy of free sex and her image as the successful career women in total control of her life and future. More important, it gave her a way to get out of the advertising ghetto and into the high-powered New York publishing world.

Granted, Helen Gurley Brown had the talent and style to write a book as phenomenally successful as “Sex and the Single Girl,” but she probably could never have reached the status of a best-selling celebrity author without the very active involvement of David Brown, whose experience and connections gave him the requisite blend of Hollywood glitter and New York publishing savvy.

In 1964, a reporter asked Gurley Brown whether she had changed her mind and decided that “a woman’s priority in life should be to please the man in her life.” Gurley Brown responded that “pleasing your man” is merely being “self-serving” because pleasing a man enables you to get the man and have a happier time and a better marriage. “Man pleasing,” she answered in the interview, “has to do with keeping your relationship desirable and happy, it also has to do with getting a man to commit to you if he hasn’t yet done so.”

How ironic that the queen of sexual liberation ended up in a marriage where both she and her husband were committed to fidelity. It is doubly so that a woman who built her career on warning other women to avoid needing a man ends up realizing that her own happiness depends on getting a certain man to marry her and then making that husband happy. To further compound the irony, Gurley Brown, who wrote extensively about the importance of a woman controlling her own destiny, recognizes her dependence upon her husband for her professional success, just as he comes to realize his dependence upon her for his personal well-being.

More than her passing, we mourn the terrible legacy that Gurley Brown has left behind. Millions of young women have bought into the carefully crafted myth that Helen Gurley and David Brown sold so successfully, promoted so vigorously and found so financially lucrative. (In her retirement, Gurley Brown was receiving a $2 million annual stipend from Cosmo.)

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are 19 million sexually transmitted infections each year ? almost half in people ages 15 to 24. The CDC also reports that more than 65 million people in the United States are living with an incurable sexually transmitted disease (STD). When Gurley Brown started promoting her brand of sexual liberation, there were three STDs. Now, according to a report from my colleague Brenda Zurita at Concerned Women for America, there are 49. The Allan Gutmacher Institute reports more than 1.2 million annual abortions and that from 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions occurred in the United States.

American women are paying a very high price for living the “Cosmo” lifestyle.