Starting -- and hanging in
"How old are you? Twenty-one? Thirty? It doesn't matter -- you need only to have some kind of job somewhere. Then, from that most unillustrious beginning, however young or old you are, you move ever so gradually up, and, if you stay with it, the gradual moving up takes you to the top.
It's true. It doesn't matter where you start, or with what company; what matters is starting -- and hanging in.
May I tell you about my early jobs? They were pitiful, and I was pitiful in them."
I wish I could just excerpt the entirety of the late Helen Gurley Brown's book "Having It All" on my blog -- it's a favorite I have referenced a couple of times in the past -- but I would just entreaty you all to buy it (it's out of print, but I blessedly stumbled upon it at a vintage store a few years back and it seems to be in stock on Amazon still.) She is wonderful, funny, ridiculous, brilliant, and so helpful and woman-centric and instructive and loving -- not to mention how she's instilled into me an respect for the power of italics.
I have to assume that anyone who is deriding Helen Gurley Brown's legacy when it comes to women and feminism (as have some people whose thoughts I otherwise often respect) has not read enough of her work to really understand what she was about. Today's Cosmopolitan has nothing to do with what HGB pioneered.
Anyway. That mouseburger will be sorely missed, and may she rest in peace.
New comment
