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Authors: Helen Gurley Brown

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I’m sure you do many constructive things in eventless periods already, like washing walls and having friends over for meat loaf, but I was thinking of something a little more ambitious. Laura decided to read when things were dull. She tackled Clifton Fadiman’s recommended list of books and was still going strong a year later when she met a fascinating Englishman, followed him to London and married him. She acknowledges that year alone as the most intellectually rewarding of her life and thinks it
may
have helped her bag Hilary, a reader himself. Betty took up oil painting, without ever having drawn a line in her life, and it has transformed her previously dull weekends into a Gauguin-like fiesta.

A single woman’s life is
not
particularly orderly. You have to catch as catch can … the riotous living when it’s offered, the quiet when there’s nothing else.

In a World War II book,
The Battle Is the Payoff
(Harcourt, Brace), war correspondent Ralph Ingersoll said that the early rugged training of the G.I.—the toughening of muscle, sleeping out in the rain, walking ten miles under a thirty-pound pack—although drudgery, was often the difference between life and death for a foot soldier when he got into battle. Five fewer obstacle courses run might have kept him from making the foxhole when he jumped for it.

I believe the same principle applies to single women. The unglittery, unglamorous, sound-pitiful-when-you-tell-anybody-about-them things you do when you’re alone can be the difference between an interesting job assignment or a love affair with a fabulous man and getting absolutely passed over by both. (I’m convinced a fluent knowledge of French can make you more enchanting to a Frenchman.)

One night several years ago nearly all the girls in my office were invited to a shower. Except me. Ordinarily a shower is something to bless your stars for
not
being invited to, but have you ever been the
only
one who wasn’t? I think I had offended the hostess by saying I wouldn’t care to go bar-hopping with her some Saturday night, and she took it to mean I didn’t like the company of women ever. Anyway, as everybody filed out of the office with presents under their arms, I felt like the blackballed freshman of the year. Partly for revenge (which isn’t a bad motive for getting things done!), partly from the lonely fidgets, and possibly because one of my best girl friends had won the contest the previous year and envy had nearly unhinged me, I stayed at my typewriter and started to fill out the questionnaire for
Glamour
Magazine’s “Ten Girls with Taste” contest.

It took about three hours.

Three month’s later the magazine telephoned to say I was one of the twenty finalists (out of 40,000 entrants) and to ask me to come to New York. Eventually I was one of the ten winners. The contest changed my life. It strengthened my boss’ conviction that I could write, and he let me try advertising copy almost immediately, bringing about the blissful end of a secretarial career. I spent three great weeks in Honolulu in a glamorous wardrobe from Joseph Magnin. It was all quite princessy for a while, but it started with loneliness, a Remington with a new ribbon and lots of hours to kill.

Of course, I am a Goody-Two-Shoes as well as a coward! I’m scared most of the time that whatever it
is
out there is going to catch me … or, as an advertising man once wrote of his daily commuter-train thoughts, “Perhaps this is the day they’ll
find me out
… how untalented, how inadequate I really am.” I personally work like a beast, so “they” won’t find out and “it” won’t catch up!

You may not need to work so compulsively.

I know that everybody is always tugging at you to shuck off your slob suit, to be as dynamic as Ethel Merman, as well-adjusted as Lassie, to learn Portuguese, cook with seaweed, embrace Yoga, know Shakespeare. At the very least you must sandpaper your calloused heels and organize your closets.

If you worked hard enough to achieve one-tenth of these things, you’d have calluses on
everything.

It’s my opinion that people writing “onward and upward” books (like this one) get carried away because as long as they’re giving advice they don’t have to
do
anything. You ought to see
my
closets!

There are acres of days when you don’t
feel
like doing a bloody thing but sitting stolidly on your fanny. That’s okay. You can also start lots of things you don’t finish. That’s okay too. Tennessee Williams has a wonderful line in
Camino Real:
“Make voyages. Attempt them. That’s all there is.” (See, he
can
be constructive.)

You can fall on your face with some of the projects you
do
finish. (Having that scavenger hunt for grownups wasn’t such a hot idea, as it turned out.)

But if you are worried about being single, or, more importantly, uneasy about being
you
all your life (as I was and still am), intermittent forays into dressing, cooking, looking, flirting, and flattering better can help you rout the trembles. One last thought: When you
do
start on new projects, don’t tell anyone. Once you’ve talked and bragged about your I’m-doing-me-over plans, you won’t
do
them!

Finally

You may marry or you may not. In today’s world that is no longer the big question for women. Those who glom on to men so that they can collapse with relief, spend the rest of their days shining up their status symbol and figure they never have to reach, stretch, learn, grow, face dragons or make a living again are the ones to be pitied. They, in my opinion, are the unfulfilled ones.

You, my friend, if you work at it, can be envied the rich, full life possible for the single woman today. It’s a good show … enjoy it from wherever you are, whether it’s two in the balcony or one on the aisle—don’t miss
any
of it.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge with deep gratitude the generous contributions to this book made by: Cleo Bryan, Mary Alford, Alice Belding, John Clerc-Scott, Charles and Drisa Cooke, Saul David, Marilyn Hart, Pamela Hedley, William Hoy of the Pickwick Book Shop, Tom Jones, Charlotte Kelly, Mary Louise Lau, Arthur Pesterre, Noreen Sulmeyer, and Dr. George Watson.

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cover design by Andrea C. Uva

978-1-4532-5584-1

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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