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Blonde Like Me: The Roots of the Blonde Myth in Our Culture By Natalia Ilyin Touchstone, 188 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com I'm Wild Again: Snippets From My Life and a Few Brazen Thoughts By Helen Gurley Brown St. Martin's Press, 288 pages Nonfiction Buy this book at B&N.com

I was wrong. "I'm Wild Again" is a loosely threaded web of memoir, advice and observation, but it feels like a cohesive whole because of the strong personality of its author. Brown -- Arkansas born, no college degree, 17 secretarial jobs before she wrote "Sex and the Single Girl" -- is fascinating even pushing 80. To give you an idea of her energy level, she still exercises twice a day, and after a bout with breast cancer, she has begun working on her posture. Self-confident enough to reveal both her flaws and her strengths -- to be, in short, a real person -- she is a far better role model than the tacky covers of Cosmo under her editorship suggested.

For one thing, Brown is as forthright as, well, a man in her comfort with her power and success. (New Yorkers: Read her description of her four-story Central Park West pad, once Mike Nichols', and weep.) For another, she gets straight to the point on all subjects, and like Freud, she thinks love and work are the important ones. The meaty, smart sections of career counsel to young women have the authority of someone who has wielded real power, which is by no means the usual case for women writing advice for women. Brown puts her finger on what I suspect is the real reason for the persistence of the male-female earnings gap, and the relatively small number of women in top positions in the business world, with one of her precepts: "As you climb, don't be afraid success will defeminize you." Advice Ilyin should take for her next book, which might then reflect the abilities she blunts in "Blonde Like Me."
salon.com | March 24, 2000

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