Helen Gurley Brown

Today Tuesday August 14, 2012 the AWOD is Helen Gurley Brown born February 18, 1922 and passed yesterday August 13, 2012 at the ripe old age of 90. She was an American author, publisher, businesswoman and was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years. She wrote “Sex and the Single Girl” which at the time was taboo to discuss the fact that single women had SEX let alone the fact that they actually may have enjoyed it! As the editor-in-chief of Cosmo she informed women on how they too could enjoy this thing called sex, it wasn’t just for the mans pleasure anymore.



Here then are some of Gurley Brown's wisest, funniest and most outrageous quotes.

Helen on money:

“Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.”

Helen on being bad:

“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”

Helen on vanity:

“One of the paramount reasons for staying attractive is so you can have somebody to go to bed with.”

Helen on humble beginnings:

“Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.”

Helen on having it all:

“The message was: So you're single. You can still have sex. You can have a great life. And if you marry, don't just sponge off a man or be the gold-medal-winning mother. Don't use men to get what you want in life - - get it for yourself.”

Helen on feminism:

“Cosmo is feminist in that we believe women are just as smart and capable as men and can achieve anything they want. But it also acknowledges that while work is important, men are, too. The Cosmo girl absolutely loves men!”

Helen on listening:

“Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody.”

Helen on her wilder side:

“I was mousy on the outside but inside I'm this tiger and I have to get on with it.”

Helen on husbands:

"Marry a decent, good, kind person who will cherish you."

Helen on sex:

"If only one of you is in the mood, do it. Even if sex isn’t great every time, it's a unique form of communication and togetherness that can help you stay together with a good degree of contentment."

Helen on success:

“I hope I have convinced you—the only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren’t is the willingness to work very, very hard.”



Here is a great article about her in the NY times…no matter what women may have thought about her, she was bold and groundbreaking for sure.

Mary Katherine Goddard

Today’s Awesome Woman of the Day is Mary Katherine Goddard (1738-1816) printer, newspaper publisher, and postmaster. Mary Katherine Goddard was a pioneer among women in Baltimore town in the era of the American Revolution. She was a newspaper editor determined to publish the truth as well as a fighter for the right of women to pursue a career.

She was born on June 16, 1738, in either Groton or New London, Connecticut, in the British Colonies in North America and she grew up in New London. She was the daughter of Dr. Giles Goddard and Sarah Updike Goddard, a woman unusually well educated for that era. Dr. Goddard was the postmaster of New London, explaining why son William and daughter Mary Katherine also had lifelong involvement with the postal system. After her father died in 1762, Mary moved with her mother to Providence, Rhode Island, to help her brother, William, run a printing office. This is also where both mother and daughter began their careers as printers.

In 1765, William moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to open another printing shop, while Mary and her mother remained in Providence to operate the business by themselves. In 1766, they started publishing the Providence Gazette and they issued the West's Almanack. Then, in 1768, they sold the business and joined William in Philadelphia where Mary helped her brother in publishing the Pennsylvania Chronicle.

In 1773, William moved yet again to set up another printing shop in Baltimore, Maryland, while Mary continued operating the business in Pennsylvania before selling it in 1774. Mary joined her brother in Baltimore and took over the operations in the publishing of the Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser, Baltimore's first newspaper. The paper gave Baltimoreans their first taste of a local newspaper. It charmed, informed, and educated. Among the best newspapers in the colonies, its entertainment and educational content were typified by the motto the Goddards adopted--a Latin couplet by Horace, which translated meant: "He carries every point who blends the useful with the agreeable, amusing the reader while he instructs him."

The May 10, 1775 issue of the Maryland Journal made official what had been in practice for over a year when the colophon was changed to read, “Published by M. K. Goddard.” Mary Katherine proved to be a steady, impersonal newspaper editor and during the Revolution she was usually Baltimore’s only printer. On July 12, 1775, the Journal printed a three-column account of the Battle of Bunker Hill less than a month after it happened. Apparently it was a scoop at the time. From her press, in January 1777, came the first printed copy of the Declaration of Independence to include the names of the signers. Mary Katherine Goddard was also responsible for issuing several Almanacs, while in Baltimore, which now hold a place in the Maryland Historical Society. Then in 1784, following an argument with her brother, Mary Goddard left the printing and publishing business.

In 1775, Mary Katherine became postmaster of Baltimore, probably the first woman so appointed in the colonies, and certainly the only one to hold so important a post after the Declaration of Independence. She continued in the office for fourteen years until in October 1789 when, much against her will, she was relieved on the ground that someone was needed who could visit and superintend the Southern department of the postal system. The authorities believed that this responsibility involved more traveling than a woman could manage. The esteem in which Goddard was held is revealed by the fact that over two hundred of the leading businessmen of Baltimore endorsed her petition to the Postmaster General to retain her position. Remaining in Baltimore, she continued to operate, until 1809 or 1810, the bookshop she had begun as an adjunct of the printing business.

Because Mary Katherine did not engage in public controversies but remained an impersonal editor, there are few statements that reflect her personal point of view. Her brother described her as, “an expert and correct compositor of types,” and respect for her abilities as a postmaster is shown in letters by such diverse people as Ebenezer Hazard and Thomas Jefferson.

Mary Katherine Goddard was a successful businessperson of the eighteenth century who turned enterprises begun by her undependable brother into financial successes. She was the most acclaimed female publisher during the American Revolution. Her reputation for quality work spread far beyond the cities where her newspapers were produced. In the end, she was forced to live in near-poverty when she lost her government job because of limitations set on women of her day.

Mary Katherine Goddard died on August 12,1816, at the age of 78, a woman of achievement who had taken an important stand for freedom of speech and the rights of women in the young United States.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womensfirsts1.html#ixzz1aTj77Oqo

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/goddard-mk.html

http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/womenshall/html/goddard.html

http://www.baltimoremd.com/monuments/goddard.html

Jane Pratt

Today's Awesome Woman is Jane Pratt. Why is Pratt so friggin’ awesome? She’s the founder of Sassy magazine, the sort of prototype for all subsequent ballsy, political, gay-friendly, chick mags. “Alternative” is the word we used back in the day. Writes Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon:

Yet while Pratt's name may not be immediately recognizable, her influence is everywhere, in the lively, unapologetically feminism-powered prose of Jezebel and a slew of imitators. What made Sassy, and later, its grown-up sequel, the inevitably named Jane, unique in their days was their intimate, conversational tone. Sassy and Jane didn't dole out authoritative tips on how to make a guy like you or why that skirt makes you look fat. They didn't sound like magazines whose contents were entirely dreamed up by Vassar girls bunkered in the Conde Nast building with no idea of what real girls were wearing and listening to and talking about on the street right below. They spoke to females in the voice of friends. They were infectiously enthusiastic and unabashedly snarky. They said that stuff sucked, right on the coverlines. It was goddamn revolutionary.

It WAS goddamn revolutionary. Magazine stands are still full of “women's’” magazines filled with drivel geared toward the diet-obsessed, dimwitted, creatively stunted, sexually immature creatures they consider grown women to be. F that, man. Viva, Jane!

Pratt’s just started a new online mag xojane and I’ll be curious to see where she takes it. You can check it out at www.xojane.com.

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Nadia Al-Sakkaf

Today's Awesome Woman is Nadia Al-Sakkaf, a Yemeni woman who, in 2005 after her father was murdered, took over as editor and publisher of the Yemen Times, the country's  first and most widely read independent English-language newspaper. As painfully demonstrated by her father's fate, this position in the ongoing political protest in Yemen -- protest that was first started by a woman -- entails extreme risk. But Al-Sakkaf does not stop at publishing a newspaper that dares to report on government oppression and violence, she also actively initiates and supports efforts aimed at improving the lives of Yemeni women. And she uses her newspaper as a platform for activism.

Al-Sakkaf travels out of country on the conference and speaker circuit and, while she could easily obtain residency in any number of Western countries, she returns to her homeland to continue upholding the principles of free speech and to advocate for women and others. While she was in Washington, D.C. in March, 2011 she was interviewed by Judy Woodruff of PBS.

Yemen today is in a very unique situation. The process was started by a woman and a number of women. And, alongside with men, they managed to lobby the students in the streets.

And the women are also part of the support group of these protesters. They bring them food and blankets. And they -- I have seen a woman throwing hot water on soldiers when they were trying to attack the protesters from her window.

So, we need not forget the role of women in this magnificent time of Yemen.

Al-Sakkaf was the very first recipient of the Gibran Tueni award bestowed annually by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) for, "attachment to freedom of the press, courage, leadership, ambition, and high managerial and professional standards."   Indeed, she has become a strong voice in the call for the Arab media to mind its own store rather than merely complain about the international press, to balance its coverage, to play the critical role that no one but the press can play in a fair-minded society, and to improve its pitiful record at reporting on the many human rights abuses -- both political oppression and the traditional practices that victimize women.

From the WAN page where Al-Sakkaf's 2006 award is documented:

She considers the Yemen Times to be a newspaper with a mission: it should not only criticise the government but also furnish solutions. Editorially, she focuses on raising the newspaper's general standards, with a strong focus on human rights, gender issues and women's rights....

Ms Al-Saqqaf has made it a priority to raise the professional standards of the journalists working at the newspaper and to improve the competence of female journalists in Yemen. Legal education is among upcoming projects for the staff, as well as training in how to report on scientific developments.

In her biting article, "Arab media: To lead or to follow?" posted on the Arab Media Community web site in 2008, Al-Sakkaf wonders why her newspaper was the only one in Yemen to take up the case of Nujood Ali, the 10-year-old girl who fought her way out of a marriage to a man more than three times her age, until it became a huge story in the Western media. And she never misses a chance to encourage women to become full partners in Yemeni public life, and to exercise their voices via the media. When she received the Tueni award she said, "This is recognition of Yemeni journalists generally and especially Yemeni women working in the media. This should encourage them to grow and not give up."

This month, Al-Sakkaf spoke at TEDGlobal. "How did you, then, make the decision and assume the responsibility of running a newspaper -- especially in such times of conflict?" asks the interviewer.

"Well, let me first warn you that I am not the traditional Yemeni girl."

Nadia, you can say that again. You are not the "traditional girl" anywhere!




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