In the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Kate Hudson plays a spunky journalist who works for Composure, "the fastest growing woman's magazine in the country." Hudson's character and her coworkers gather information about woman's desires and interest in order to sell magazines. Hudson's character Andie Anderson writes a column about the problems of dating. Her inspiration is her friend who keeps getting dumped. Andie helps her friend by dating a guy and driving him away with the mistakes many women make while being in a relationship.
The events in this movie are similar to classic headlines found in many Cosmopolitan magazines. Laura Ouellette, in her article Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams, discusses the phenomenon of woman's periodicals. Helen Gurley Brown is the founder of Cosmopolitan Magazine and author of the bestselling book Sex and the Single Girl. This book "sold more than two million copies in three weeks" (Dines 118). Her target audience is single women. She writes for the woman who wants to know how to be beautiful and have relations with men. Many have criticized her for promoting twenty-first century prostitution. Female sexuality has exploded since the publication of her book. Between her novels, magazines, and countless authors who have mimicked her genre, women have defied their inhibitions of sexual relations with men who are not their husbands. When the bold, capitalized headlines posted on the monthly Cosmopolitan magazine proclaim the latest sex tricks, it is no wonder women have been less timid to explore their sexuality. The sanctity of sex in marriage has been slid to the back burner for a light simmer while promiscuous relations are at a rolling boil.
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