Book reviews: new non-fiction by Sue Ellen Browder, Dawn Casey-Rowe and Mary-Louise Parker
Browder reveals the confusion at the heart of Cosmopolitan magazine, Casey-Rowe has an eye-opening account of life at the chalk-face, while Parker writes letters to men who’ve made an impact on her life
by Sue Ellen Browder
Ignatius Press (e-book)
Women who counted on Cosmopolitan magazine for bedroom secrets will find this book especially interesting. Written by a former Cosmo writer, it shows how the sexual liberation promoted by the publication led to confused messages about women, work, sex, marriage and relationships. American Sue Ellen Browder aspired to be an investigative journalist yet ended up making up fantasy women for the magazine. “I told lie upon lie to sell the casual-sex lifestyle to millions of single, working women,” she admits. In Subverted, she explains how she “helped the sexual revolution hijack the women’s movement”, showing how issues that concerned feminists such as Betty Friedan (equal opportunity for women in education and the workplace) ended up linking hands with “liberation” of the kind that celebrated sex with no strings attached, contraception and the right to abortion. Browder writes that at the time she was spreading the Cosmo message, she didn’t realise the work by propagandists in having the women’s movement and the sexual revolution join forces. The book, which starts strongly but falters towards the end, also chronicles her conversion to Catholicism, her marriage and an abortion that shakes her and her husband long after the act.
by Dawn Casey-Rowe
