Working Girl Wednesdays: “Sex at High Noon!”

Welcome to Working Girl Wednesdays! Need advice on handling the complexities of the modern workplace? Well, fret no more! Whether it’s a senior partner making a move or a catty co-worker plotting for your plum position, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book Sex and the Office has a solution. Every Wednesday on Glossed Over, I’ll present a new tip from the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan. Is her advice utterly ridiculous or startlingly prescient? You decide!

In the second of three consecutive chapters about the midday meal, “Lunchland II: Boys and Girls Together,” HGB explains the allure of dining with the opposite sex.

What about the lunches girls have with boys? They’re the greatest! Think about it. Lunching with men is a chance to have dates in the daytime on the pretext of business…and to have a whack at men who might not think of asking you—or be able to ask you—to dinner. Looking at it realistically, business lunch dates with men are sex at high noon!

One little girl can have lunch with six big men and keep them all to herself for two full hours. Just try taking that many to a cocktail party—if you could find them. They’d be sniped at and made off with within seconds.

Once at the luncheon I’d plan just to be pretty and sweet and happy and content but not scintillating. To scintillate isn’t necessary. They’d rather have you be a girl than try to come on like Jacques Barzun.

Right! Because it’s all about what the man wants. No, really. HGB explains:

My friend Ruth, who didn’t invent the system but is awfully good at it, says you must listen with all your pores open during those first few minutes to see if you can glean what shape he’s in. He may not actually tell you what’s happened to him the first instant, but you must be prepared to go along with his mood. Any wife can detect a husband-mood practically from the way he opens the door. She learns not to be happy if he’s miserable and to break out the champagne if he closed a deal even if she’s just picked herself up from falling down a flight of stairs.

Next week: she’s still talking about lunch. But this time, she’s talking about a “very special” kind of lunch break, if you know what I mean. Wink. Nudge.

Comments

[Citronella]

So in the end it's all about finding a husband and being a good little wifey, right?

Riiiight.

[Athena]

I love the way HGB always refers to women as "girls" but men are always men. Also, it never occurred to me that I was supposed to be listening with all my pores open, as if I could just open and close them on a whim. I'll have to practice that one. Seriously, where did this woman come from?

[Becca]

I would think listening with all of your pores open would be rather revolting for the speaker. But that's probably why I just go out to lunch, and not on lunch "dates". Yeesh. She's so nutty!

[laylaness]

"One little girl can have lunch with six big men and keep them all to herself for two full hours."

That made me throw up a little.

HGB: The bastion of feminism.