Laying the Groundwork: Grace Metalious and Helen Gurley Brown

With Peyton Place, author Grace Metalious began to create an active female readership  for sexually suggestive if not explicit reading material. Six years later, the cautious but devoted readers of Peyton Place were ready for direct advice about sex, which they got in Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl. This discussion will explore how these two examples of postwar popular literature can be used productively, and together, in the classroom.