Cosmopolitan (stylized in all caps) is an American quarterly women's fashion and entertainment magazine first published in New York City in March 1886 as a family magazine; it was later transformed into a literary magazine and, since 1965, has become a women's magazine. Cosmopolitan is one of the best-selling magazines.
Formerly titled The Cosmopolitan and often referred to as Cosmo, Cosmopolitan has adapted its style and content. Its current incarnation was originally marketed as a woman's fashion magazine with articles on home, family, and cooking. For some time it focused more on new fiction and written work, which included short stories, novels, and articles. Now it is more targeted towards women's fashion, sports, and modern interests. Eventually, editor-in-chief Helen Gurley Brown changed its attention to more of a women's empowerment magazine. Nowadays, its content includes articles discussing relationships, sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, fashion, horoscopes, and beauty.
Cosmopolitan is published by New York City–based Hearst Communications. The magazine's office is in the Hearst Tower, 300 West 57th Street near Columbus Circle in Manhattan in New York City. Cosmopolitan operates eighteen international editions in Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Middle East, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
International editions previously existed for Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, Central America, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mongolia, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sweden, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam.
History
Cosmopolitan began as a family and women's magazine, first published in New York City in March 1886 by Schlicht & Field of New York as The Cosmopolitan.
Paul Schlicht ("an opportunistic businessman motivated by the dotcom-like magazine mania of the Gilded Age") told his first-issue readers inside of the front cover that his publication was a "first-class family magazine". Adding on, "There will be a department devoted exclusively to the concerns of women, with articles on fashions, on household decoration, on cooking, and the care and management of children. There was also a department for the younger members of the family."
The Cosmopolitan circulation reached 25,000 that year, but by November 1888, Schlicht & Field were no longer in business. In 1889, ownership was acquired by John Brisben Walker, a visionary and eccentric entrepreneur. That same year, he dispatched Elizabeth Bisland on a race around the world against Nellie Bly to draw attention to the magazine. The race between Bisland and Bly was covered by newspapers across the United States. Bly won, but the race achieved the object of giving a boost to circulation of The Cosmopolitan.
Under John Brisben Walker's ownership, E. D. Walker, formerly with Harper's Monthly, took over as the new editor, introducing color illustrations, serials, and book reviews. It became a leading market for fiction, featuring such authors as Annie Besant, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Edith Wharton, and H. G. Wells. The magazine's press run climbed to 100,000 by 1892 and to 300,000 by 1897.
In 1894, Walker and his family moved to Irvington, New York, a village on the shores of the Hudson River that then had many of the wealthiest people in the country as residents. He promptly commissioned the construction of a new headquarters for his now thriving magazine, the Cosmopolitan Building. To this day, the three-story stone Neo-Classical revival building, designed by McKim, Mead & White, remains the largest building in Irvington.
In 1897, Walker (ever "an avid geek and prophetic thinker") came up with a plan for a free correspondence college called Cosmopolitan University, with no charges for students. Cosmopolitan would cover all expenses, requiring only a commitment to a set number of study hours. When 20,000 immediately signed up, Walker could not fund the school, and students were then asked to contribute 20 dollars a year, but the project still failed to survive long-term. Also in 1897, H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds was serialized, as was his The First Men in the Moon (1900). Olive Schreiner contributed a lengthy two-part article about the Boer War in the September and October issues of 1900.
During his tenure as owner of The Cosmopolitan, Walker wrote many articles, essays, and even fiction stories for the magazine, reflecting his diverse and varied personal interests, which ranged from contemporary economic and political issues to aviation and automobiles. In 1904, he published them as a book. Many of his articles promoted a progressive, reformist social agenda. He wrote several articles on the then-President Theodore Roosevelt; the two men corresponded and met several times.
Acquisition by Hearst In 1905, William Randolph Hearst purchased the magazine from John Brisben Walker for a sum variously reported as $400,000 and $1,000,000 and brought in journalist Charles Edward Russell, who contributed a series of investigative articles, including "The Growth of Caste in America" (March 1907), "At the Throat of the Republic" (December 1907–March 1908) and "What Are You Going to Do About It?" (July 1910–January 1911).
Other contributors during this period included O. Henry, A. J. Cronin, Alfred Henry Lewis, Bruno Lessing, Sinclair Lewis, O. O. McIntyre, David Graham Phillips, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, and Ida Tarbell. Jack London's novella, "The Red One", was published in the October 1918 issue (two years after London's death), and a constant presence from 1910 to 1918 was Arthur B. Reeve, with 82 stories featuring Craig Kennedy, the "scientific detective". Magazine illustrators included Francis Attwood, Dean Cornwell, Harrison Fisher, and James Montgomery Flagg.
Hearst formed Cosmopolitan Productions (also known as Cosmopolitan Pictures), a film company based in New York City from 1918 to 1923, then Hollywood until 1938. The vision for this film company was to make films from stories published in the magazine.
Hearst's International Cosmopolitan magazine was officially titled Hearst's International Combined with Cosmopolitan from 1925 until 1952 but was simply referred to as Cosmopolitan. In 1911, Hearst had bought a middling monthly magazine called World To-Day and renamed it Hearst's Magazine in April 1912. In June 1914, it was shortened to Hearst's, and it was ultimately titled Hearst's International in May 1922. To spare serious cutbacks at San Simeon, Hearst merged the magazine Hearst's International with Cosmopolitan effective March 1925. But while the Cosmopolitan title on the cover remained at a typeface of eighty-four points, over time the typeface of Hearst's International decreased to thirty-six points and then to a barely legible twelve points. After Hearst died in 1951, the Hearst's International disappeared from the magazine cover altogether in April 1952.
With a circulation of 1,700,000 in the 1930s, Cosmopolitan had an advertising income of $5,000,000. Emphasizing fiction in the 1940s, it was subtitled The Four-Book Magazine since the first section had one novelette, six or eight short stories, two serials, six to eight articles, and eight or nine special features, while the other three sections featured two novels and a digest of current non-fiction books. During World War II, sales peaked at 2,000,000.
The magazine began to run less fiction during the 1950s. By 1955, the rise of paperbacks and television overshadowed magazines, causing circulation to drop to slightly over a million. The Golden Age of magazines came to an end as mass-market, general-interest publications gave way to special-interest magazines targeting specialized audiences.
Under Helen Gurley Brown
Cosmopolitan's circulation continued to decline for another decade until Helen Gurley Brown became chief editor in 1965 and radically changed the magazine. Brown remodeled and reinvented it as a magazine for modern single career women, completely transforming the magazine into a racy, contentious, and successful magazine. As the editor for 32 years, Brown spent this time using the magazine as an outlet to erase stigma around unmarried women not only having sex but also enjoying it. Known as a "devout feminist", Brown was often attacked by critics due to her progressive views on women and sex. She believed that women were allowed to enjoy sex without shame in all cases. She died in 2012 at the age of 90. Her vision is still evident in the design of the magazine. The magazine eventually adopted a cover format consisting of a usually young female model (or prominent female celebrity), typically in a low-cut dress, bikini, or some other revealing outfit.
The magazine distinguished itself by openly discussing sexuality from the viewpoint that women can and should enjoy sex without guilt. The first issue under Helen Gurley Brown, July 1965, featured an article on the birth control pill, which had gone on the market exactly five years earlier.
This magazine was not Brown's first publication dealing with sexually liberated women. Her 1962 advice book, Sex and the Single Girl, had been a bestseller.Ouellette, Laurie. "Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams". Media, Culture & Society 21 (1999): 361. Retrieved August 19, 2012.Scanlon, Jennifer. "Sensationalist Literature or Expert Advice?". Feminist Media Studies 9:1 (2009): 12. Retrieved February 14, 2010. After the book's release, Brown received a flood of fan mail pleading for her advice on various topics related to women's behavior, sexual encounters, health, and beauty. Brown sent the message that a woman should have men complement her life, not take it over. Enjoying sex without shame was also a message she incorporated in both publications.
In Brown's early years as editor, the magazine received heavy criticism. In 1968 at the feminist Miss America protest, protestors symbolically threw several feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can." These included copies of Cosmopolitan and Playboy magazines. Cosmopolitan also ran a near-nude centerfold of actor Burt Reynolds in April 1972, causing great controversy and attracting much attention. The Latin American edition of Cosmopolitan was launched in March 1973.
In April 1978, a single edition of Cosmopolitan Man was published as a trial, targeted to appeal to men. Its cover featured Jack Nicholson and Aurore Clément. It was published twice in 1989 as a supplement to Cosmopolitan."Men's magazines: an A to Z". . Magforum. Accessed October 27, 2023.
In its January 1988 issue, Cosmopolitan published a feature that suggested women had little reason to be concerned about contracting HIV, despite the fact that the best available medical science indicated otherwise. The piece claimed that unprotected sex with an HIV-positive man did not put women at risk of infection and went on to state that "most heterosexuals are not at risk" and that it was impossible to transmit HIV in the missionary position. This article angered many educated people, including AIDS and gay rights activists. The protests organized in response to the article's publication were turned into a 30-minute documentary titled "Doctors, Liars, and Women: AIDS Activists Say NO to Cosmo" by two members of ACTUP, a New York City-based collective of HIV/AIDS activists.jeancarlomusto.com, actupny.org