"You need an apartment alone even if it's over a garage," declared Helen Gurley Brown in her 1962 bestseller "Sex and the Single Girl". To Brown, who went on to edit Cosmopolitan magazine, the benefits of solo living were innumerable: it afforded the space to cultivate the self, furnish the mind, work late and indulge in sexual experimentation. Young women should enjoy their best years without a husband, she advised, as this not only laid the foundation for stronger marriages but also gave them a lifestyle to fall back on in case they found themselves alone again.
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