"Remember ladies, be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands, but put yourself in his hands instead. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could, it is up to us to distract them from the realities of life."
-Abigail Adams, Cosmo's "237 Ways to Please Your Founding Father", 1769Today, Helen Gurley Brown is praised as the founder of the ever-so-scandalous Cosmopolitan magazine. Though Brown spear-headed the project of taking Cosmo to the masses, she was hardly the first woman in history to push the boundaries of female sexuality with a written publication. If you want to know the real origins of today's most popular woman's magazine, you'll have to look much further back in history than the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s - that was nothing compared to 1764, the year Abigail and John started the
Abby and John were essentially the hot, young power couple of the Founding Father crew. They had it all: a charming lot of youngsters (including John Quincy, 6th President of the United States), a beautiful home in the 'burbs, well-paying jobs, and to top it all off, a fairytale marriage that made Martha Jefferson green with envy ("Tom never looks at me the way [John] looks at Abby", from Second to Sally, an autobiography). And what was the secret to such a perfect relationship? Well, Cosmo has been telling us for years and will keep telling us as long as we continue to impulsively grab that $3.95 issue in the check-out line. That's right, ladies, you've been reading the words of Abigail Adams all this time. Don't let the editors of Cosmo tell you that some trendy love doctor came up with "82 New Ways To Spice Up Your Love Life " or the "Which Sex In The City Character Are You?" Quiz. Rather, those are the wise words of Abigail Adams, passed down through the centuries. And who wrote the "Advice from Guys" column? You guessed it: John Adams himself, with the help of GDubs, TJ, J.Mad, and Monbroeski, of course.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Adams was well ahead of her times when she started Colonialpolitan. She knew the conservatism of her day would not allow for such a magazine to be mass produced. Thus, she drafted one issue of the magazine that she shared with her fellow Founding Mothers. On her death bed, she charged her eldest daughter "Nabby" with passing down her tried and true relationship secrets to the next generation. Little did she know that her secrets would be reworded and retitled thousands of times over to create every issue of Cosmopolitan.
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