Once again, her instincts may be serving her well. Circulation is down to 2.5 million after peaking more than a decade ago. Maybe that cover girl, once an icon with her gift-wrapped bosom and lipsticky pout, is starting to look a little quaint by now. And while there’s been some effort to put a ’90s spin on a ’60s breakthrough (“Cosmo Goes Online to Ask Women What They Want in Bed”), the magazine still hesitates to admit there might be an icky side to its favorite subject. Sexual harassment? Sure, it happens, but there’s so much overreaction. “When I was a working girl,” Brown says, “I’d say, “Joe, I think you’re terrific … but you mustn’t put your hands down my dress’.” AIDS? Cosmo has published only three articles on the subject. “I can’t speak for all Cosmo girls, [but] most of those situations don’t exist in their lives,” she explains.
Brown will spend the next year and a half training her successor, Bonnie Fuller, 39, editor in chief of Marie Claire. Fuller sees nothing peculiar about a transition nine times longer than the one between U.S. presidents. “Those are very big shoes to fill,” she says. Meanwhile, retirement is nowhere in sight for Brown. After Fuller’s ascension, Brown will become editor in chief of Cosmopolitan’s 27 editions around the world, an empire scheduled to grow to 50 editions by the year 2000. “My work really definitely is me,” says Brown. “And for me, work is chloroform.” Right. Nighty-night, then.
