Wealth & Money Quote by Helen Gurley Brown

There is a gleeful knife-twist in Helen Gurley Brown’s dismissal of “titular recognition” as the booby prize. Titles are the socially acceptable currency offered to ambitious women: the plaque, the role, the photo-op, the respectability. Brown, who built Cosmopolitan into a cultural engine and made her own notoriety out of women’s desire and self-interest, exposes that bargain for what it is: a pat on the head that keeps the real levers elsewhere.

The line works because it’s blunt in a way women in public life are rarely allowed to be. It refuses the sentimental script where esteem is supposed to substitute for leverage. “Titular” is doing heavy lifting; it’s a word that smells like boardrooms and ceremonial promotions, a way of naming the corporate habit of rewarding image while withholding authority. When she says, “I’ll take money and power,” she’s not confessing greed so much as puncturing the piety around ambition. Brown’s feminism was never about purity. It was about outcomes.

The subtext is a warning to anyone negotiating status inside institutions: prestige is cheap when it isn’t paired with control over budgets, hiring, and direction. In media especially, “Editor-at-large” can be a velvet exile. Brown understood that culture is made by people who can greenlight, pay, and veto. She also understood that women are often taught to crave approval rather than agency. This quote is her choosing agency, and daring you to admit you want it too.