that's helen gurley brown, woman who created essentially a publishing empire, right, all by herself. >> she said, ¡'i always knew that i wanted to marry money." and in fact, she did. but, she ended up becoming money. >> reporter: it all started with her 1962 mega-seller, "sex and the single girl." >> the book was a how-to on how to be just like me, how to be helen gurley brown: how to be thin, most important; how to be young forever. how to be sexy always under all conditions in any circumstance. >> reporter: and that's what she sold to turn around the then- failing cosmopolitan. so what does she tell her readers to eat or not to eat? >> cosmopolitan was full of food stories, and there was two kinds. "here is a classy little buffet dinner you can make for your friends," and it would be a bunch of recipes not that different from what you'd find in any other magazine. then, there would be dieting stories, each more crazed than the last, and all of them packed with diet pills and chemical sweeteners. she once said, 'i think maybe you have to have a little touch of anorexia to be really