The tone of "Blonde Like Me" is women's-magazine cozy and bland. Ilyin seems to be trying to be Helen Gurley Brown, but why not go for the real thing? There is more reality, guts and vigor in two pages of 78-year-old Brown's recent autobiography, "I'm Wild Again," than in Ilyin's whole book -- and you can bet that if Brown had a graduate degree she wouldn't go around ashamed of it. I'd never read any of the magazine publishing doyen's seven previous books and even as an adolescent found Cosmopolitan too embarrassing to pick up. I couldn't imagine wanting to wear the horrible clothes on the cover girl, and then there was the big hair. (It was, I knew even then, a class thing: Cosmo was for secretaries, not professionals.) I assumed Brown was one of those sickly sweet, girly writers who teach father culture -- that is, who teach females how to be women -- powerless, decorative, boring.

I was wrong. "I'm Wild Again" is a loosely threaded web of memoir, advice and observation, but it feels like a cohesive whole because of the strong personality of its author. Brown -- Arkansas born, no college degree, 17 secretarial jobs before she wrote "Sex and the Single Girl" -- is fascinating even pushing 80. To give you an idea of her energy level, she still exercises twice a day, and after a bout with breast cancer, she has begun working on her posture. Self-confident enough to reveal both her flaws and her strengths -- to be, in short, a real person -- she is a far better role model than the tacky covers of Cosmo under her editorship suggested.

For one thing, Brown is as forthright as, well, a man in her comfort with her power and success. (New Yorkers: Read her description of her four-story Central Park West pad, once Mike Nichols', and weep.) For another, she gets straight to the point on all subjects, and like Freud, she thinks love and work are the important ones. The meaty, smart sections of career counsel to young women have the authority of someone who has wielded real power, which is by no means the usual case for women writing advice for women. Brown puts her finger on what I suspect is the real reason for the persistence of the male-female earnings gap, and the relatively small number of women in top positions in the business world, with one of her precepts: "As you climb, don't be afraid success will defeminize you." Advice Ilyin should take for her next book, which might then reflect the abilities she blunts in "Blonde Like Me."

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