LOS ANGELES—Cynthia Heimel, a pioneering author and writer whose 1983 book Sex Tips For Girls inspired a generation of young women to think and speak about—and have—sex more freely and with a healthy sense of humor, died in Los Angeles on February 25 at the age of 70. Born Cynthia Glick on July 13, 1947, in Philadelphia, Heimel’s writings both in her books and in her work as a sex columnist for The Village Voice, Playboy and other magazines, is seen as “revolutionary” in changing attitudes toward sex on the part of American women.
Heimel “taught so many of us women who came up after her to talk about sex without shame,” feminist publisher Anna March told The Washington Post.
“We don’t always stop to think about how revolutionary that was, but 30 years ago when I was 18, it sure was.”
“When I read Heimel's work for the first time, it upended what I believed, with my still very limited experience, sex was—and confirmed what I hoped it could be,” wrote author Mary Elizabeth Williams on Tuesday. “Heimel advised ladies, frankly, to ‘enjoy sex’—a concept that is still revelatory.”
According to a New York Times obituary for Heimel—who called herself a “card carrying hippie—her humorous, personal and blunt writing about women and sex paved the way for later writers such as Candace Bushnell, who created her own cultural watershed with Sex and the City.
In fact, Heimel—whose landmark 1983 first book was comprised largely of her Village Voice sex columns—considered herself a humorist rather than an expert on matters of sexuality.
“I was thinking, ‘O.K., I have to write cleanly,’ and so I made it all jaunty and cheerful and made sure not to be slimy or weird and not salacious,” she said, describing her writing in Sex Tips For Girls. “It was sort of like nursery school writing.”
In 1986, she adapted Sex Tips For Girls and its follow-up book, But Enough About You, into a successful Off-Broadway play, A Girl’s Guide To Chaos. The play consisted largely of four female characters having frank and funny discussions about sex, presaging Sex and the City and its imitators.
The play also earned her a favorable comparison to legendary writer and humorist Dorothy Parker—another woman considered well ahead of her time (albeit six decades before Heimel) when it came to discussing sexual topics—from New York Times critic Stephen Holden, who called Heimel “an urban romantic with a scathing X-ray vision that penetrates her most deeply cherished fantasies.”
She also wrote for Playboy magazine, describing herself as “holding high her feminist credentials amongst the stampeding bunnies.”
In 2002, nearly two decades after the publication of her groundbreaking debut book and at the age of 55, Heimel published its sequel, Advanced Sex Tips For Girls: This Time It’s Personal. According to one review, despite the 19-year gap, in the sequel “the beleaguered humorist’s sex life is not all that much better.”
Heimel herself said that while she considered her first book a “how-to manual” about sex, “the second one is kind of a 'why' manual. Once you tell people how to give blow jobs, there's not much else to say. The first book was kind of ‘Don't be nervous, here's how to give a blow job.’”
The 2002 book turned out to the last of the seven she would publish in her lifetime. She also wrote for the television comedy shows Dear John and Kate & Allie, but her Hollywood experience nearly caused her to become an alcoholic, she said.
Heimel had been diagnosed with dementia about one year ago, and according to her family, she passed away from complications of the disease. She also spoke openly during her lifetime about her longtime struggle with depression.
