Its current incarnation was originally marketed as a woman's fashion magazine with articles on home, family, and cooking.

[5] Nowadays, its content includes articles discussing relationships, sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, fashion, horoscopes, and beauty.

[6] Cosmopolitan has 21 international editions in Australia, China, Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Middle East, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Slovenia, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

International editions previously existed for Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Central America, Chile, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mongolia, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, South Africa and Vietnam.

[7] Paul Schlicht told his first-issue readers inside of the front cover that his publication was a "first-class family magazine".

Adding on, "There will be a department devoted exclusively to the concerns of women, with articles on fashions, on household decoration, on cooking, and the care and management of children.

It became a leading market for fiction, featuring such authors as Annie Besant, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Edith Wharton, and H. G.

[34] Magazine illustrators included Francis Attwood, Dean Cornwell, Harrison Fisher, and James Montgomery Flagg.

[37] Cosmopolitan's circulation continued to decline for another decade until Helen Gurley Brown became chief editor in 1965[38] and radically changed the magazine.

As the editor for 32 years, Brown spent this time using the magazine as an outlet to erase stigma around unmarried women not only having sex, but also enjoying it.

The magazine set itself apart by frankly discussing sexuality from the point of view that women could and should enjoy sex without guilt.

The first issue under Helen Gurley Brown, July 1965,[43] featured an article on the birth control pill,[40] which had gone on the market exactly five years earlier.

[46][47] Fan mail begging for Brown's advice on many subjects concerning women's behavior, sexual encounters, health, and beauty flooded her after the book was released.

In 1968 at the feminist Miss America protest, protestors symbolically threw a number of feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can".

[49] Cosmopolitan also ran a near-nude centerfold of actor Burt Reynolds in April 1972, causing great controversy and attracting much attention.

[51] In its January 1988 issue, Cosmopolitan ran a feature claiming that women had almost no reason to worry about contracting HIV long after the best available medical science indicated otherwise.

The magazine has also featured a section called "Ask Him Anything", where a male writer answers readers' questions about men and dating.

In 2000, the grocery chain Kroger, at the time the second largest in the US after Walmart, began covering up Cosmopolitan at checkout stands because of complaints about sexually inappropriate headlines.

[63] In October 2018, Bauer Media Group announced that after 45 years, publication of the Australian edition of Cosmopolitan would stop due to the commercial viability of the magazine no longer being sustainable.

[64] In March 2022 the Russian edition, Cosmopolitan Russia, changed its title to Voice after Hearst revoked its affiliation following the invasion of Ukraine.

Editor of Cosmopolitan Farrah Storr called the cover choice a bold stance in favor of body positivity.

In 2011, Russell Brand received the magazine's Fun, Fearless Male of the Year Award, joining Kellan Lutz and Paul Wesley (2010), John Mayer (2008), Nick Lachey (2007), Patrick Dempsey (2006), Josh Duhamel (2005), Matthew Perry (2004), and Jon Bon Jovi (2003).

The Fun, Fearless Female of the Year award was awarded to Kayla Itsines (2015), Nicole Scherzinger (2012), Mila Kunis (2011), Anna Faris (2010), Ali Larter (2009), Katherine Heigl (2008), Eva Mendes (2007), Beyoncé (2006), Ashlee Simpson (2005), Alicia Silverstone (2004), Sandra Bullock (2003), Britney Spears (2002), Debra Messing (2001), Jennifer Love Hewitt (2000), Shania Twain (1999), and Ashley Judd (1998).

A team of Cosmopolitan editors then selects the Bachelor of the Year, who is announced at an annual party and media event in New York.

The awards attracted more than 15,000 entries and winning and highly commended blogs were voted for in several categories including beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and celebrity.

Named 'Cosmopolitan, The Fragrance', the perfume takes on the notion of their much-loved phrase 'Fun, Fearless Female' and was set to launch in September.

In 1906, William Randolph Hearst hired David Graham Phillips to write a series of articles entitled "The Treason of the Senate".

Hearst, the founder of an evangelical Colorado church called Praise Him Ministries,[85] states that "the magazine promotes a lifestyle that can be dangerous to women's emotional and physical well being.

[92] It continued publication until December 2018 when the licence holder Bauer Media axed the title, stating that it was no longer commercially viable.