Revisiting "The Feminine Mystique"
June 2000
Did Betty Friedan dance around her living room in 1958 saying,
"Move over, Will and Ariel. I'm writing the final chapter in your
History of Civilization for this century!"
Hardly. Totally
unaware she was writing history, Ms. Friedan penned "The Feminine
Mystique" while her toddlers napped. It is one of the 100 most
influential books of the 20th Century.
Living then in
Rockland County, N.Y., she says she was technically a housewife
who couldn't get rid of the itch to do something. She was a graduate
of Smith '42, trained as a psychologist, and a journalist who
lost her newspaper job for being pregnant.
Originally, her
book went out as articles for women's magazines and was rejected
every time, until finally she said, "Gee, I must be crazy."
Everything she
wrote was against what was accepted about women. She was bucking
the establishment and, since no other woman in her suburb worked,
it was like drinking in secret for her to write every morning,
helping to swell the family income and salve that itch.
Part of the feminine
mystique is guilt over not working. When the articles came back
either turned down or rewritten to say the opposite, she knew
she had to write her book.
And I knew I had
to read it. Of course, the last thing that bothered me was guilt
over not working. Betty Friedan was technically a housewife, while
I was technically in the work force -- and feeling lucky at that.
By the time my
peers earned college degrees and got their first entry-level jobs
at corporations, I'd been on the job four years, earning all I
needed for clothes, cosmetics, cocktails, cabs, and socking away
money in my Christmas Club and for a week in Bermuda. Just as
their degrees started to zoom them up the corporate ladder, I
got married. Where pregnancy forced Betty Friedan to leave her
job despite credentials from the finest women's college in America,
I couldn't wait to get pregnant so I could leave.
Since I never
wanted to be anything but wife and mother, I was not surprised
to be where I was, doing what I did. I turned the pages of her
book, sometimes reading a paragraph twice, not because I didn't
understand it but because it spoke directly to me; I wanted to
be sure I heard every word. I was deeply affected by all she said.
For the next week I was quietly contemplative. She broke through
the feminine mystique, giving vision to the women's movement.
Because of that
book, I too broke through enough of the feminine mystique to recognize
symptoms of housewives' fatigue, a malady common to suburban women
too tired to get out of bed after 10 hours sleep and an afternoon
nap. Once we flipped the pages of her book instead of the Yellow
Pages for a new doctor, we were able to treat symptoms appropriately.
Dr. Blake Crider,
a frequent guest on noon television talk shows, told us that if
you arm itches, someone is getting under your skin; if your neck
gets stiff, somebody's on your back. Basically, these symptoms
are not far from what was ailing the housewife, pre Betty Friedan.
I still had no
guilt about not working, but thought I might have had a slightly
longer talk with my high school counselor. I did feel guilty looking
at each of my four children at the time, imagining them erased
from the pages of life. Instantly I felt like George Bailey in
"It's a Wonderful Life." Everything looked the same but some people
weren't there.
No, my plan was
good. My plan was working. I never had a door closed in my face
that I had wanted open. I appreciated the strides being made by
those marching for rights and privileges, yet I felt badly for
what those women might be missing, and for how hard they'd have
to work to have the best of both worlds -- assuming it wouldn't
be second best.
Betty Friedan
had the vision, but others took the ball and ran with it. Amid
disagreement, new wings took flight with her old ideas, and on
many less at issue.
It's easy to get
lost in the abstract and forget the specificities of ordinary
life. I was living one of those ordinary lives, and although I
didn't march for all women, I was active for one woman and one
woman's family. Mine.
There's something
about the intimacy of a book that no other medium can touch. I
believe if every woman read the book and quietly incorporated
its ideas into her family, raising and educating daughters to
expect equality, raising sons to understand that, then woman-by-woman
we'd have marched to exactly where we are now -- without ever
having stopping rocking the cradles that rule the world.
March? How could
we march back then and still greet our husbands at the door draped
in nothing but Saranwrap? That was another book we read: The Total
Woman. Moms around the sandbox kept reading, but our lives overlapped
those of the authors who told us how to live ours. We were younger
than Betty but older than the perky little blonde telling us to
draw a jello bath for our lords and masters. After we checked
the cellulite and varicose veins, we opted to offer a double martini
in a chilled glass and bag the Saranwrap.
Wherever we were
then -- around a sandbox or marching down Main Street -- we're
all in the same place now. Our ducks are in a row and swimming
in parallel lines, with grandchildren taking up the rear.
Six years ago,
Betty Friedan wrote "The Fountain of Age," prompting Brian Lamb,
Booknote moderator on Cable Network's C-SPAN to ask her about
the title,
"'The Feminine
Mystique' was a breaking through of the media image of women,
and 'The Fountain of Age' is in another way, men and women," she
said.
She admires and
writes about Norman Lear, Jonas Salk and Hugh Hefner. "When people
get older, they change the way they think about things," she writes.
Once more, I pondered
what she was saying to Lamb, because she was speaking to me: "They
don't care much what other people think. You can see it in their
faces as sort of a -- well, I really recognize it. I recognize
it when a woman reaches that point. Suddenly there's a new serenity
and assurance and a radiance in her face."
Ms. Friedan became
radiant as she spoke. I know exactly what she means because I
know exactly who I am. I am comfortable within myself; without
her, I might have missed the moment.
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