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| My hero: Betty Friedan by Lionel Shriver | My hero: Betty Friedan by Lionel Shriver |
| (4 months later) | |
| In 1957, Betty Friedan conducted a survey of her former classmates at a prestigious women's college – 15 years after graduation, mostly married, well-off stay-at-home moms whose college degrees had become mere accessories, like handbags. To Friedan's surprise, these pampered, idle suburbanites were miserable. Thus in The Feminine Mystique (1963), she identified the original "desperate housewife". It's partly thanks to her urging you to get off your butts, ladies, that women in my generation grew up expecting to do more than sit still for pedicures. | In 1957, Betty Friedan conducted a survey of her former classmates at a prestigious women's college – 15 years after graduation, mostly married, well-off stay-at-home moms whose college degrees had become mere accessories, like handbags. To Friedan's surprise, these pampered, idle suburbanites were miserable. Thus in The Feminine Mystique (1963), she identified the original "desperate housewife". It's partly thanks to her urging you to get off your butts, ladies, that women in my generation grew up expecting to do more than sit still for pedicures. |
| Now, I reread The Feminine Mystique recently, and it's frankly a bit of a slog. The style is academic, and the author sometimes indulges in strained hyperbole (comparing the trap of domesticity to a Nazi concentration camp is absurd). But Friedan was more important as an activist and social commentator than as a writer. She kicked off a revolution of which I am personally a beneficiary. | Now, I reread The Feminine Mystique recently, and it's frankly a bit of a slog. The style is academic, and the author sometimes indulges in strained hyperbole (comparing the trap of domesticity to a Nazi concentration camp is absurd). But Friedan was more important as an activist and social commentator than as a writer. She kicked off a revolution of which I am personally a beneficiary. |
| Fifty years on, we've come full circle, and the prospect of spending all day hanging with your kids and baking crumbles – why, actually being home when a delivery arrives from Amazon – would strike many women as the height of luxury. Work doesn't always feel like a privilege, and women sagging against poles in the tube after entering insurance data at a computer for hours on end might dream of the leisure that Friedan's contemporaries found so enervating. Most women work not from yearning for fulfilment, but yearning to pay the mortgage. | Fifty years on, we've come full circle, and the prospect of spending all day hanging with your kids and baking crumbles – why, actually being home when a delivery arrives from Amazon – would strike many women as the height of luxury. Work doesn't always feel like a privilege, and women sagging against poles in the tube after entering insurance data at a computer for hours on end might dream of the leisure that Friedan's contemporaries found so enervating. Most women work not from yearning for fulfilment, but yearning to pay the mortgage. |
| Yet it's worth touching base with The Feminine Mystique, which reminds us not to idolise that bygone life of lie-ins, hairdressing appointments, and a husband who didn't want you to worry your pretty head about that mortgage. Such leisure came at a price: a marriage that was in no way an equal partnership; lassitude, a sense of uselessness and triviality; boredom and the worry that the big events of life were somewhere else while you were replacing the bin liner. The Feminine Mystique goads me to gratitude that, thanks to forerunners like Betty Friedan, I've had the opportunity to pursue a career. And I can still bake a mean crumble. | Yet it's worth touching base with The Feminine Mystique, which reminds us not to idolise that bygone life of lie-ins, hairdressing appointments, and a husband who didn't want you to worry your pretty head about that mortgage. Such leisure came at a price: a marriage that was in no way an equal partnership; lassitude, a sense of uselessness and triviality; boredom and the worry that the big events of life were somewhere else while you were replacing the bin liner. The Feminine Mystique goads me to gratitude that, thanks to forerunners like Betty Friedan, I've had the opportunity to pursue a career. And I can still bake a mean crumble. |
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