The Feminine Mystique was first published in February 1963.
If you're young, or you've never read Friedan's book, it’s hard to remember how far then women had to go to achieve equality in 1963. Life on the domestic front—the only front that supposedly mattered—was actually getting better. The average housewife fifty years ago owned an automatic washing machine and perhaps even a clothes dryer. She had an electric can-opener on her kitchen counter and a garbage disposal in her sink. If she was rich she might have an automatic dish washer. Wrinkle-free synthetic fabrics had taken the “iron” out of “ironing day.” Frozen foods, cake mixes, and the growth of fast-food chains made meal time less taxing.
Birth control pills had been on the market for three years and their use was spreading. (It was still a crime, however, to send birth control information through the mail. It had something to do with “pornography,” you see) Experts—males, anyway—reported that America’s females had never been happier.
In reality, though, a revolution was brewing.
The Patrick Henry of the moment was Betty Friedan, mother of three small children, a college graduate who stayed at home, as expected. Growing up, she had heard the same simple message again and again: “A woman’s place is in the home.” A girl must learn to cook and sew. A girl must make herself appealing to young men. She must not be aggressive or act “too smart.” She must not curse. She must not engage in activities which made her sweat. She must not discuss sex! Mercy! She must be a “lady.”
Marriage was her goal and caring for a family her career. A female who stepped outside her role was flirting with disaster. She was deserting her family, one gentleman warned, leaving nothing behind but an “empty house and [an] empty cookie jar.”
Even the wedding ceremony made the limits clear. A bride promised to love, honor, cherish and obey her husband. One young lady explained what this meant to an interviewer: “If he [the husband] doesn’t want me to wear a certain color or a certain kind of dress then I truly don’t want to either. The thing is, whatever he has wanted is what I also want...I don’t believe in fifty-fifty marriages.” She had attended college until it was clear she was going to marry. Then she dropped out, putting off graduation, likely forever.
Now she “never disputed [with] her husband in anything.”
A doctor’s wife and mother of three described her life to Friedan in similar terms: “I always knew as a child that I was going to grow up and go to college, and then get married, and that’s as far as a girl has to think. After that your husband determines and fills your life.”
Asked in 1963 what they might have thought about “careers” for their daughters, most fathers (and probably most mothers) would have laughed at the idea. School books, television shows, and magazines all supported the same view. Women were meant to be housewives and mothers. Advertising focused on the same theme. Commercials showed women who enjoyed getting laundry white and understood the joys--yes, the joys--of making bathroom floors shine.
In fact, nothing mattered more than looking good and roping in “Mr. Right.” Slogans like: “Blondes have more fun.” said it all. American women were trained to think that happiness could be found in a bottle of coloring. Even the first Barbie dolls (which were sold in 1959) helped bolster the message.
Barbie was all body and no brain. Her hair was perfect. Her clothes were lovely. And he head was empty. Or, what most conservatives today might call: the ideal woman, in an ideal time.
Working on her book, Friedan ran into countless women who admitted having trouble accepting these limits. These were wives and mothers who tried their best but for whom nothing seemed to work. Not even matching pillows and drapes brought them contentment. Peanut butter sandwiches in lunch boxes didn’t do it, and not dusting, or making beds, either. Sadly, one woman explained: “I feel so empty, somehow, useless, as if I don’t exist.” “Do you know what America is?” another frustrated housewife asked Friedan. “It’s a big, soapy dishpan of boredom.”
A third woman told how she turned to gardening, hobbies, and the PTA to fill the emptiness she felt.
I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem you can put a name to. But I’m desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bed-maker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?
Friedan called this feeling “the problem with no name,” or “the feminine mystique.” It was the myth that held women could only be happy as wives and homemakers. It was, Friedan warned, a belief that had “succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.” The “dull routine of housework” was not enough to give meaning to their lives. The typical American home was really no more than a “comfortable concentration camp.”
Disgusted with what she now found, Friedan launched a broad-based attack. It was time she said to “stop giving lip service to the idea that there are no battles left to be fought for women in America, that women’s rights have already been won.” Women should accept nothing less than full participation in school, work, government and sports. “If women were really people, no more [and] no less,” she thundered, “then all the things that kept them from being full people in our society would have to be changed.” The Feminine Mystique stormed up the best-seller list and stayed there. It helped all thinking women focus their anger. The book served as the rallying point for the “war” which was now fast approaching.
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