From The Progressive: http://www.progressive.org/the-feminine-mystique-at-50
By Annie Laurie Gaylor
February 19, 2013
Tuesday, Feb. 19, marks the half-century anniversary of the publication of a book that changed women’s lives. The book was “The Feminine Mystique,” written by Smith College graduate Betty Friedan.
Herself a housewife drowning in domesticity, Friedan wrote the truth about the lives of American middle-class housewives buried under a pile of laundry.
“I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today,” she wrote.
I was only 7 when the book came out, but I remember the shock of its bright pink cover, knowing from my mother’s reaction that the book was something momentous.
As one of the only mothers in our neighborhood who worked outside the home, my mother, now 86, remembers the collective sense of relief women felt in 1963 that someone was finally naming “the problem that had no name.”
A friend of mine, Phyllis, 81, recalls being hunkered down in a small house with two babies and crying with recognition as she read “The Feminine Mystique.” Phyllis, by the way, went on to have a full professional career, and my mother is still running a feminist charity.
It’s hard not to write personally about Friedan, because her book, although thoroughly documenting women’s societal straitjacket, was profoundly personal.
Continue reading at: http://www.progressive.org/the-feminine-mystique-at-50
