Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The 1963 publication of The feminine mystique by Betty Friedan (1921–2006) is certainly linked to, and sometimes considered the starting date of, the second wave of feminism in the US. Despite a lackluster “launch” by its publisher, the book quickly became a brisk seller in its hardback edition and went on to sell 1.5 million copies when it was issued in paperback a year later. The book remains available after a dozen republications, including one in 2001, more than forty years after it first appeared. Its title, a phrase that Friedan coined, has come to represent the accumulation of expectations attached to women, especially those that are dissonant and conflicting. Friedan called this liminal status, wherein women are dissatisfied but cannot quite identify why, as “the problem that has no name.” In its time, the success of the book provided a platform for its author to claim for herself the role of the mother of the US women's movement. For the purposes here, we may consider that the book helped establish the second wave in the US as a social movement that was largely dependent upon mass media attention for the distribution of its messages (→  Women's Movement and the Media ). On a theoretical level, the subject of a mass-media product calling for social change emphasizes the notion, as explored by Frankfurt School theorists, of the difficulties, and perhaps the impossibility, ... log in or subscribe to read full text