Feminine Mystique

The Problem That Has No Name

The Feminine Mystique written by Betty Friedan was one of the first books that targeted the idealized image of an American woman at the time. The ideal image of an American woman, during the civil rights era, was a middle-class, college-educated housewife. Who's sole purpose was to happily take care of the home while the men focus their time on more pressing issues, such as the fast-paced world of business or the politics of the Russian conflict. These issues were simply too much for the common woman to contemplate. So the problems of the outside world should be best left to the men to handle, thus leaving the woman’s role in the world in the home. Trapped in their suburban prisons, women were discouraged from

pursuing higher education or a career. Any woman who would rather work then get married was considered “unfeminine” and incapable of fulfilling their role as mothers. The feminine mystique is used to describe “the problem that has no name” as Friedan puts it. The failed social experiment that describes a woman being nothing more than the sum of her happy housework or her lunch-making abilities, cutting off the opportunity for women to find success and fulfillment outside the home. Friedan speaks out to the social pressures put on women to become housewives, the social responsibility of being a woman and the exploitation of advertisements that targets middle-class women into voluntarily believing that they truly were secondary intellectually, mentally, and financially to men. Even though Friedan’s book was a driving force of the second-wave feminist movement, Friedan’s focus lies solely on college educated, white, middle class, and married women; excluding the vast array of colored, unmarried, lower class, and homosexual women who are falling due to the same social pressures, and then some.
The Feminine Mystique begins by describing the world of post-World War II America, where women who had been working in place of men, were encouraged to leave their jobs and return to the home. Where they would be wives and mothers and focus their education and work experience toward raising the next race of American housewives and businessmen. The pressures facing women to go back to the home were monstrous. Friedan explains an encounter she had with male magazine writers and editors. Topics surrounding issues outside the house, politics, satire, travel, and “broad issues of the day” were thrown out simply because these male editors believed that women would have no use or interest for information not related to their children's health, cleaning the house or sex. Friedan responds to this with a German phrase, “Kinder, Kuche, Kirche, the slogan by which the Nazis decreed that women must once again be confined to their biological role. But this was not Nazi Germany. This was America.” The translation of Kinder, Kuche, Kirche from German to English is children, cooking, and church. Friedan even goes as far as describing the willingness of middle-class women to conform into happy housewives as akin to prisoners forced into Nazi concentration camps. Even though comparing the struggles of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps to trapped housewives can be seen as far-fetched, American women were trapped by the invisible bonds of the suburban home. Through many interviews with suburban wives and mothers, Friedan found that many of them are dissatisfied and unfulfilled but were unable to figure out why. This is where the phrase “the problem that has no name” originates. College educated women are taken from class and put back into the home and told that fulfillment comes from being good wives and having children. Friedan states that some women even blamed their education for giving them “career dreams” causing them not to find satisfaction in the role of a housewife. This type of thinking causes educated women to install their very own glass ceiling over their heads. Trapping themselves in the home, searching for satisfaction through redecorating the living room, learning to cook elegant, healthy and delicious food trying to impress their husbands and satisfy their children. A quote taken from an interview with Friedan and a minister’s wife captures this lost feeling and the deep dissatisfaction of being trapped in the home, “The problem is always being the children’s mommy, or the minister’s wife and never being myself.”
Friedan makes another argument about the social responsibilities of being feminine and the fear of being labeled unfeminine. Friedan connects the result of women returning back to the home with the importance of traditionalism and the loss of interest in important social issues. “Women went home again just as men shrugged off the bomb, forgot the concentration camps, condoned corruption, and fell into helpless conformity.” Friedan argues that it is easier and safer “to think about love and sex than about Communism, McCarthy, and the uncontrolled bomb.” It became much easier for women to worry about their children, homes, and husbands instead of focusing on the constant threat of being bombed or attacked by foreign forces. Friedan describes this as a “personal retreat,” something at affected “the most spirited; we lowered our eyes from the horizon, and steadily contemplated our own navels.” Friedan herself tells about how “in retrospect… it was easier to build the need for love and sex into the end-all purpose of life, avoiding personal commitment to truth in a catch-all commitment to “home” and “family.” It is almost impossible for a woman of the time to turn against the shifting focus from war to the home. When the nation needed women to go to work during times of war, they did. Millions of women got out of the house and went into factories to work for a common cause and help the nation. Now that the war is over, we don't need women to be producers anymore. They are instructed to go back home and rejoin the family and become another consumer. A consumer that is focused toward new kitchen technologies and the latest trends for decorating the home. The needs of the individual woman are thrown out in order to accommodate the interest of capitalism. It is seen as a responsibility for a woman to be in the home. A woman who is more interested in searching for a career than a husband is considered “unfeminine” and “man-hating, embittered, sex-starved spinsters.” This was reinforced by places of education providing more classes for women to learn skills for the home instead of academics, popular media producing stories of the happy housewife and academic theories that try to box women into the home by claiming it is their “biological role.”
The exploitation of the unhappy and unfulfilled housewife by advertisers is another argument Friedan makes for the feminine mystique.

Women are the primary buyers of the household, responsible for purchasing food, clothes, cleaning supplies and products necessary for the home. Commercial advertising takes advantage of the tired, restless and bored housewife. Through rapidly changing trends and fashions, advertising held the ability to control the housewife into staying in the home. Advertisers would portray a happy housewife making a satisfying meal the whole family loves using their new kitchen appliance. They make promises of fulfillment through the process of buying things. Causing a cycle of housewives buying the newest technology for the home or clothes for the next fashion trend and then repeating that over and over while women scramble to keep up with the trends. Friedan explains that since her own self-identity has been lost then she looks toward material possessions to find some sort of identity. The science of selling to unhappy housewives is perfected by advertisers who try to manipulate housewives in order to give them a “sense of identity, purpose, creativity, the self-realization, even the sexual joy they lack—by the buying of things…”. “We show him how to tell her that its creative to be in the kitchen. We liberate her need to be creative in the kitchen.” Advertising manipulates women into buying more and more, constantly searching for the fulfillment they

seek. They feel the need to buy a bigger house, or a faster car, or more expensive furniture in order to find the fulfillment that is promised to them by advertisers. This is the feminine mystique. An exploitation of unhappy housewives in order to move the economy, purposefully keeping women down in order to hold onto consumers. Advertisers molded what it meant to be feminine in order to control women. Creating a sense that without the best clothes, makeup, house, car, kitchen she would somehow be transformed and categorized as unfeminine. An unfeminine woman was unable to care for her children and was unable to satisfy her husband. A diagnosis worst than death.
Even though The Feminine Mystique was a driving force in the second-wave feminist movement, the book was centered on issues only a certain demographic of women felt. The book was aimed and helping white, middle-class, college-educated wives and mothers. Leaving out the struggles of colored women, homosexual women, lower-class women, and working women. The book focuses on housewives bored and tired with the home and not sure how to spend their allowance from their working husbands. Friedan fails to mention the struggles of so many women who are facing constant oppression for being a different race, sexual orientation, being without an education or without a man. Friedan’s view of the struggles of what it means to be a woman is incredibly lacking. Friedan encourages housewives to get out of the home, to search for fulfilling careers and more education, while women who did not have that opportunity or privilege were left behind, to care for the children and clean the houses of the housewives inspired by Friedan. Many women wanted nothing more than to be leisurely housewives that didn't have to work and could rely on their husbands, but for many, this was not the case. Many women did not have the privilege to be affected by advertisements because they did not have money. So they would be looked down upon by the oppressed housewives who had the means to be molded into the feminine mystique. Despite being written during the civil rights movement, Friedan does nothing to include the struggles or offer help to poor women, women of color, homosexual women and unmarried women. Friedan failed to move past her own experiences and expand her view to include more women.
The feminine mystique is a phrase used to describe “the problem that has no name.” Women in the workforce were pressured into leaving their careers and become housewives in order to satisfy the return of men back into American society.

The feminine mystique comes from the dissatisfaction of women’s new role in society, the happy housewife. Who’s biggest worries were getting the kids to school, cleaning the house and having dinner ready to satisfy her husband. These housewives are trapped at home and are told to not go out and pursue a career or higher education but to stay in the home because it is their responsibility. It is the responsibility of the tired mother to make sure that the home is functioning and to make sure the economy is running. A woman is expected to keep up with the latest trends in fashion to look beautiful for her husband, she is expected to know how to cook and clean and make the house look presentable so her neighbors can see how well she is doing. Advertisers take control and manipulate the wants and needs of women to keep them in the home, cooking, cleaning and decorating. If a housewife is unable to do all of these things she is considered a failure by her peers and unable to take care of a home, her one job. So she must work day in and out to make sure she has the best and looks the best. Even though Friedan fails to include the struggles many women who are less fortunate than the white, middle-class housewife, the feminine mystique brought upon a

wave of feminism that shattered many glass ceilings and provided a base that helped many more women fight against oppression.