What women want

I was thrilled to find at The Last Word recently, a brand new edition of Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique, a seminal work of that contentious and much-derided pursuit, feminism. Initially released in 1963, following the decade which established the apple-pie-and-checkered-apron housewife as a staple of American culture, it is tragic that many, if not all the points raised in this heartfelt treatise are still relevant today. Regarded as the work that set feminism’s second wave in motion; Friedan makes a passionate case for the condition of the female psyche — subjugated, anaesthetised with material purchases, sexualised into a parody of itself, finding validation solely through the role of mother and wife. The text opens with accounts of the days as spent by her peers at Smith, a mind-numbing inventory of thankless nothingness: make breakfast, take children to school, clean, bake, set hair in rollers, embroider the living room cushions, cook dinner and so forth. Rinse rather and repeat this routine, every single day, leading to the heartbreaking question, “is this it, life?”  Please note that when men question the emptiness of their existence, this is called philosophy, but when women do it, it is called feminism, as if women, half the population, are somehow a specialty subject, an exotic, irrelevant minority group deserving of a school of study divorced from the mainstream.

Cut to almost 50 years later, and not nearly enough has changed, if anything, the really hard questions posed in Friedan’s work have found hollow, unsatisfactory responses. It’s hardly worth mentioning that double standards reign supreme, be they in terms of sexual behaviour, or in the different societal reaction to aggression, or for that matter, professional ambition, as displayed by a woman as opposed to a man. Not to mention the simpering gratitude of the wife whose husband does her the immense kindness of babysitting (his own offspring) for an evening or two, regardless of whether or not she also works for a living. Working for a living, incidentally, is a whole other sore spot, since those of us who do it are well aware of just how much of our day is pleasurably idled away on Google, and how bringing home money isn’t superior, just more fun than running around after a child and planning dinner. Women, given the power to ostensibly do what they wish, chose to condescend to other women who weren’t afforded those same freedoms and opportunities, with both sets considering the other a traitor to the cause.

The most damaging blow to women in the last two or so decades, has come from women themselves, the notion that the modern woman can have it all, a career, a loving husband, children, that she can look like Angelina Jolie, cook like Nigella Lawson, earn a six-figure salary, run a model home and most of all, not be quite good enough if she doesn’t manage all of this. I saw a sign in the tube once, for SHE magazine, the advertisement of which read, ‘’She is a Mother, She is a Lover, She is a Career Woman, She is a Homemaker’’. Somebody had graffitied it over with black marker, adding the line, “She is a Myth.”

Published in the Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2010.