When talking about the women’s movement, and specifically the role of the media, it would be a monumental injustice to not talk about The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. This book, practically single-handedly, started a new wave of feminism in the United States, and was responsible for engaging thousands of American women.
According to the PBS documentary, “Makers: Women who Make America,” the 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, helped to crumble the traditional notion of the “happy homemaker.” Friedan’s work shed light on the fact that there were large amounts of women that were utterly dissatisfied with their homemaker lives; there were women out there who wanted more! The documentary illuminates that The Feminine Mystique was really a turning point in the women’s movement because it let women know that it was okay to want more out of life than just staying at home. The book helped inspire women to dream bigger and fight the restricting stereotypes of women that were so ingrained in the 1950s and 1960s.
Not only was The Feminine Mystique a fundamental document for women’s empowerment, but it is a prime example of how the media greatly impacted the success of the women’s movement. According to Patricia Bradley in her book, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism: 1963-1975, the historic book represented one of the first times that the feminist agenda was able to reach the national media agenda. Friedan wrote the book in a way that made it accessible and interesting to the mass media, thus giving the piece national attention. “With Friedan’s book as the opening salvo, the second wave of feminism was inextricably mounted to a midcentury belief in the mass media’s ability to promote change...Beginning with The Feminist Mystique, mass media brought feminism to millions of women who otherwise might never have been connected to the movement at all,” writes Bradley.
Ultimately, The Feminine Mystique was a controversial and truly ground-breaking book that challenged the notion of what it meant to be a woman in the 1960s. Encouraging women that it was okay to want more than the homemaker lifestyle, Friedan invigorated a swath of eager American women to become more involved in women’s liberation. While there were of course negative reactions and critiques to Friedan’s assertions, there is no way one could argue that her book didn’t play a significant role in the growth of feminism. She got a woman’s daring perspective in the mass media, and that was a gigantic win for women everywhere.
PBS documentary can be found at:
Patricia Bradley’s book can be found at:
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