The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique is the title of a book written by Betty Friedan
who also founded The National Organization for Women (NOW) to help US women gain
equal rights. She describes the "feminine mystique" as the heightened awareness
of the expectations of women and how each woman has to fit a certain role as a
little girl, an uneducated and unemployed teenager, and finally as a wife and
mother who is to happily clean the kitchen and cook things all day. After World
War II, a lot of women's organizations began to appear with the goal of bringing
the issues of equal rights into the limelight.
The stereotype even came down to the color of a woman's hair. Many
women wished that they could be blonde because that was the ideal hair color.
In The Feminine Mystique, Friedan writes that "across America, three out of
every ten women dyed their hair blonde " (Kerber/DeHart 514). This serves as
an example of how there was such a push for women to fit a certain mold......
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