(Emphasis is my own, throughout.)įriedan's famous phrase, 'the problem that has no name,' often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle- and upper-class, married white women-housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. But her delivery of this particular criticism ranks among the most withering. Hooks was by no means the first to have a problem with Friedan's white-girl-problems worldview. According to hooks, Friedan had written myopically, as though women of other races and classes-those who, she argued, were most victimized by sexist oppression-simply didn't exist. In 1984, black feminist theorist bell hooks introduced her own book, From Margin to Center, with a searing indictment of The Feminine Mystique: Though Friedan's book had spawned what came to be known as the second-wave feminist movement, it focused on what wasn't a universal female problem but rather a problem endured only by white, upper- and middle-class mothers and wives. According to the aforementioned thinkers and philosophers, Betty Friedan's 1963 book is a courageous text with a noble goal, but. So, lest we get too rosy remembering the achievements of The Feminine Mystique, let's review in further detail some of those bubble-bursting, parade-raining criticisms.

Like any beloved, much-studied text, secular or sacred, The Feminine Mystique deserves to be read critically in order to be understood fully. 'Anger Boiled Up, and Betty Friedan Was There': 'Feminine Mystique' at 50

The feminine mystique 1963