When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the societal expectations placed on women and how those expectations contribute to their objectification.
Betty Friedan's quote highlights the deep-rooted issues of femininity and passive dependence that American women face, suggesting that these societal constructs render them vulnerable to exploitation. By acknowledging the complexities tied to femininity, Friedan calls attention to how these societal norms perpetuate objectification and hinder women's autonomy.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about gender roles in a classroom setting.
Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.
Advice? I don't offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?
My personal history, along with the history of many black people in this country, is rife with trauma born out of anti-black policies aided and facilitated by presidents and their administrations.
I sometimes think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition.
I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.
Let no act be done without purpose.
To know that God knows everything about me and yet loves me is indeed my ultimate consolation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.