I want to write down a few excerpts from The Feminine Mystique, the Betty Friedan classic. This is mostly so I don't forget them. Sometimes you dog-ear books and then forget all about them. Hopefully this won't happen to me. Anyways, here are some of the best parts (according to me) -
pg 95
When Susan B Anthony & her women captains collected 6,000 signatures [in favor of women's suffrage] in 10 weeks, the New York State Assembly received them with roars of laughter.
pg 123
[The Freudian theme] provided a convenient escape from the atom bomb, McCarthy, all the disconcerting problems that might spoil the taste of steaks, and cars and color television and backyard swimming pools.
pg 164
A girl may learn certain surface skills and activities of the feminine role, but she will be thought ungraceful and unfeminine if her efforts toward femininity are too clearly conscious.
pg 192
...the state or quality of being mature; ripeness, full development...independence of thought and action - the quality of being fully human. Which is not quite the same as femininity.
pg. 227
(in an interview with an American advertiser in the 1960s)
Friedan - Why doesn't the pie-mix ad tell the woman she could us the time saved [from making the pie from scratch] to be an astronomer?
Advertiser - It wouldn't be too difficult...but no. The client would be too frightened. He wants to sell pie mix. The woman has to want to stay in the kitchen- and we show him how to do it the right way.
