Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Susan Faludi
Language: English
Pages: 594
ISBN: 0307345424
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Skillfully Probing the Attack on Women’s Rights
“Opting-out,” “security moms,” “desperate housewives,” “the new baby fever”—the trend stories of 2006 leave no doubt that American women are still being barraged by the same backlash messages that Susan Faludi brilliantly exposed in her 1991 bestselling book of revelations. Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fifteenth anniversary edition, with a new preface by the author that brings backlash consciousness up to date.
When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing such favorite media myths as the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage,” myths that defied statistical realities. These willfully fictitious media campaigns added up to an antifeminist backlash. Whatever progress feminism has recently made, Faludi’s words today seem prophetic. The media still love stories about stay-at-home moms and the “dangers” of women’s career ambitions; the glass ceiling is still low; women are still punished for wanting to succeed; basic reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. The backlash clearly exists.
With passion and precision, Faludi shows in her new preface how the creators of commercial culture distort feminist concepts to sell products while selling women downstream, how the feminist ethic of economic independence is twisted into the consumer ethic of buying power, and how the feminist quest for self-determination is warped into a self-centered quest for self-improvement. Backlash is a classic of feminism, an alarm bell for women of every generation, reminding us of the dangers that we still face.
start getting prettier again—more like the fashion photography you’d see in old magazines from the 1950s.” And what of female customers who might say, as he put it, “God, I could never look like that in a million years”? But that’s the good news, Filoso says. “Today, women can look at a beautiful mannequin in a store and say, ‘I want to look like her,’ and they actually can! They can go to their doctor and say, ‘Doc, I want these cheekbones.’ ‘Doc, I want these breasts.’” He sighs. “If I were
and vacuuming of fat deposits, was no better. Between 1984 and 1986, the number of liposuction operations rose 78 percent—but the procedure barely worked. Liposuction removed only one to two pounds of fat, had no mitigating effect on the unseemly “dimpling” effect of cellulite, and, in fact, often made it worse. The procedure also could produce permanent bagginess in the skin and edema, just two of the “variations from the ideal” that the plastic surgery society cataloged in its own report.
criticizes me for trivial things, cupboards and doors left open I don’t like him angry. So I just close the cupboards, close the drawers, switch off the lights, pick up after him, etc., etc., and say nothing.” From these personal reports, Hite culls some data about women’s attitudes toward relationships, marriage, and monogamy. That the media find this data so threatening to men is a sign of how easily hysteria about female “aggression” ignites under an antifeminist backlash. For instance,
living standard for many divorced women to be temporary. Five years after divorce, the average woman’s living standard was actually slightly higher than when she was married to her ex-husband. What baffled Hoffman and Duncan most was that Weitzman claimed in her book to have used their methods to arrive at her 73 percent statistic. Hoffman’s letter wondered if he and Duncan might take a look at her data. No reply. Finally, Hoffman called. Weitzman told him she “didn’t know how to get hold of her
Review, Jan.-Feb. 1989, pp. 65-76. The “mommy-tracking” trend . . .: The New York Times, not Schwartz, came up with the phrase. The interview count comes from a personal interview with Schwartz’s media relations director, Vivian Todini, Nov. 1989. “Across the country . . .”: Elizabeth Ehrlich, “The Mommy Track,” Business Week, March 20, 1989, p. 126. 104 In fact, at a conference . . .: Ellen Hopkins, “Who Is Felice Schwartz?” Working Woman, Oct. 1990, p. 116. Women with this . . .: The