The Problem That Now Has a Name

By: Morgan Wysopal

Published: September 26, 2016

In the article, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, she creates and emphasizes the idea that women in the early 50s were often asking themselves “is this all?” Back in these times women were taught to clean, cook, and take care of their family. “Experts told them how to catch a man and keep him, how to breastfeed children and handle their toilet training, how to cope with sibling rivalry and adolescent rebellion; how to buy a dishwasher, bake bread, cook gourmet snails, and build a swimming pool with their own hands…” (Friedan 16) These tedious daily tasks left women feeling unsatisfied and confused. Ads in magazines, newspapers, commercials, TV shows, and movies were all demonstrating a glorious life of a housewife that was full of joy and fulfillment, but for most women this wasn’t their reality. The problem with how gender is communicated through media is it’s misinterpreting women, housewives specifically, and what they want in life outside of being a wife and mother.

Women during this time were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be doctors, presidents, or CEOs. They learned true feminine women did not want careers. Media exhibited women to only wanting to be housewives who took care of their house, husband and kids. The older generation of women could still remember the painful time they gave up their dreams of having a successful career and now the younger generation doesn’t even think of it as an option. The only opportunities women had to leave their homes were to shop, shofar children around, or attend social engagements with their husbands.

Women’s main form of communication during this time was through ads, like the one displayed. Most noticeable object is only a women is present in this ad for cleaning the house. Taking a better look at this image you can see that she is cleaning with a smile, portraying that cleaning makes you joyful and “a clean house is a sign of a good life.” In the image they used bright colors to make it look more pleasing with a pink shelving unit in the bottom left corner and a pink towel to add a feminine touch to the ad to appeal more to women. Housewives were left confused because they didn’t feel the same enjoyment as they thought every other housewife was experiencing. The article states “If a women had a problem in the 1950’s and 1960’s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought, what kind of women was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it.”(Friedan 19) That was the problem, which all women who felt unfulfillment did not speak up about it because they felt alone due to what they saw in the media.

Many women knew something was not right when they didn’t fit the “perfect” image of a housewife that was displayed but the majority did not visit psychoanalysts to try to figure out why. They would tell themselves “there’s nothing wrong really” and “there isn’t any problem” because this is what they saw as a happy women through media. On one average morning a mother of four was having coffee with some fellow neighborhood housewives when she spoke in quite desperation of “the problem”. All the other ladies knew what she was referring to without any further explanation. Two of the ladies were in tears of relief knowing they weren’t alone.

In the 1960’s more and more women were talking about the problem that has no name although almost everybody who talked about it found some superficial reason to dismiss it, when they saw more and more ads and pictures through media representing this perfect housewives life like displayed in image 2.

This popular Budweiser advertisement, which says, “Where there’s life… There’s Bud” shows off a more than happy housewife in her very feminine pink jacket pouring her husbands beer (representing that she takes care of him) with a smile on her face. The husband is captured with a hammer in his right hand and a broken clock in front of him. The tools are to show that the job for the man of the house was to fix things when they were broken.

In the article by Friedan talks about the “Mrs. Degree” which is women back in the 1950s were only attending college to find a husband. Image 3 is of two young girls talking in very feminine dresses. It says “This finals week, let’s focus on how best to get our Mrs. Degree so we can avoid future finals weeks.” The background of the image is pink to relate more to women.  Also in the 1950s the marring age dropped to 20 just about the time that women were in college for one year. “By the mid-fifties, 60 per cent dropped out of college to marry, or because they were afraid too much education would be a marriage bar.” (Friedan 16) Many women did not want to go to school just for the reason to find a husband or didn’t want to go far with their education because they were scared men would be turned off by how smart they were, but this is what the media had been telling women so they went along.

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century.” (Friedan 15) The problem that many housewives and stay at home mothers faced because they thought they had to fit into this perfect, happy, fulfilled life that media communicated to them but, this was a myth.

References:

Fava, S. F., & Friedan, B. (1963). The Feminine Mystique. American Sociological

Review, 28(6), 1053

Frankel, A. (2015, November 24). "Independent Woman" is my theme song.