But this magazine, published for over 5,000,000 American women, almost all of whom have been through high school and nearly half to college, contained almost no mention of the world beyond the home.
This was the image of the American woman in the year Castro led a revolution in Cuba and men were trained to travel into outer space the year that the African continent brought forth new nations, and a plane whose speed is greater than the speed of sound broke up a Summit Conference the year artists picketed a great museum in protest against the hegemony of abstract art physicists explored the concept of anti-matter astronomers, because of new radio telescopes, had to alter their concepts of the expanding universe biologists made a breakthrough in the fundamental chemistry of life and Negro youth in Southern schools forced the United States, for the first time since the Civil War, to face a moment of democratic truth. It is crammed full of food, clothing, cosmetics, furniture, and the physical bodies of young women, but where is the world of thought and ideas, the life of the mind and spirit? In the magazine image, women do no work except housework and work to keep their bodies beautiful and to get and keep a man.
The magazine surely does not leave out sex the only passion, the only pursuit, the only goal a woman is permitted is the pursuit of a man. The image of woman that emerges from this big, pretty magazine is young and frivolous, almost childlike fluffy and feminine passive gaily content in a world of bedroom and kitchen, sex, babies, and home. Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan
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