Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
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“Time is running out . . .”: Gerald Nachman, “Going Out of Business Sale on Singles,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 1, 1987, p. B3.
“When they really decided . . .”: Barbara Lovenheim, “Brides at Last: Women Over 40 Who Beat the Odds,” New York, Aug. 3, 1987, p. 20.
USA Today even . . .: Marlene J. Perrin, “What Do Women Today Really Want?” USA Today, July 10, 1986, pp. D1, D5; Karen S. Peterson, “Men Bare Their Souls, Air Their Gripes,” USA Today, July 14, 1986, p. D1. And the women who called weren’t all pleading for a man: “How do you get people to stop asking why I’m not married yet?” was the question posed by one thirty-two-year-old woman from Virginia. See Peterson, “Stop Asking Why I’m Not Married,” p. D4.
Cosmopolitans February . . .: Samkoff, “How To Attract Men,” pp. 163-73.
At Mademoiselle Personal interview with Mademoiselle editors, 1988; Cathryn Jakobson, “The Return of Hard-to-Get,” March 1987, p. 220.
And a New Woman Dr. Joyce Brothers, “Why You Shouldn’t Move in With Your Lover,” New Woman, March 1985, p. 54.
“Singlehood seems so . . .”: Jeffrey Kluger, “Dangerous Delusions About Divorce,”
Cosmopolitan, Sept. 1984, p. 291. 117 CBS revived . . .: Sue Adolphson, “Marriage Encounter, Tube Style,” San Francisco Chronicle, Datebook, Jan. 22, 1989, p. 47.
“How to Stay Married” Barbara Kantrowitz, “How To Stay Married,” Newsweek, August 24, 1987, p. 52.
How times have . . .”: Ibid.
Is this surge . . .”: NBC News Special, “The Baby Business,” April 4, 1987.
“Having It All . . .”: “Having It All: Postponing Parenthood Exacts a Price,” Boston magazine, May 1987, p. 116.
“The Quiet Pain . . .”: Mary C. Hickey, “The Quiet Pain of Infertility: For the Success-Oriented, It’s a Bitter Pill,” Washington Post, April 28, 1987, p. DO5.
As a New York Times Fleming, “The Infertile Sisterhood,” p. B1.
Newsweek devoted two . . .: Matt Clark, “Infertility,” Newsweek, Dec. 6, 1982, p. 102; Barbara Kantrowitz, “No Baby on Board,” Newsweek, Sept. 1, 1986, p. 68.
Newsweek warned . . .: Kantrowitz, “No Baby,” p. 74. 118
The expert that Newsweek Ibid.
Not to be upstaged . . .: Anna Quindlen, “Special Report: Baby Craving: Facing Widespread Infertility, A Generation Presses the Limits of Medicine and Morality,” Life, June 1987, p. 23.
“It’s hard to tell, but . . .”: Clark, “Infertility,” p. 102.
“There are few . . .”: Quindlen, “Baby Craving,” p. 23.
Mademoiselle, for example . . .: Laura Flynn McCarthy, “Caution: You Are Now Entering the Age of Infertility,” Mademoiselle, May 1988, p. 230.
And a 1982 . . .: Georgia Dullea, “Women Reconsider Childbearing Over 30,” New York Times, Feb. 25, 1982, p. C1.
“Career women are opting . . .”: J. D. Reed, “The New Baby Bloom,” Time, Feb. 22, 1982, p. 52.
Time made that . . .: Claudia Wallis, “The Medical Risks of Waiting,” Time, Feb. 22, 1982, p. 58.
“More and more . . .”: Reed, “New Baby Bloom,” p. 52.
McCall’s gushed . . .: “Hollywood’s Late-Blooming Moms,” McCall’s, Oct. 1988, p. 41.
“Motherhood is consuming . . .”: Leslie Bennetts, “Baby Fever,” Vogue, Aug. 1985, p. 325.
Reaching even farther afield . . .: AP, “Koko the Gorilla Tells Keeper She Would Like to Have a Baby,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 1988, p. A3.
And, just as it had done . . .: Roger Munns, “Couples Race to Get Pregnant,” San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 19, 1990, p. B5.
“In our personal life . . .”: “The Marriage Odds Improve,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 1, 1987, p. 38.
“Some college alumnae . . .”: “Mothers a la Mode,” New York Times, May 8, 1988, p. E28. The Times editorial writers appeared to have forgotten their own words. Only two months earlier, they had noted that there was no change in the birth rate: “New Baby Boom? No, Just a Dim Echo,” New York Times, March 30, 1988, p. A26.
“You can’t pick up a magazine . . .”: Kim C. Flodin, “Motherhood’s Better Before 30,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 1989, p. A31.
I wasn’t even thinking . . .”: Bennetts, “Baby Fever,” p. 326.
The formerly quasi-feminist forum . . .: Renee Bacher, “The Ring Cycle,” The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 31, 1989, p. 20; Dava Sobel, “Face to Face With the New Me,” The New York Times Magazine, April 9, 1989, p. 26; Carolyn Swartz, “All That Glitters Is the Tub,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 5, 1989, p. 36.
And many smaller . . .: Julie Pechilis, “What Happened to the Women’s Press? No Newspaper of Her Own,” MediaFile, Feb.—March 1989, p. 1.
“We give you permission . . .”: Susin Shapiro, “The Ms. Guide to Minimalist Grooming,” Ms., Oct. 1989, pp. 43–46.
The first magazine ever . . .: Peggy Orenstein, “Ms. Fights for Its Life,” Mother Jones, Nov.—Dec. 1990, p. 32.
What was most curious . . .: “Carbine Says Sale of Ms. to Australian Will Open New Opportunities for the Magazine,” Media Report to Women, Nov.—Dec. 1987, p. 4.
When Summers took . . .: Personal interview with Anne Summers, April 1988.
This point was . . .: Ms. promotional literature to advertisers. See also Susan Milligan, “Has Ms. Undergone a Sex Change?” Washington Monthly, October 1986, p. 17.
(It was, weirdly,. . .): See Media Watch, Summer-Fall 1988, p. 2.
Only women in households making . . .: Personal interview with Anne Summers, April 1988.
They complained . . .”: Ibid. (Subsequent quotes are from personal interview unless otherwise noted.) This was, after all . . .: Ibid.
“As for the Women’s Movement . . .”: Shana Alexander, “A Woman Undone,” Ms., Sept. 1988, p. 40.
Meanwhile, the magazine’s publishers . . .: Orenstein, “Ms. Fights,” p. 82.
Finally, with Sassy’s . . .: Ibid., pp. 82-83.
Not Men or Men’s Life Patrick M. Reilly, “New Magazines Offer ‘Real’ Guy Stuff,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 29, 1990, p. B4; Deirdre Carmody, “Magazine Market Targets the Men,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 23, 1990, p. C4.
Not Elle Brenda Polan, “The Age of Confusion,” Elle, November 1986, cited in Janet Lee, “Care to Join Me in an Upwardly Mobile Tango? Postmodernism and the ‘New Woman,’” in The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, ed. by Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1989) pp. 166, 171.
“We want to . . .”: Media Report to Women, Nov.-Dec. 1988, p. 3.
CHAPTER FIVE. FATAL AND FETAL VISIONS
I don’t get it . . .”: Personal interview with Sabrina Hughes, Oct. 1987.
As Darlene Chan . . .: Personal interview with Darlene Chan, Oct. 1987.
It’s amazing what . . .”: Personal interview with Adrian Lyne, Oct. 1987; Susan Faludi, “Single Wretchedness,” West, San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 15, 1987, p. 14.
The words of one . . .: Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973) p. 151; Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973) pp. 117-18; Julie Burchill, Girls on Film (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986) pp. 24-25.
West infuriated the . . .: Rosen, Popcorn Venus, p. 153.
In the ’30s, she . . .: Ibid., p. 153; Kathryn Weibel, Mirror Mirror: Images of Women Reflected in Popular Culture (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1977) p. 233.
The biggest Depression . . .: Haskell, Reverence to Rape, p. 123; Danelle Morton, “Shirley Temple Black,” West Magazine, San Jose Mercury News, Jan. 8, 1989, p. 5.
During World War II . . .: Hartmann, Home Front, pp. 191-92; Rosen, Popcorn Venus, pp. 190-93.
A crop of films soon . . .: A few examples: And Now Tomorrow, The Spiral Staircase, and Johnny Belinda. Rosen, Popcorn Venus, pp. 219-20; Hartmann, Home Front, p. 202.
As film historian .
. .: Rosen, Popcorn Venus, p. 219.
In the ’50s, as . . .: Haskell, Reverence to Rape, pp. 270-71; Rosen, Popcorn Venus, p. 250.
In The Good Mother . . .: Sue Miller’s The Good Mother, the 1986 popular novel on which the movie is based, at least takes note of the injustice behind society’s double standard for divorcing husband and wife. But the film version just moralizes, laying out only the dangers that await the woman who challenges convention. If the film’s makers aimed to critique such repressive codes, they kept that intention well hidden.
And soon after . . .: Marilyn Beck, “She Did Her Best Work Up Real Close,” San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 11, 1987, p. F6.
All of these films were . . .: Rosen, Popcorn Venus, p. 151.
Story after story . . .: Richard Corliss, “Killer!” Time, Nov. 16, 1987, p. 72; James S. Kunen, “Real Life Fatal Attractions,” People, Oct. 26, 1987, p. 88.
A headline in one . . .: Cited in Dan Goodgame, “Getting Close to Stardom,” Time, Nov. 16, 1987, p. 81.
People promoted . . .: Kunen, “Fatal Attractions,” cover line.
British director . . .: Personal interview with James Dearden, Oct. 1987. For longer version of the story of the making of Fatal Attraction, see Susan Faludi, “Fatal Distortion,” Mother Jones, Feb.—March 1988, p. 27.
the early ’80s, American . . .: Personal interview with Stanley Jaffe, Oct. 1987.
Lansing had left . . .: Aljean Harmetz, “Sherry Lansing Resigns as Fox Production Chief,” New York Times, Dec. 21, 1982, p. C11.
“I kept coming back . . .”: Personal interview with Sherry Lansing, Oct. 1987.
“Michael Eisner turned it down . . .”: Personal interview with Adrian Lyne, Oct. 1987.
My short film was . . .”: Personal interview with James Dearden, Oct. 1987. (Subsequent quotes from Dearden are from personal interview unless otherwise noted.)
“The intent was . . .”: Personal interview, Oct. 1987.
Kim Basinger, the actress who . . .: Nina Darnton, “How 9 ½ Weeks Pushed an Actress to the Edge,” New York Times, March 9, 1986, p. C1; personal interview with Adrian Lyne, Oct. 1987; personal interviews with film’s production staff, Oct. 1987.
But Lyne tried to change . . .: Personal interviews with production staff, Oct. 1987; Faludi, “Fatal Distortion,” p. 30; Pat H. Broeske, “The Cutting Edge,” Los Angeles Times, Calendar, Feb. 16, 1986, p. 1.
Where is the new . . .”: Personal interview with Billy Hopkins, Oct. 1987.
Close was determined . . .: Faludi, “Fatal Distortion,” p. 30.
Close was anxious . . .: Lawrence Van Gelder, “Why a Fury’s Furious,” New York Times, Sept. 25, 1987, p. C10.
“I wanted her . . .”: Personal interview with Stanley Jaffe, Oct. 1987.
Casting agent Risa . . .: Personal interview with Risa Bramon, Oct. 1987.
Concurrently, Lyne . . .: Personal interview with Adrian Lyne, Oct. 1987.
inspire this . . .: Ibid. (Rest of Lyne’s quotes are from personal interview unless otherwise noted.) “If you want to know, I’m really . . .”: Joan Smith, Misogynies: Reflections on Myths and Malice (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989) pp. 31–32.
Close consulted . . .: Gelder, “Why a Fury’s Furious,” p. C10. 135
Originally, Fatal Attraction . . .: Faludi, “Fatal Distortion,” p. 49.
The film’s creators . . .: Aljean Harmetz, “Fatal Attraction Director Analyzes the Success of His Movie, and Rejoices,” New York Times, Oct. 5, 1987, p. C17.
Lansing concedes that . . .: Personal interview with Sherry Lansing, Oct. 1987. (Rest of Lansing quotes are from personal interview unless otherwise noted.)
Just as silent-era . . .: Kay Sloan, “Sexual Warfare in the Silent Cinema: Comedies and Melodramas of Woman Suffragism,” American Quarterly, Fall 1981, pp. 412–36.
At the time, the female audience . . .: Pauline Kael, Reeling(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976) p. 430.
It was important . . .”: Personal interview with Nancy Meyers, Feb. 1988.
As Schrader explained . . .: Glenn Collins, “Natasha Richardson, on Portraying Patty Hearst,” New York Times, Oct. 5, 1988, p. C19.
“Remember the troubles . . .”: Andree Aelion Brooks, “When Fast Trackers Have Kids: Can a Baby Mix With Business,” Child, Sept.-Oct. 1989, p. 88.
“There are certain women . . .”: Jim Jerome, “Annie Hall Gets It All,” Savvy, Oct. 1987, pp. 37-41.
“I don’t see women having it all . . .”: Personal interview with Nancy Meyers, Feb. 1988.
They were very nervous . . .”: Personal interview with Charles Shyer, Feb. 1988.
She was so torn . . .”: Personal interview with Nancy Meyers, Feb. 1988.
“Well, I know it’s Hollywood . . .”: Personal interview with Nadine Bron, 1988. (Rest of Bron’s quotes are from personal interview.)
(In the 1912 A Cure for. . .): Sloan, “Sexual Warfare,” p. 420.
Field was turned away . . .: Personal interview with Gwen Field, March 1988.
In a 1988 essay . . .: “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” New York Woman, Feb. 1988, p. 58.
In such films as Field of . . .: For two good discussions of this phenomenon, see Caryn James, “It’s a New Age for Father-Son Relationships,” New York Times, Arts and Leisure section, July 9, 1989, p. 11; Stephen Holden, “Today’s Hits Yearn for Old Times,” New York Times, Aug. 13, 1989, Arts and Leisure section, p. 1.
Not surprisingly . . .: Streep, “When Women Were in Movies,” p. 15.
In 1988, all but . . .: See Media Watch, Spring 1989 issue, vol. 3, no. 1.
“If anyone thinks this movie . . .”: Bob Strauss, “Hollywood’s ‘Has-It-All’ Woman,” San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 14, 1988, p. C6.
“Until I saw . . .”: Ibid.
CHAPTER SIX. TEEN ANGELS AND UNWED WITCHES
“Under no circumstances . . .”: Personal interview with Tony Shepherd, 1988; personal observations at the Fox press conference for “Angels ’88,” May 5, 1988.
This May morning . . .: D. Keith Mano, “So You Want to Be an Angel,” Life, May 1988, p. 145; Lisa Wren, “Hundreds Wing It for a Chance to Be Angels,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, March 5, 1988, p. 1; Zay N. Smith, “Angels Tryout Not So Divine,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 5, 1988, p. 3; Bill Givens, “Fox Hunt for Charlie’s Angels of the Eighties,” Star, March 22, 1988, p. 2.
Later that same day . . .: Personal interview with Brad Markowitz, May 5, 1988.
Spelling, who later . . .: Personal interviews with Aaron Spelling, May 1988, August 1990.
In the 1987-88 . . .: Joanmarie Kalter, “What Working Women Want from TV,” TV Guide, Jan. 30, 1988, p. 3.
In a sharp . . .: Sally Steenland, Women Out of View: An Analysis of Female Characters on 1987–88 TV Programs, Washington, D.C.: report by National Commission on Working Women, Nov. 1987, pp. 2, 4.
In a resurgence of . . .: Jay Martel, “On Your Mark, Get Set, Forget It,” TV Guide, Feb. 4, 1988, p. 28.
In the single-parent . . .: Steenland, Women out of View, p. 6.
This season it’s . . .”: “Moms at Work,” New York Woman, Feb. 1988, p. 93.
Women’s disappearance . . .: Diana M. Meehan, Ladies of the Evening: Women Characters of Prime-Time Television (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1983) pp. 42, 109–110.
On “Lady Blue” . . .: Sally Steenland, “Trouble on the Set, An Analysis of Female Characters on 1985 Television Programs,” report by National Commission on Working Women, Washington, D.C., 1985, p. 9.
An analysis of . . .: Donald M. Davis, “Portrayals of Women in Prime-Time Network Television: Some Demographic Characteristics,” Sex Roles, 23, no. 5-6 (1990): 325–30.
The “return of . . .”: Peter J. Boyer, “Television Returns to the Hard Boiled Male,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 1986, II, p. 1.
And the networks . . .: John Carman, “Networks Playing It Bland,” San Francisco Chronicle, TV Week, Sept. 17–23, 1989, p. 3.
In audience surveys . . .: Michael A. L
ipton, “What You Want to See in the New Decade,” TV Guide, Jan. 20, 1990, p. 11.
Nonetheless, Brandon . . .: Boyer, “Hard Boiled Male,” p. 1. 157
Glenn Gordon Caron, coproducer . . .: Ibid.
Glen Charles, coproducer . . .: Ibid.
When the TV programmers . . .: Peggy Ziegler, “Where Have All the Viewers Gone?” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1988, p. 6; data from Nielsen Media Research.
None of the . . .: Ziegler, “Where Have All,” p. 6.
But while younger . . .: Nielsen Media Research, Nielsen Report on Television, “Weekly Viewing Activity,” 1980–1989.
Independent women were “seizing . . .”: Harry F. Waters, “Networking Women,” Newsweek, March 13, 1989, p. 48.
Behind the scenes . . .: Michael E. Hill, “Murphy Brown: F.Y.I., We Like Your Show, Sort of,” Washington Post, TV Week, Feb. 26, 1989, p. 8.
The media declared her . . .: “People,” Orange County Register, March 29, 1990, p. A2; Michael McWilliams, “Pauley and Barr: Two Notions of Womanhood,” Gannett News Service, Aug. 8, 1990; Dennis Duggan, “What, Me Judge a Man on Looks Alone? Guilty!” Newsday, Newsday Magazine, Feb. 17, 1991, p. 6; Jeffrey Zaslow, “Roseanne Ban Would Be as Bad as Barr’s Own Antics,” Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 29, 1990, II, p. 65; Michele Stanush, “Anti-War Sentiments,” Austin-American Statesman, Dec. 16, 1990, p. E1.
TV critic Joyce Millman . . .: Joyce Millman, “Prime Time: Where the Boys Are,” San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 9, 1990, p. F1.
Only two of thirty-three . . .: Ibid.
(And most are men. . .): Davis, “Portrayals of Women,” p. 330.
Women are turning to . . .: “VCRs Reach Working Women,” Marketing to Women, 1, no. 3 (Dec. 1987): 11.
By 1990 . . .: Dennis Kneale, “TV’s Nielsen Ratings, Long Unquestioned, Face Tough Challenges,” The Wall Street Journal, July 19, 1990, p. A 1.
(A mere one-point drop. . .): Paul Richter, “Eyes Focus on People Meter As It Gauges TV Viewing,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1987, sections IV, p. 1.