The Feminine Mystique

by Friedan, Betty

  No one, not even the depth researchers, denied that housework was endless, and its boring repetition just did not give that much satisfaction, did not require that much vaunted expert knowledge. But the endlessness of it all was an advantage from the seller’s point of view. The problem was to keep at bay the underlying realization which was lurking dangerously in “thousands of depth interviews which we have conducted for dozens of different kinds of housecleaning products”—the realization that, as one housewife said, “It stinks! I have to do it, so I do it. It’s a necessary evil, that’s all.” What to do? For one thing, put out more and more products, make the directions more complicated, make it really necessary for the housewife to “be an expert.” (Washing clothes, the report advised, must become more than a matter of throwing clothes into a machine and pouring in soap. Garments must be carefully sorted, one load given treatment A, a second load treatment B, some washed by hand. The housewife can then “take great pride in knowing just which of the arsenal of products to use on each occasion.”)

  Capitalize, the report continued, on housewives’ “guilt over the hidden dirt” so she will rip her house to shreds in a “deep cleaning” operation, which will give her a “sense of completeness” for a few weeks. (“The times of thorough cleaning are the points at which she is most willing to try new products and ‘deep clean’ advertising holds out the promise of completion.”)

  The seller must also stress the joys of completing each separate task, remembering that “nearly all housekeepers, even those who thoroughly detest their job, paradoxically find escape from their endless fate by accepting it—by ‘throwing myself into it,’ as she says.”

  Losing herself in her work—surrounded by all the implements, creams, powders, soaps, she forgets for a time how soon she will have to redo the task. In other words, a housewife permits herself to forget for a moment how rapidly the sink will again fill with dishes, how quickly the floor will again be dirty, and she seizes the moment of completion of a task as a moment of pleasure as pure as if she had just finished a masterpiece of art which would stand as a monument to her credit forever.

  This is the kind of creative experience the seller of things can give the housewife. In one housewife’s own words:

  I don’t like housework at all. I’m a lousy houseworker. But once in a while I get pepped up and I’ll really go to town…When I have some new kind of cleaning material—like when Glass Wax first came out or those silicone furniture polishes—I got a real kick out of it, and I went through the house shining everything. I like to see the things shine. I feel so good when I see the bathroom just glistening.

  And so the manipulator advised:

  Identify your product with the physical and spiritual rewards she derives from the almost religious feeling of basic security provided by her home. Talk about her “light, happy, peaceful feelings” her “deep sense of achievement.”…But remember she doesn’t really want praise for the sake of praise…also remember that her mood is not simply “gay.” She is tired and a bit solemn. Superficially cheerful adjectives or colors will not reflect her feelings. She will react much more favorably to simple, warm and sincere messages.

  In the fifties came the revolutionary discovery of the teenage market. Teenagers and young marrieds began to figure prominently in the surveys. It was discovered that young wives, who had only been to high school and had never worked, were more “insecure,” less independent, easier to sell. These young people could be told that, by buying the right things, they could achieve middle-class status, without work or study. The keep-up-with-the-Joneses sell would work again; the individuality and independence which American women had been getting from education and work outside the home was not such a problem with the teenage brides. In fact, the surveys said, if the pattern of “happiness through things” could be established when these women were young enough, they could be safely encouraged to go out and get a part-time job to help their husbands pay for all the things they buy. The main point now was to convince the teenagers that “happiness through things” is no longer the prerogative of the rich or the talented; it can be enjoyed by all, if they learn “the right way,” the way the others do it, if they learn the embarrassment of being different.

  In the words of one of these reports:

  49 per cent of the new brides were teenagers, and more girls marry at the age of 18 than at any other age. This early family formation yields a larger number of young people who are on the threshold of their own responsibilities and decision-making in purchases…

  But the most important fact is of a psychological nature: Marriage today is not only the culmination of a romantic attachment; more consciously and more clear-headedly than in the past, it is also a decision to create a partnership in establishing a comfortable home, equipped with a great number of desirable products.

  In talking to scores of young couples and brides-to-be, we found that, as a rule, their conversations and dreams centered to a very large degree around their future homes and their furnishings, around shopping “to get an idea,” around discussing the advantages and disadvantages of various products….

  The modern bride is deeply convinced of the unique value of married love, of the possibilities of finding real happiness in marriage and of fulfilling her personal destiny in it and through it.

  But the engagement period today is a romantic, dreamy and heady period only to a limited extent. It is probably safe to say that the period of engagement tends to be a rehearsal of the material duties and responsibilities of marriage. While waiting for the nuptials, couples work hard, put aside money for definite purchases, or even begin buying on an installment plan.

  What is the deeper meaning of this new combination of an almost religious belief in the importance and beauty of married life on the one hand, and the product-centered outlook, on the other?…

  The modern bride seeks as a conscious goal that which in many cases her grandmother saw as a blind fate and her mother as slavery: to belong to a man to have a home and children of her own, to choose among all possible careers the career of wife-mother-homemaker.

  The fact that the young bride now seeks in her marriage complete “fulfillment,” that she now expects to “prove her own worth” and find all the “fundamental meanings” of life in her home, and to participate through her home in “the interesting ideas of the modern era, the future,” has enormous “practical applications,” advertisers were told. For all these meanings she seeks in her marriage, even her fear that she will be “left behind,” can be channeled into the purchase of products. For example, a manufacturer of sterling silver, a product that is very difficult to sell, was told:

  Reassure her that only with sterling can she be fully secure in her new role…it symbolizes her success as a modern woman. Above all, dramatize the fun and pride that derive from the job of cleaning silver. Stimulate the pride of achievement. “How much pride you get from the brief task that’s so much fun…”

  Concentrate on the very young teenage girls, this report further advised. The young ones will want what “the others” want, even if their mothers don’t. (“As one of our teenagers said: ‘All the gang has started their own sets of sterling. We’re real keen about it—compare patterns and go through the ads together. My own family never had any sterling and they think I’m showing off when I spend my money on it—they think plated’s just as good. But the kids think they’re way off base.’”) Get them in schools, churches, sororities, social clubs; get them through home-economics teachers, group leaders, teenage TV programs and teenage advertising. “This is the big market of the future and word-of-mouth advertising, along with group pressure, is not only the most potent influence but in the absence of tradition, a most necessary one.”

  As for the more independent older wife, that unfortunate tendency to use materials that require little care—stainless steel, plastic dishes, paper napkins—can be met by making her feel guilty about the effects on the children. (“As one young wife told us:
‘I’m out of the house all day long, so I can’t prepare and serve meals the way I want to. I don’t like it that way—my husband and the children deserve a better break. Sometimes I think it’d be better if we tried to get along on one salary and have a real home life but there are always so many things we need.’”) Such guilt, the report maintained, can be used to make her see the product, silver, as a means of holding the family together; it gives “added psychological value.” What’s more, the product can even fill the housewife’s need for identity: “Suggest that it becomes truly a part of you, reflecting you. Do not be afraid to suggest mystically that sterling will adapt itself to any house and any person.”

  The fur industry is in trouble, another survey reported, because young high school and college girls equate fur coats with “uselessness” and “a kept woman.” Again the advice was to get to the very young before these unfortunate connotations have formed. (“By introducing youngsters to positive fur experiences, the probabilities of easing their way into garment purchasing in their teens is enhanced.”) Point out that “the wearing of a fur garment actually establishes femininity and sexuality for a woman.” (“It’s the kind of thing a girl looks forward to. It means something. It’s feminine.” “I’m bringing my daughter up right. She always wants to put on ‘mommy’s coat.’ She’ll want them. She’s a real girl.”) But keep in mind that “mink has contributed a negative feminine symbolism to the whole fur market.” Unfortunately, two out of three women felt mink-wearers were “predatory…exploitative…dependent…socially nonproductive…”

  Femininity today cannot be so explicitly predatory, exploitative, the report said; nor can it have the old high-fashion “connotations of stand-out-from-the-crowd, self-centeredness.” And so fur’s “ego-orientation” must be reduced and replaced with the new femininity of the housewife, for whom ego-orientation must be translated into togetherness, family-orientation.

  Begin to create the feeling that fur is a necessity—a delightful necessity…thus providing the consumer with moral permission to purchase something she now feels is ego-oriented…. Give fur femininity a broader character, developing some of the following status and prestige symbols…an emotionally happy woman…wife and mother who wins the affection and respect of her husband and her children because of the kind of person she is, and the kind of role she performs….

  Place furs in a family setting; show the pleasure and admiration of a fur garment derived by family members, husband and children; their pride in their mother’s appearance, in her ownership of a fur garment. Develop fur garments as “family” gifts—enable the whole family to enjoy that garment at Christmas, etc., thus reducing its ego-orientation for the owner and eliminating her guilt over her alleged self-indulgence.

  Thus, the only way that the young housewife was supposed to express herself, and not feel guilty about it, was in buying products for the home-and-family. Any creative urges she may have should also be home-and-family oriented, as still another survey reported to the home sewing industry.

  Such activities as sewing achieve a new meaning and a new status. Sewing is no longer associated with absolute need…. Moreover, with the moral elevation of home-oriented activities, sewing, along with cooking, gardening, and home decorating—is recognized as a means of expressing creativity and individuality and also as a means of achieving the “quality” which a new taste level dictates.

  The women who sew, this survey discovered, are the active, energetic, intelligent modern housewives, the new home-oriented modern American women, who have a great unfulfilled need to create, and achieve, and realize their own individuality—which must be filled by some home activity. The big problem for the home-sewing industry was that the “image” of sewing was too “dull” somehow it didn’t achieve the feeling of creating something important. In selling their products, the industry must emphasize the “lasting creativeness” of sewing.

  But even sewing can’t be too creative, too individual, according to the advice offered to one pattern manufacturer. His patterns required some intelligence to follow, left quite a lot of room for individual expression, and the manufacturer was in trouble for that very reason, his patterns implied that a woman “would know what she likes and would probably have definite ideas.” He was advised to widen this “far too limited fashion personality” and get one with “fashion conformity”—appeal to the “fashion-insecure woman,” “the conformist element in fashion,” who feels “it is not smart to be dressed too differently.” For, of course, the manufacturer’s problem was not to satisfy woman’s need for individuality, for expression or creativity, but to sell more patterns—which is better done by building conformity.

  Time and time again, the surveys shrewdly analyzed the needs, and even the secret frustrations of the American housewife; and each time if these needs were properly manipulated, she could be induced to buy more “things.” In 1957, a survey told the department stores that their role in this new world was not only to “sell” the housewife but to satisfy her need for “education”—to satisfy the yearning she has, alone in her house, to feel herself a part of the changing world. The store will sell her more, the report said, if it will understand that the real need she is trying to fill by shopping is not anything she can buy there.

  Most women have not only a material need, but a psychological compulsion to visit department stores. They live in comparative isolation. Their vista and experiences are limited. They know that there is a vaster life beyond their horizon and they fear that life will pass them by.

  Department stores break down that isolation. The woman entering a department store suddenly has the feeling she knows what is going on in the world. Department stores, more than magazines, TV, or any other medium of mass communication, are most women’s main source of information about the various aspects of life…

  There are many needs that the department store must fill, this report continued. For one, the housewife’s “need to learn and to advance in life.”

  We symbolize our social position by the objects with which we surround ourselves. A woman whose husband was making $6,000 a few years ago and is making $10,000 now needs to learn a whole new set of symbols. Department stores are her best teachers of this subject.

  For another, there is the need for achievement, which for the new modern housewife, is primarily filled by a “bargain.”

  We have found that in our economy of abundance, preoccupation with prices is not so much a financial as a psychological need for the majority of women…. Increasingly a “bargain” means not that “I can now buy something which I could not afford at a higher price” it mainly means “I’m doing a good job as a housewife; I’m contributing to the welfare of the family just as my husband does when he works and brings home the paycheck.”

  The price itself hardly matters, the report said:

  Since buying is only the climax of a complicated relationship, based to a large extent on the woman’s yearning to know how to be a more attractive woman, a better housewife, a superior mother, etc., use this motivation in all your promotion and advertising. Take every opportunity to explain how your store will help her fulfill her most cherished roles in life…

  If the stores are women’s school of life, ads are the textbooks. They have an inexhaustible avidity for these ads which give them the illusion that they are in contact with what is going on in the world of inanimate objects, objects through which they express so much of so many of their drives…

  Again, in 1957, a survey very correctly reported that despite the “many positive aspects” of the “new home-centered era,” unfortunately too many needs were now centered on the home—that home was not able to fill. A cause for alarm? No indeed; even these needs are grist for manipulation.

  The family is not always the psychological pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of promise of modern life as it has sometimes been represented. In fact, psychological demands are being made upon the family today which it cannot fulfill….

  For
tunately for the producers and advertisers of America (and also for the family and the psychological well-being of our citizens) much of this gap may be filled, and is being filled, by the acquisition of consumer goods.

  Hundreds of products fulfill a whole set of psychological functions that producers and advertisers should know of and use in the development of more effective sales approaches. Just as producing once served as an outlet for social tension, now consumption serves the same purpose.

  The buying of things drains away those needs which cannot really be satisfied by home and family—the housewives’ need for “something beyond themselves with which to identify,” “a sense of movement with others toward aims that give meaning and purpose to life,” “an unquestioned social aim to which each individual can devote his efforts.”

  Deeply set in human nature is the need to have a meaningful place in a group that strives for meaningful social goals. Whenever this is lacking, the individual becomes restless. Which explains why, as we talk to people across the nation, over and over again, we hear questions like these: “What does it all mean?” “Where am I going?” “Why don’t things seem more worth while and when we all work so hard and have so darn many things to play with?”

  The question is: Can your product fill this gap?