Word: faludi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mean denigrating motherhood, pursuing selfish goals and wearing a suit. Whereas feminism was hip and fashionable in the '70s, antifeminism became socially acceptable in the '80s. First the fundamentalist right, then the White House -- and ultimately Hollywood, television and many journalists -- held feminism responsible for "every woe besetting women," Faludi writes, "from mental depression to meager savings accounts, from teenage suicides to eating disorders to bad complexions...
...simply this overt partisan assault that created the backlash. According to Faludi, women came to condemn the movement because they heard from messengers they trusted that it was responsible for their pain. When the source of attack claims neutrality, offers statistics, cites an expert, the message carries even more weight...
...chance of finding a husband; by age 35 it was 5%, by 40 she was "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than make it to the altar, in Newsweek's memorable analogy. Reading the article on an airplane on the way to a friend's wedding, Faludi recalls, "I hadn't been worrying about marriage, but suddenly I felt glum and grouchy...
...only to discover what demographers already knew: the figures were based on unorthodox calculations of unrepresentative samples. More men than women were rushing out to dating services, and in the prime marrying years of 24 to 34, there were 119 single men for every 100 single women. What bothered Faludi was not just that the numbers were wrong; it was that many of the stories read like morality tales, whispering threats about the cost of postponing marriage in favor of having a career. Fear of spinsterhood stormed into the popular culture, giving birth to a whole generation of desperate movie...
Struck by the eagerness of the media to hype dubious scholarship, Faludi examined other trend stories to find their hidden message. In 1982 the New England Journal of Medicine urged women to re-evaluate their goals in light of findings that a woman's fertility plunged after age 30. The tyranny of the biological clock, warning women about putting work before family, made front- page news; but the story was based on a French study of women with infertile husbands who had tried to get pregnant through artificial insemination -- hardly a representative sample...