When one begins to think about it, America depends rather heavily on women's passive dependence, their femininity. Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the societal expectations placed on women and how those expectations contribute to their objectification.
Betty Friedan's quote highlights the deep-rooted issues of femininity and passive dependence that American women face, suggesting that these societal constructs render them vulnerable to exploitation. By acknowledging the complexities tied to femininity, Friedan calls attention to how these societal norms perpetuate objectification and hinder women's autonomy.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about gender roles in a classroom setting.
Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.
Advice? I don't offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
We need to see men and women as equal partners, but it's hard to think of movies that do that. When I talk to people, they think of movies of forty-five years ago! Hepburn and Tracy!
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?
It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.
Last year, when he had been staying with the Pevensies, he had managed to hear them all talking of Narnia and he loved teasing them about it. He thought of course that they were making it all up; and as he was far too stupid to make anything up himself, he did not approve of that.
Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.
The moral of the story is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around.
Becoming a vegan is a sure way of completely avoiding participation in the abuse of farmed animals. Vegans are a living demonstration of the fact that we do not need to exploit animals for food.
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
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