The problem with no name...

This summer, I read The Feminine Mystique. My mother's response was, "You're just now reading that?" Well mom, between you and me was the Third Wave of feminism. Anyway, I truly enjoyed it.

I suppose I could sit here and summarize it, but there's just so much that this book covered in it's almost 400 pages. I learned a great deal about myself by reading this book. I'm going to cheat and offer up an overview from Wikipedia:

The Feminine Mystique came about after Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class. Most women in her class indicated a general unease with their lives. Through her findings, Friedan hypothesized that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system causes women to completely lose their identity in that of their family.

Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II middle-class suburban communities. She suggests that men returning from war turned to their wives for mothering. At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable.

I too have fallen victim to the mystique. I've dated, I've been in relationships. And while in a way they make me happy, I am not myself nor am I fully and truly ever happy in them. I live my life thru my partner at the time- utterly supporting them in their needs, but never asking for fulfillment of my own. I rarely, if ever, suggest activities, instead doing whatever it is my partner wants. I can't truly remember the last time I did something with a boyfriend that I chose or wanted. It leaves me unhappy and unfulfilled in the end. While I enjoy making others happy, I cannot continue to do this at the expense of my own happiness. It's something I will work on in the future.

Another thing addressed in the book was the preoccupation women had with youth. This still continues to this day. You can see this every where, but this new infomercial makes me laughs at the ridiculous lengths people will go. So watch and laugh like I did.