The Feminine Mystique: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Friedan posits that the perpetuation of housewifery and the feminine mystique occurred when industry leaders realized that women were the chief consumers. There was no conspiracy to oppress women, but instead “the subversion of women’s lives in America to the ends of business” was merely a means to an end, a way to keep the “affluent economy” going by exploiting the housewife market.

American businesses exploited the “uncreative” lives that many housewives led by making them think that they could find joy and purpose in buying things.

Using a national survey of 4,500 wives, a publisher of “a leading women’s magazine” divided American women into three categories to learn their opinions about electrical appliances. They included “The True Housewife Type,” “The Career Woman,” and “The Balanced Homemaker.”

The True Housewife Type, whose existence was justified by housework, represented the largest market for appliances. However, she was sometimes reluctant to use devices that rendered her old-fashioned methods obsolete. Marketers found that this group of women was diminishing and would probably continue to new fields of interest and education that were becoming available to women.

The Career Woman represented a minority that advertisers did not want to become larger. She had often never had a job, but she thought that housework was a waste of time and, if her children were older, she would have spent more time outside of the home and might have gotten a job.

“The Balanced Homemaker” was the ideal type for advertisers because, unlike “the true housewife,” she had some outside interests and was open to the help that appliances offered. She could be encouraged to believe that homemaking was an “art” that “should be the goal of every normal woman.”

Seventy-five percent of all consumer advertising was directed at housewives. Product designers created new gadgets that contributed to giving them a sense of achievement and yet, maintained housework as their main purpose. The “manipulator” with whom Friedan consulted uses the advertisement of a baking mix as an example of the way in which advertising could capitalize on American women’s need to do creative work. Instead of merely baking bread, she could use the mix to create many different baked goods and thus feel creative. Advertisers were supposed to de-emphasize the ease with which she could do this to avoid her “underlying guilt” over feeling that she never did enough.

By the mid-1950s, consumer surveys had revealed that the Career Woman was gone. She was replaced by a less sophisticated consumer who did some work in the Parent-Teacher Association, or PTA. She thought she was the equal of men, but found in housework a way to express her “femininity and individuality.” Advertisers needed to manipulate her feeling of never having enough to do and her desire to feel creative. The only trouble was that this type could not be influenced by her neighbors, but tended to “use her own mind and her own judgment.”

Advertisers and manufacturers tried to convince housewives that housework was fun. They made her feel like an expert in her field by giving her different products to perform different tasks. They also emphasized her perceived “know-how” by helping women use their minds and create various household cleaning tricks.

To maintain women’s interest in housework, which many of them hated, sellers marketed more products and made the instructions more complicated. Sellers also exploited housewives’ “guilt over the hidden dirt” in their homes and encouraged a sense of achievement for every household task completed.

In the 1950s, advertisers discovered the teenage market. Young women who had married out of high school were insecure and, therefore, easy marketing targets. Advertisers convinced teenaged couples that they could achieve middle-class status by buying things. Young wives could even be “safely encouraged” to get part-time jobs to help their husbands buy things.

Advertisers exploited the teenage bride’s desire to find fulfillment and purpose in being a housewife. They exploited these desires in their campaign to sell sterling silver. They began trying to influence girls while they were still in school, using peer pressure, as well as the influence of educators, TV programs, and social clubs, to get them to buy silver. Regarding the older, more independent wife, advertisers sought to make her feel guilty for her uses of cheap, disposable materials. She was encouraged to see sterling silver as a part of herself and a tradition that she could offer her children.

The fur industry also started working on teenage girls to reverse the reputation of fur-wearing women as “predatory” and as “kept women.” Instead, they encouraged the association of fur with femininity and with women passing a tradition down to their daughters.

Fur advertisers also addressed the product’s reputation for “ego-orientation” by saying that a family would take pride in a mother who wears fur. Thus, the housewife’s guilt in doing something for herself is transformed into benefiting the whole family by looking good.

Any creative urges a housewife had were to be channeled into her home and family. The sewing industry combated the feeling that sewing was “dull” by creating patterns for housewives to follow. This allowed her some individual expression without being too creative, required her to use some intelligence, and played into her insecurity about not wanting “to be dressed too differently” from other women.

Surveys showed that women’s needs for “education” and their desire to be a part of the world could be satisfied through shopping. Being in department stores relieved their isolation. Buying things at a bargain made housewives feel successful.

The surveys revealed other desires that could be addressed through product sales, such as needs for privacy in the age of “togetherness” and the “missing sexual spark” in marriage which consumers could supposedly recover by buying products that had been advertised using sex.

Consumer researchers understood American housewives in ways that Freudian therapists and sociologists did not. However, they were guilty of using their knowledge of her needs for fulfilment beyond homemaking to sell her things that would never really fulfill those needs but would always keep her wanting more. The advertisers did not invent the feminine mystique, but they were “the most powerful of its perpetuators.” They flattered the housewife, diverted her guilt, and hid her growing sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction.

Like a “primitive culture” that sacrifices its girls to tribal gods, American culture sacrificed its girls to the feminine mystique to ensure the sales of products. The power and intelligence of women was turned against them to groom them into good consumers. Friedan wonders if it is only “a sick society,” or an “immature” one, that makes women into housewives instead of people. Maybe it is only immature men and women who can retreat from society and its challenges to live in a “thing-ridden house” and make that their life’s purpose.