Shining a Spotlight on Anonymity

   I’ll admit it – I’m one of those girls Susan Douglas talks about, the girl who exclaims, “I’m not a feminist!” but makes sure to follow it up with a lame, “But, uh, equal rights for women.” I was surprised at how well Douglas knew this side of me, and how compelling her argument was for why women so often shun the label of feminism while at the same time upholding its ideals. Until today, I had never stopped to consider why the idea of feminism made me feel uneasy. As Douglas reveals, the media encourages women to be at once strong Americans and delicate girls, beautiful at all times yet never vain, rebellious and submissive. These contradictory messages create a rift between the views we share with others and those we keep to ourselves.

            I appreciated Douglas’s focus on the mothers of the 1950’s. Her description of the abrupt changes in propaganda directed towards women to suit the country’s changing economic and political needs fascinated me. It is outrageous that the media can claim to simply reflect “reality” to viewers when over the course of a few decades, women were first commanded not to steal jobs from men, then enticed by visions of glamorous female workers, and finally told that women who wanted jobs were “neurotically disturbed.” The women who endured this “ideological roller coaster,” as Douglas calls it, made up a significant yet largely forgotten portion of the population.

Did anyone else have trouble believing the excerpts from What Makes Women Buy? I was in shock as I read accounts of how “the instability of woman’s bodily functions and nervous system makes her a more emotional customer than a man” and that “women’s verbal aptitude accounts for the fact that they like to gossip and have the last word” (57). At first I found these preposterous and ignorant claims to be funny, but it is sobering to realize that fifty years ago, this was no joke.

I loved Douglas’s combination of fact with personal anecdotes – her participation in the period about which she’s writing makes the experience much more real for the reader. When she recounted her eagerness to see the scandalous adulteress Liz Taylor in her new film “Cleopatra” after vowing in church never to see it, I truly got a sense of the powerful allure of mass media and the many futile efforts to suppress it.

Janice makes a good point in her entry – some of Douglas’s arguments are unreasonable. I think Douglas realized this though, and accepted that in writing a book whose sole purpose is to expose the media’s portrayal and manipulation of a generation of women, she would be bound to alienate some readers. And although, as she admits, she “cannot speak for everyone,” her hilarious and brilliantly argued study of Baby Boomer culture succeeds in placing the emphasis away from the famous stars and leaders of the 1950’s and towards the anonymous female consumers.