Reading the chapter The Problem That Has No Name by Betty Friedan reminded me of the movie Stepford wives, where all the women are beautiful and perfect but they turn out to be robots. Even though it’s sad to admit, making the women as robots really was a good representation of the women in the 50’s and 60’s, although I don’t think it was their fault. Women were completely brainwashed by society that their true role in life was to be a good mother and wife. The women even brainwashed themselves by trying to silence their inside voices and convince themselves that everything was just the way it should be. Women knew that there was hardly an option other than being a housewife, and the women that chose to stray from this position were ridiculed for being the most horrifying thing of all: effeminate. I personally just think the men felt threatened that women would become equal and perhaps jeopardize their “manly” careers.
There were hardly any options available for women because mass media targeted them towards domestic training rather than educational training. And the woman became obsessed with this phenomenon because when you’re limited to one “purpose” in life, you pretty much want to be perfect at it—you want to excel and the one thing you’re allowed/ suppose to be good at. I imagine I would have been the same way but thanks to women’s rights activists like Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Friedan I’m not—and neither is the rest of female population. In modern society, if a woman chooses to be a stay at home mom it is because she wants to and most people respect that decision. On the other hand, if a woman chooses to be a physician it is because she wants to, and because she qualifies just as much if not more than any man. And once again the woman earns the rightful respect—at least in most cases, but if not then a whole other can of worms is opened.