Susan Faludi, "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women"

Skillfully Probing the Attack on Women’s Rights

“Opting-out,” “security moms,” “desperate housewives,” “the new baby fever”—the trend stories of 2006 leave no doubt that American women are still being barraged by the same backlash messages that Susan Faludi brilliantly exposed in her 1991 bestselling book of revelations. Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fifteenth anniversary edition, with a new preface by the author that brings backlash consciousness up to date.

When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing such favorite media myths as the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage,” myths that defied statistical realities. These willfully fictitious media campaigns added up to an antifeminist backlash. Whatever progress feminism has recently made, Faludi’s words today seem prophetic. The media still love stories about stay-at-home moms and the “dangers” of women’s career ambitions; the glass ceiling is still low; women are still punished for wanting to succeed; basic reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. The backlash clearly exists.

With passion and precision, Faludi shows in her new preface how the creators of commercial culture distort feminist concepts to sell products while selling women downstream, how the feminist ethic of economic independence is twisted into the consumer ethic of buying power, and how the feminist quest for self-determination is warped into a self-centered quest for self-improvement. Backlash is a classic of feminism, an alarm bell for women of every generation, reminding us of the dangers that we still face.

Amazon.com Review
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

From Publishers Weekly
Far from being "liberated," American women in the 1980s were victims of a powerful backlash against the handful of small, hard-won victories the feminist movement had achieved, says Wall Street Journal reporter Faludi, who won a Pulitzer this year. Buttressing her argument with facts and statistics, she states that the alleged "man shortage" endangering women's chances of marrying (posited by a Harvard-Yale study) and the "infertility epidemic" said to strike professional women who postpone childbearing are largely media inventions. She finds evidence of antifeminist backlash in Hollywood movies, in TV's thirtysomething , in 1980s fashion ads featuring battered models and in the New Right's attack on women's rights. She directs withering commentary at Robert Bly's all-male workshops, Allan Bloom's "prolonged rant" against women and Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer's revisionism. This eloquent, brilliantly argued book should be read by everyone concerned about gender equality.

From Library Journal
Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal , marshals in a sustained and excoriating 500-plus pages what many thoughtful women already know: it isn't that the goals of the feminist movement have failed, but that they have not yet been tried. Placing the current backlash against women squarely in a historical context (in the 19th century so-called experts told women that education would atrophy their wombs), she debunks the shoddy scholarship and half-truths that produced the myths we hear today: that women are fleeing the workplace to stay home and "cocoon"; that their chances of marrying diminish greatly if they don't marry young; that their lack of advancement is their own fault. She argues that women's anger and resentment are not due to their feminism, but occur because women have not yet been the beneficiaries of the justice, fairness, and equity they deserve. Along the way, Faludi demolishes the anti-feminist agendas of Robert Bly's "wild men," Allan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind, LJ 5/1/87), and George Gilder (Sexual Suicide, LJ 8/73), among others.

Contents

Preface to the Fifteenth Anniversary Edition

1 Introduction: Blame It on Feminism

Part One – Myths and Flashbacks
 2 Man Shortages and Barren Wombs: The Myths of the Backlash
 3 Backlashes Then and Now

Part Two – The Backlash in Popular Culture
 4 The "Trends" of Antifeminism: The Media and the Backlash
 5 Fatal and Fetal Visions: The Backlash in the Movies
 6 Teen Angels and Unwed Witches: The Backlash on TV
 7 Dressing the Dolls: The Fashion Backlash
 8 Beauty and the Backlash

Part Three – Origins of a Reaction: Backlash Movers, Shakers, and Thinkers
 9 The Politics of Resentment: The New Right's War on Women
 10 Ms. Smith Leaves Washington: The Backlash in National Politics
 11 The Backlash Brain Trust: From Neocons to Neofems

Part Four – Backlashings: The Effects on Women's Minds, Jobs, and Bodies
 12 It's All in Your Mind: Popular Psychology Joins the Backlash
 13 The Wages of the Backlash: The Toll on Working Women
 14 Reproductive Rights Under the Backlash: The Invasion of Women's Bodies

Epilogue
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author

Tags: Feminism, History