Mystique: Feminine? Hot? Or Not?

Susan notes: hmmmm... somedays I wonder if we've made any progress at all !

Last night, Stephen Colbert interviewed author Stephanie Coontz about her new book "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s."

Coontz discussed how important and shocking Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique" was when it came out. Coontz said, "In those days, women were told, 'All you are is somebody's keeper.'"

While "housewife syndrome" isn't the problem that it once was, Coontz argued that women face many new problems, one of which she referred to as "the hottie mystique."

She discussed how women are now allowed to do everything that men are allowed to "as long as [they] are gorgeous every step of the way and display [their] sexuality." She considers this a "big pressure" for women.

The Colbert Report
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The interview was concluded with Coontz's declaration that the best predictors for a man's happiness in a relationship are "how little criticism he gets and how much sex he gets" and that these predictors are displayed to men by "how much housework [a woman] does."

She referred to this situation as "chorenography."

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by Zoe Triska
The Huffington Post