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| Original Title: | Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women |
| ISBN: | 0307345424 (ISBN13: 9780307345424) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | California Book Award for Nonfiction (Silver) (1991), National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction (1991) |
Susan Faludi
Paperback | Pages: 594 pages Rating: 4 | 8420 Users | 270 Reviews
Commentary Supposing Books 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.
List About Books Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
| Title | : | Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women |
| Author | : | Susan Faludi |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 594 pages |
| Published | : | August 15th 2006 by Broadway Books (first published October 1st 1991) |
| Categories | : | Feminism. Nonfiction. Politics. History. Sociology. Gender. Womens |
Rating About Books Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Ratings: 4 From 8420 Users | 270 ReviewsWrite Up About Books Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
I'm pretty biased to Faludi, so I can't review this book objectively. I enjoy her style, which is semi-academic, and I like the way she pulls up seemingly unrelated puzzle pieces from under the sofa, the shelf, the dog's slobbery mouth and creates a jigsaw that makes the reader go, "Duh, now I get the big picture."Faludi's classic focuses on the late 70s and early 80s United States, to a time when women's rights were supposedly set. Roe vs. Wade came about, women were entering the work forceI tried to read this book 20 years too late, me thinks. Faludi relies on a lot of 80's media references to support her theory of backlash against the feminist movement of the 1970's. I was born in 1981 and unfortunately I'm only vaguely familiar with most of the statistics, events, and movies that Faludi discusses in Backlash. And I'm not really that motivated to sit with wikipedia open while I read this book and bring myself up-to-speed with the media happenings of the decade of my birth. Why
Faludi takes on the 80s, decade of big hair, bad music, and, she claims, a new kind of backlash against feminism. Her thesis is that pop-culture of the 80s told women they had been liberated by the women's movement of the last decade, but were now suffering because of the very gains made by women's lib. She quips: it must be all that equality that's causing all that pain--But what equality?Faludi's book has two main goals then, to bust the backlash myth that feminism is responsible for women's
My favorite thing about Susan Faludi is the strength and accuracy of her BS-o-meter. My next favorite thing is her brilliant writing. The sad thing to realize after reading this 20-year-old book is that she could write the same book -- with all new but similar material -- today.*sigh*Faludi laid the groundwork for many authors who followed. Twenty years ago, she wrote " ... women in the '70s who were assertive and persistent discovered that they could begin to change men's views. By vigorously
It's been nearly thirty years since Backlash was first released, then as an examination of the backlash to the feminist movement (or women's liberation, if you prefer) in the 80s. After the feminist movement grew in the 70s, the 80s were a whole different story. Faludi opens her books by going through the "facts" that were known in the 80s: the 'shortage of men', that a woman's life & economic situation worsened after divorce (while the man's got better), the infertility epidemic that was
I should note that I read the 1992 original version of this book. I'd love to read the updated version. At any rate, I went into this book open minded but by no means sold on her thesis. I came out the other end totally convinced. This is a solid work of well-written, well-researched scholarship that drives home her undeniable theses that career women are not "suffering" for their pursuits and that there is a determined effort to create a public perception of how "dangerous" feminism has been
As Rebecca West wrote sardonically in 1913, "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."While reading Backlash was depressing at times, I can't express how grateful I am to have come across it (Thanks to Olly from Philosophy Tube). As I don't live in America, I was not familiar with the multitude of anecdotes and evidence presented in the book, but
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