By Suzanne Braun Levine,
Women’s Media Center
In 1963 Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique identified The Problem That Has No Name—a soul-destroying malaise and sense of uselessness that beset the woman who had bought into the “mystique” of perfect wife, homemaker, and mother. Because she wasn’t happy, she thought something was wrong with her. The second wave of the Women’s Movement gave a name to that problem and countless other experiences that women were afraid to discuss.
Everything changed in the seventies and eighties, and an unintended consequence of the revolution in women’s roles was a new mystique—Having It All. The woman who couldn’t juggle work and family, couldn’t cheerfully “bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan”—as the Enjoli perfume ad proclaimed—felt once again that something was wrong with her. We struggled to ward off the guilt and break free of that mystique too.
Now, as gender roles adapt to new family values, comes a new mystique—“the male mystique,” so named by the prestigious Families and Work Institute in a recent study. It finds men increasingly stressed out by trying to achieve an unattainable standard of the perfect father, husband, and breadwinner….
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