Monday, July 9, 2012

Fascinating Womanhood and FMH

Feminist Mormon Housewives allowed us space for a blog post on their site. Many thanks to them for their generous support.

Read the comments.  People react strongly to Fascinating Womanhood, on many fronts. This is what our documentary hopes to account for---women who found Helen's books helpful and women who disagree profoundly with her strategies and suggestions.

As for myself, I have read several editions of Helen's book and I have tried to find ideas that are useful. Such as:

  • You can't change people.
  • You are responsible for you, so be the best person you can be.
  • Treat the people in your life with kindness. 

As a wise woman once told me, there's no commandment against common sense.

As for the rest of the book, ambivalence and heartburn abound when I read it. A friend just wrote to me her experience of the book, and I quote from her summary:

"But when you're scared, or overwhelmed, or lonely, or have tons of self-doubt, [the book] is a total siren song.  I think the enduring popularity of this book is really just a monument to how many people do feel scared, overwhelmed, lonely, are crippled with self-doubt, or have a history of abusive relationships and don't know what love actually is.  A monument to sad."

No comments:

Post a Comment