Anyone follow Fascinating Womanhood principles?

Re: Anyone follow Fascinating Womanhood principles?

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  lauradreed

  November 2008

  See my reply in 6-12.
  

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  *Scuzzlebutt* member

  November 2008

  As in......the book that was followed by that crazy lady from Wife Swap?  No thanks.  I actually looked into it (because of Wife Swap - I wanted to know what that lady was actually reading) and there is no way that I would want to follow that book.  Some ideas were ok (I know they only showed the crazy stuff on WS of course) but I wouldn't put that book to use in my family.

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  RoxyLynn member

  November 2008

  Oh. My. God.  Here's what's on Wikipedia about "fascinating doormat" principles:

  Although the book was published in the mid-1960s when second wave feminism became part of the American mainstream, Fascinating Womanhood's traditional explication of happy marriage resonated in the minds and hearts of millions of women. By 1975, according to Time Magazine, the movement included 11,000 teachers and over 300,000 women had taken the series of Fascinating Womanhood classes.

  Unlike other antifeminism movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the Fascinating Womanhood Movement continues today. Octogenarian Helen Andelin maintains a website that has received over a quarter of a million visits.[9] The classes continue in Namibia, The Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, and in the United States in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Utah, and Virginia.[10]

  Academic Attention

  Fascinating Womanhood has gained the attention of academic writers who, in the main, regard the book as detrimental to women in various ways. In 1978, psychologist Martha L. Rogers wrote an article ("Fascinating Womanhood as a Regression in the Emotional Maturation of Women") positing the argument that women who follow the teachings of Fascinating Womanhood were doing so out of a fear of being self-actualized individuals.^[1]. Juanne N. Clarke of Wilfrid Laurier University wrote that the Fascinating Womanhood movement used Kanter's Model of Commitment Mechanisms to analyze the techniques used to gain women's allegiance to the movement.^[2] More recently, Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons, authored by Lynn Peril, cited Fascinating Womanhood as part of a body of literature that seeks to promote "an idealized version of womanhood"(Peril, page 215)^[3]. Finally, communications writer Julia Woods discusses the Fascinating Womanhood movement in Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture.^[4]

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