Published in 1984
272 pages
Susan Brownmiller is an American feminist journalist, author, and activist best known for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.
Brownmiller also participated in civil rights activism, joining CORE and SNCC during the sit-in movement and volunteering for Freedom Summer in 1964, wherein she worked on voter registration in Meridian, Mississippi. Returning to New York, she began writing for The Village Voice and became a network TV newswriter at the American Broadcasting Company, a job she held until 1968. She first became involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement in New York City in 1968, by joining a consciousness-raising group in the newly formed New York Radical Women organization. Brownmiller went on to coordinate a sit-in against Ladies’ Home Journal in 1970, began work on Against Our Will after a New York Radical Feminists speak-out on rape in 1971, and co-founded Women Against Pornography in 1979. She continues to write and speak on feminist issues, including a memoir and history of Second Wave radical feminism, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999). Brownmiller won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1973 to research and write about the crime of rape.
What is this book about?
With intelligence and humor, Susan Brownmiller explores the history and unspoken rules of the burden of “feminine perfection”
What is femininity? How is it measured? What are its demands? How are women meant to dress, look, think, act, feel, and be, according to the mores of society?
Susan Brownmiller offers a witty and often pointed critique of the concept of femininity in contemporary culture and throughout history. She explores the demands placed upon women to fit an established mold, examines female stereotypes, and celebrates the hard-won advances in women’s lifestyle and attire.
At once profound, revolutionary, empowering, and entertaining, Femininity challenges the accepted female norm while appreciating the women throughout history who have courageously broken free of its constraints
