February 19, 1963: "The Feminine Mystique" Is Published

February 19, 1963: The Feminine Mystique is published by Betty Friedan, through W.W. Norton. It sparks what becomes known as "Second Wave Feminism."

Friedan was born as Bettye Naomi Goldstein on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois. Her father was a jeweler, and when he fell too ill to work, her mother took to writing, a career that she found very fulfilling. Betty took notice of this.

She graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, then considered America's leading college for women, in 1942, and became a journalist. In 1947, she married theater producer Carl Friedan, and they had 3 children, Daniel, Emily and Jonathan. (The couple divorced in 1969.) But in 1952, she was fired from her job at UE News, because she was pregnant with Emily. The commonly-held belief at the time was that a woman could not be a mother and an employee. She proved them wrong by succeeding at free-lance journalism.

In 1957, she was asked to conduct a survey of her former Smith classmates for their 15th anniversary reunion. The results, in which she found that many of them were unhappy with their lives as housewives, prompted her to begin research. She conducted interviews with other suburban housewives, as well as researching psychology, media, and advertising. She originally intended to create an article on the topic, not a book, but no magazine would publish the work.

The phrase "feminine mystique" was coined by Friedan to describe the assumptions that women would be fulfilled from their housework, marriage, sexual lives, and children. The prevailing belief was that women who were truly feminine should not want to work, get an education, or have political opinions. Friedan wanted to prove that women were unsatisfied, and could not voice their feelings. The book sold over 1 million copies in its 1st year.

But it did not escape criticism, including from women, some of whom felt left out by it. Social activist Gloria Watkins, who wrote under the name bell hooks (like the poet e e cummings, she did not use capital letters in her name), wrote of Friedan:

She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women, and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute than to be a leisure-class housewife.

She made her plight, and the plight of white women like herself, synonymous with a condition affecting all American women.  In so doing, she deflected attention away from her classism, her racism, her sexist attitudes towards the masses of American women. In the context of her book, Friedan makes clear that the women she saw as victimized by sexism were college-educated white women."

Friedan was writing from experience, and from a time when the Civil Rights Movement was in its early stages, the gay rights movement barely existed, and the War On Poverty didn't exist at all. It was never Friedan's intention to exclude anyone.

She was among the founders of the National Organization for Women in 1966, and the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971. In 1981, she published The Second Stage, which was critical of what she saw as the excesses of the feminist movement. She died on February 4, 2006, on her 85th birthday.

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February 19, 1963 was a Tuesday. Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel, who became the singer Seal, was born on this day.

Baseball and football were out of season. And there were no games scheduled in the NHL. But there were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Detroit Pistons, 121-112 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Cincinnati Royals, 129-126 at the Boston Garden. Oscar Robertson scored 35 points for the Royals, but it wasn't enough.

* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Chicago Zephyrs, 118-110 at the Chicago Coliseum. Lee Shaffer scored 41 points for the Nats. Both teams would move before the next season: The Nats became the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Zephyrs became the Baltimore Bullets, and are now the Washington Wizards.

* And the San Francisco Warriors beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers, 111-109 at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco in Daly City, California. Wilt Chamberlain had 39 points and 36 rebounds for the Warriors. Elgin Baylor of the Lakers led all scorers on the night with 42.