This month, Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” celebrates 50 years of influence. In 2013, we live in the world Friedan built. More women go to, and graduate from, college than men. Hanna Rosin’s recent book “The End of Men” trumpets that women dominate 20 of the 30 fastest growing sectors of the economy.
Certain feminists, similar to children discovering that certain words shock their mommies, like to talk dirty. Or at least naughty. Naomi Wolf climbs on this bandwagon once more with her eighth book, "Vagina: A New Biography" (Ecco, 2012).
The increasing distance between the people who make country music and the people who live it has caused something of a crisis of authenticity for the genre.
Asea change has washed over America since Freud asked the question that forever perplexes everybody: "What do women want?" The question remains forever elusive, because women are never of one mind. To the consternation of marketers, political and otherwise, women don't all think alike.
Wonder Woman got a makeover, but she's still behind the curves. Her designers seem not to realize that for decades women have been in the ascendancy in the marketplace, and it's male action heroes who require a makeover, literally and figuratively. Exceptions still rule the imaginations of children, but in the world which most grown-ups inhabit, the male sex seems to need a Wonder Man to idealize possibilities.
