A fascinating study of an icon and the era that created her.
Neuffer offers a study of Helen Andelin, author and founder of the controversial Fascinating Womanhood movement in the 1960s and ’70s.
In 1961, discontented Mormon housewife Andelin discovered a set of advice booklets written in the 1920s. Called The Secrets of Fascinating Womanhood, they advised women to fulfill traditional gender roles in order to find happiness in love and motherhood. Andelin credited them with saving her marriage, so much so that she repackaged them as Fascinating Womanhood, a book that went on to sell 2 million copies (as Neuffer notes, Andelin never admitted to copying the booklets). Andelin and her movement became cultural phenomena of the 1960s and ’70s, a counterbalance to the second-wave feminism of Betty Friedan. Despite harsh criticism from many of her contemporaries, Andelin’s ideas would shape succeeding generations of female commentators, including Phyllis Schlafly, Laura Schlessinger, and comedian Rosanne Barr (who appropriated, albeit satirically, Andelin’s ideal of the “Domestic Goddess” for her stand-up routine). Neuffer demonstrates how “the views and goals of both Andelin and her FW movement were both more complex and more distinct than her critics conceded. Moreover, they endured. In fact, Andelin built a substantial and lasting following simply by addressing the immediate, felt needs of many women at a crucial moment in history when other reform movements did not.” Raised in the Mormon Southwest during the height of the movement—her mother was, for a time, a teacher of FW classes—Neuffer was granted unprecedented access to Andelin in the last decade of her life; in addition to Andelin’s personal papers, Neuffer’s interviews with Andelin make up the bulk of the book’s sources. While Neuffer is appropriately skeptical of Andelin’s teachings (and willing to present evidence that suggests Andelin plagiarized most of her material), she treats her subject with patience and respect as she attempts to accurately describe the deeper causes and effects of Andelin’s career. “An understanding of Andelin’s wide appeal as both a religious and political leader can augment the fast-expanding discussion about women’s strategies to cope with—and shape—political and social change,” she writes. Indeed, Andelin’s story has much to teach us about dissenting voices in the pursuit of progress.
A fascinating study of an icon and the era that created her.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60781-327-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Utah
Review Posted Online: July 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sharp, compelling, and impassioned book.
A London-based journalist offers her perspective on race in Britain in the early 21st century.
In 2014, Eddo-Lodge published a blog post that proclaimed she was “no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race.” After its viral reception, she realized that her mission should be to do the opposite, so she actively began articulating, rather than suppressing, her feelings about racism. In the first chapter, the author traces her awakening to the reality of a brutal British colonial history and the ways that history continues to impact race relations in the present, especially between blacks and the police. Eddo-Lodge analyzes the system that has worked against blacks and kept them subjugated to laws that work against—rather than for—them. She argues that it is not enough to deconstruct racist structures. White people must also actively see race itself by constantly asking “who benefits from their race and who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes.” They must also understand the extent of the privileges granted them because of their race and work through racist fears that, as British arch-conservative Enoch Powell once said, “the black man will [one day] have the whip hand over the white man.” Eddo-Lodge then explores the fraught question of being a black—and therefore, according to racist stereotype—“angry” female and the ways her “assertiveness, passion and excitement” have been used against her. In examining the relationship between race and class, the author further notes the way British politicians have used the term “white” to qualify working class. By leaving out reference to other members of that class, they “compound the currency-like power of whiteness.” In her probing and personal narrative, Eddo-Lodge offers fresh insight into the way all racism is ultimately a “white problem” that must be addressed by commitment to action, no matter how small. As she writes, in the end, “there's no justice, there's just us.”
A sharp, compelling, and impassioned book.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4088-7055-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
SEEN & HEARD
Dramatic, immersive, and wanting—much like desire itself.
Based on eight years of reporting and thousands of hours of interaction, a journalist chronicles the inner worlds of three women’s erotic desires.
In her dramatic debut about “what longing in America looks like,” Taddeo, who has contributed to Esquire, Elle, and other publications, follows the sex lives of three American women. On the surface, each woman’s story could be a soap opera. There’s Maggie, a teenager engaged in a secret relationship with her high school teacher; Lina, a housewife consumed by a torrid affair with an old flame; and Sloane, a wealthy restaurateur encouraged by her husband to sleep with other people while he watches. Instead of sensationalizing, the author illuminates Maggie’s, Lina’s, and Sloane’s erotic experiences in the context of their human complexities and personal histories, revealing deeper wounds and emotional yearnings. Lina’s infidelity was driven by a decade of her husband’s romantic and sexual refusal despite marriage counseling and Lina's pleading. Sloane’s Fifty Shades of Grey–like lifestyle seems far less exotic when readers learn that she has felt pressured to perform for her husband's pleasure. Taddeo’s coverage is at its most nuanced when she chronicles Maggie’s decision to go to the authorities a few years after her traumatic tryst. Recounting the subsequent trial against Maggie’s abuser, the author honors the triumph of Maggie’s courageous vulnerability as well as the devastating ramifications of her community’s disbelief. Unfortunately, this book on “female desire” conspicuously omits any meaningful discussion of social identities beyond gender and class; only in the epilogue does Taddeo mention race and its impacts on women's experiences with sex and longing. Such oversight brings a palpable white gaze to the narrative. Compounded by the author’s occasionally lackluster prose, the book’s flaws compete with its meaningful contribution to #MeToo–era reporting.
Dramatic, immersive, and wanting—much like desire itself.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4229-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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