Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991) by Susan Faludi was published within a year of several other popular feminist writings – Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (1990), Gloria Steinem's Revolution From Within (1992), and Marilyn French's The War Against Women (1992)."--Sholem Stein |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women is a 1991 book by Susan Faludi, in which the author presents evidence demonstrating the existence of a media-driven "backlash" against the feminist advances of the 1970s.
Faludi argues that the backlash uses a strategy of "blaming the victim", by suggesting that the women's liberation movement itself is the cause of many of the problems alleged to be plaguing women in the late 1980s. She also argues that many of these problems are illusory, constructed by the media without reliable evidence.
Faludi also identifies backlash as an historical trend, recurring when women have made substantial gains in their efforts to obtain equal rights. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 1991.
A 15th anniversary edition was released in 2006.
Summary
Backlash is Susan Faludi's 550 page analysis of social, economic and political inequities and resulting difficulties American women faced in the 1980s. The book was hailed as "the most vehement and unapologetic call to arms to issue from the feminist camp in many years", and "a rich compendium of fascinating information and an indictment of a system losing its grip..." that "has already done much to ignite a revolutionary "national" consciousness". Published within a year of several other popular feminist writings – Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (1990), Gloria Steinem's Revolution From Within (1992), and Marilyn French's The War Against Women (1992) – Faludi's book garnered front page attention in national newspapers and magazines, and interviews of its author on television and radio.
As a best-seller, Backlash rejuvenated feminist discussion in the media, and established Faludi as a leading spokesperson for women's issues in the 1990s.
Publication
Faludi was inspired to write Backlash after investigating the statistics behind a 1986 Newsweek cover story that reported on a Harvard-Yale study detailing the bleak marital prospects for single, educated career women. The statistics were in error and did not reflect the reality, so Faludi began to examine other sensationalized stories about women that were being promoted by the media. She believes that her book started to attract the attention it did because women relegated to - and writing for - the arts and culture sections of journals and newspapers, frustrated with internal job discrimination and believing the book addressed the problem, helped to get initial coverage.
Faludi also says the 1991 fall publishing date was an advantage because during the originally planned spring date "we were in the middle of a war, it was boys' time" and the book "would have dropped like a stone", whereas the "fall was girls' time because of Anita Hill."
As well, two publishing companies, Crown Publishing Group (Faludi's Backlash) and Little, Brown and Company (Gloria Steinem's Revolution From Within) made an unusual decision to promote the two books together, which proved commercially successful in heightening attention for the authors, the books, and the subject matter. Faludi and Steinem were together on the cover of Time, in ads, in interviews and in the "reams of commentary on both books".
See also
