The War Against Feminism

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Likewise in her condemnation of the marriage study, Faludi is right that there is no man shortage for young women. But according to Barbara Lovenheim, who pored over census data for her book Beating the Marriage Odds, the ratio begins to reverse after 35: between the ages of 40 and 44, there are 75 single men for every 100 unmarried women.

Faludi demonstrates that the studies on the impact of divorce greatly exaggerate the fall in the average woman's living standard in the year after she leaves her husband. But she adds that five years after divorce, most women's standard of living has actually improved. She relegates to a footnote the fact that this is because most have remarried.

The wage gap, which Faludi says has barely improved since 1955, actually narrowed more quickly in the 1980s than it did in the previous three decades, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That the average woman now earns 71 cents for every dollar a man earns is still inexcusable, but by downplaying women's recent progress, Faludi risks undermining the message that economic inequity is still a real problem.

Although her handling of these facts makes Faludi an easy target of backlash, it should not be an excuse to dismiss her entire argument. "It's perfectly legitimate to point out errors in any book that has a factoid in every sentence. I'm bound to make mistakes," Faludi says. "But to dismiss the whole argument is not right. We should be more focused on how we overcome the backlash." As Ann Jones, an author and professor at Mount Holyoke, argues, "The big picture is there, and the big picture is accurate."

The New Image of Womanhood

The big picture of the backlash has more to do with the messages that permeate everyday life, through television and movies, through fashions and advertising. Naomi Wolf's book The Beauty Myth got readers talking about why women starve themselves, have breast implants, apply acid to their face to peel off the wrinkles, and why fashion magazines came to favor photo spreads of women wearing dog collars and chains and penciled-on bruises. It is on issues of symbol and representation that Faludi and the newly bred backlash theorists have the most fun and start the liveliest arguments over who really represented the Image of Woman in the 1980s.

This insidious new image, Faludi claims, was Hope Steadman, the exalted, blissful, breast-feeding mother of thirtysomething, who provided a postfeminist contrast to the "neurotic spinster ((and)) ball-busting single career woman." Or Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction, the crazed professional temptress -- beautiful, successful and mad as a hatter, thanks to the deafening tick of her biological clock. Or the Dress for Success models who, in Faludi's lethal description, "trip down the runway in stiletto heels, hands snug in dainty white gloves. Their briefcases swing like Easter baskets, feather light; they are, after all, empty."