The underlying message of many of the newest pop-psych books is that women who have problems with men are sick. The ”disease” is low self-esteem, and if you believe the self-help gurus (who preach, and sell, almost exclusively to women), it is an illness as inherently female as breast cancer. What varies from to book to book are the authors` attitudes toward career (the problem or the solution) and men (the enemy or the ultimate good). But all the books readily fall into three camps: those written by men advising women to ease up on this feminism stuff (”Hey, boys will be boys. If you tell him what you want, he`s gonna get nervous”); those written by women advising women to ease up on this feminism stuff (”If you insist on working, gals, don`t be surprised if the response to your rising income is no response, if you get my meaning”); and those written by women warning women that men are untrustworthy, awful. Only the last group, typified sickly by Sonya Friedman in ”Smart Cookies Don`t Crumble” (Pocket Books) and seriously by Susan Forward in her standout, ”Men Who Hate Women & The Women who Love Them”
(Bantam), blame the perpetrator for the crime. As Forward writes: ”The labeling of women in unhealthy relationships as masochistic . . . has long been standard practice. I was convinced that the men (in these relationships were) misogynists.”
But according to Ellen Rothman, author of ”Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America” (Harvard) and a research associate at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, the attitude toward women in the 19th Century was almost nauseatingly reverential. ”What is almost an eternal verity,” she explains, ”is the message that men are by nature untrustworthy and that women are by nature dependent on men. In the 19th Century that contradiction posed quite a trick for women: It was their responsibility to create a home in which their husbands and sons could be renewed and purified from the negative aspects of the workplace, but they had to make sure they didn`t make the men too domestic, too comfortable.
Women didn`t feel they could ask their mothers for help in living up to these new standards of womanhood created by the demands of middle-class domesticity, so they turned to advice literature.
”What`s a real switch from the 19th Century,” Rothman concludes, ”is this whole question of low self-esteem. That`s a problem that was named only with the birth of the women`s movement; the shame is in how it`s been appropriated.”
Betty Friedan called it the problem that had no name. So she gave it one. What happened next was that authors, some scrupulous and some not, took advantage of the natural ambivalence of women socialized to do one thing and wanting, sort of, to do another. Women knew they were supposed to be able to make it on their own, so Penelope Russianoff asked, ”Why Do I Think I`m Nothing Without a Man?” (Bantam).
The clever titles reflected the slickness of these book`s feminist rhetoric while hiding their antifeminist message: Women should feel responsible for their failure to change attitudes established by millennia of experience.
With ”Men Are Just Desserts” (Warner`s), Sonya Friedman latched onto a metaphor American women could understand: food. Indeed the titles of her books, including ”Smart Cookies Don`t Crumble” and ”A Hero Is More Than Just a Sandwich” (Putnam), are more appropriate to a deli menu than ”Books In Print.” Every woman knows that desserts are only for special occasions, and likewise, Friedman implied, men are dispensable. Her brilliance, and it was that, was in understanding that most women are familiar with the conflicting feeling of hating fat and loving food; some even turn that dissonance into a motivation for starvation. Now, she suggested, women could turn their love/hate for the crummy men in their lives into a motivation for independence.
But perhaps most telling of the trend toward psychomedical makeovers are the smarmy ”Smart Women/Foolish Choices” (Signet), by Connell Cowan and Melvyn Kinder, and Bebe Moore Campbell`s pseudoliberated ”Successful Women, Angry Men” (Random House).
The titles of these books, with the cadence of a Brahms symphony, or of a pitching sailboat about to keel over, tell the story: backward and forward, compare and contrast, contradiction upon contradiction. You can do one thing, they sing-song in their schizophrenogenic way, or you can be lonely. You can be successful, or you can be loved. It`s all up to you.
Actually trying to do everything that Cowan and Kinder recommend would probably drive you crazy. They suggest that a woman be honest with a man, but remember that the uncertainty stimulated by ”a woman who breaks dates . . . or comes home late and is slightly vague will . . . motivate him to reembark on romantic adventures.” They share their insight that men (as opposed to women?) have ”a strong need to maintain their sexual self-esteem,” and they take the time to remind us that men, the poor dogs,
”experience a great deal of stress and pressure.” Oh, jump in a lake!
It`s no wonder that women are feeling desperate enough to buy a book with a title as off-putting, and as embarrassing, as ”Men Who Hate Women & The Women Who Love Them.” Certainly the problem that Forward so admirably addresses–women involved with men who undermine, abuse, hate them–used to be something you didn`t read about in public. But in the world of the self-help book, discretion is a bad habit; breezy case studies of Karen`s misery, of Rachel`s newfound strength turn voyeurism into clinical data. What is extraordinary about Forward`s book, however, is the awfulness of the men she`s describing, ego-bruisers all, armbreakers some. It was with a sigh of relief that I greeted the three short paragraphs, relegated to the last chapter,
”Not Every Man Is a Misogynist.” Thank God for understatement.
Sonya Friedman, who, when you get down to it, just wants all women to have gainful employment, also thinks men are pretty dreadful; but her advice, unlike Forward`s straightforward ”pull yourself together; get out if you have to,” borders on the bizarre. In ”Smart Cookies Don`t Crumble” she recommends ”creative revenge”–the old ”Don`t get mad, get even.” But her example, the story of Cara, made me blush. It seems Cara had worked for days preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her ingrate of a husband`s family. He met her effort by asking everyone to agree that she was a lousy cook. Here`s what happened next: ”Without even looking at him, Cara reached over casually for a roll and said loudly, clearly and sweetly, `Tell you what, Jack. I`ll work on my cooking and you work on your lovemaking!` ” This is supposed to make you feel better?
Why, I want to know, are women reading this drivel? And where are the men? When I asked Stephen Rubin, vice president and editorial director of Bantam Books, if he would publish a book called ”Women Who Hate Men & The Men Who Love Them,” he hesitated before saying no: ”Men don`t buy these kinds of books.”
It`s time that women said no to the majority of self-help books addressed to them.
It`s time they said no to feeling reponsible for everybody`s happiness.
It`s time that women put blame on the men who deserve it and thank (and love) the ones who don`t.
Most of us had mothers who gave us all the now-pricey advice for free, anyway. You know, ”Talk about what interests him.” Or, ”Why should he buy the cow if he can get the milk for free?” But if there`s one thing that liberation should have taught us, it`s that ”she asked for it” is as unsuitable a response in a relationship as it is in a rape trail.
