Housewives! They’re all the rage. Good thing Betty Friedan isn’t around to hear about it. Today marks the 50th anniversary of “The Feminine Mystique,” Friedan’s groundbreaking study of housewives’ simmering frustration, which set millions of women on the path to being liberated from domestic servitude.
And what do we have to show for it today? A franchise of top-rated reality shows that feature the exploits of shrill, plastic-surgeried women, most of whom have based their entire identities on being married to rich guys. To paraphrase Lena Dunham, it makes you want to go hide under Gloria Steinem’s bed.
It wasn’t always this bleak. In the years after “The Feminine Mystique” spread like wildfire, its progressive effect on TV families was palpable. On the small screen, one role-questioning housewife led to another who actually went out and got a job.
Where Barbara Billingsley and Donna Reed were picture-perfect domestic angels on “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show,” respectively, Mary Tyler Moore’s Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” became the first housewife to wear pants on TV — and not just pants, but tight, stylish capris. (She may not have worn the pants in the family, but she did wear pants.)
“All in the Family” introduced Jean Stapleton as long-suffering housewife Edith Bunker. Despite her outward doormat trappings, she could show spine, occasionally calling out her husband for his boorishness.
She even grew bold enough to split from Archie’s conservative views, admitting in one episode that she’d voted for Jimmy Carter. She gave voice to 1970s women who were openly questioning their allegiances to home, housework and the notion of the man as the head of the household. (More than understandable with a lout like Archie as the embodiment of the American husband.)
On “One Day at a Time,” Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin) accomplished what loyal Edith never contemplated. Ann dumped her husband in a bid for self-actualization, and became one of the first divorced single mothers on TV.
The apex of Friedan’s vision arrived with “The Cosby Show,” in which Phylicia Rashad’s impeccably perfect Clair became a worldwide symbol of equality. With her unassailable style and distinct air of authority, she made the very notion of subservient women seem suddenly vestigial. Just try imagining Cliff Huxtable ordering his wife to do the dishes or stop working. You can’t.
Clair, however, was just an ideal. It took Roseanne Barr to take liberation and get down in the dirt with it. “Roseanne” showed a grittier, blue-collar vision of womanhood that was more like viewers’ own lives. Where the Huxtables were, for the most part, true equals, Roseanne was a benevolent dictator whose quarrels with hubbie John Goodman never left any doubt who was in charge of the Conner household.
But just when women had proved their might, a slow tide of subservience trickled back in. The year after “Roseanne” went off the air, “Sex and the City” debuted and with it Kristin Davis’ Charlotte, who actively envisioned marrying rich and quitting her gallery job. She would discover her dreams of marrying the perfect man, getting pregnant and being a society wife were empty, but found happiness with a less glamorous incarnation: a schlubby lawyer husband, an adopted Chinese daughter and a definitive lack of employment.
Then came the big-H Housewives — first Desperate, then Real. “Desperate Housewives” celebrated a new icon, Eva Longoria’s Gabrielle. With her killer wardrobe, glossy Ferrari and a succession of paramours, she represented a depressingly retro idea of women who secretly (or not so secretly) long for the simplicity of not having to worry about anything. The word “housewife” had gone from meaning “unpaid domestic labor,” in Friedan’s day, to being able to take it really, really easy while your man hands you cash and stays out of your way.
“The Real Housewives of Orange County,” launched in 2006, was a true-life counterpart to ”Desperate Housewives,” but quickly took on a life of its own. There are six “Real” shows running today, with no signs of declining popularity. Six casts of women who are — as The Post’s own Linda Stasi has described it — “Jerry Springer in designer duds.”
These quintessential fame whores do their best to reinstate the feminine mystique: that “the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity.”
To wit, consider some of their personal mottoes: “Am I high-maintenance? Of course I am. Look at me!” (Tamra Barney, O.C.)
“I’m the ultimate Southern belle. I get what I want.” (Phaedra Parks, Atlanta)
“I don’t make money, I spend money.” (Mary Schmidt Amons, D.C.).
So much for Friedan’s dream that women would “realize that neither her husband nor her children, nor the things in her house, nor sex, nor being like all the other women, can give her a self.” For today’s Real Housewives — and their millions of fans — it nearly seems time to start the fight all over again.