Ladies, the next time you decide you don't want to cook dinner that night, that you'd rather read a book instead... I want …Ladies, the next time you decide you don't want to cook dinner that night, that you'd rather read a book instead... I want you to give a little fist-bump to the heavens in honor of Betty Friedan. It's because of her that you even have that opportunity to make that choice.Let's clear something up right now - The Feminine Mystique is not a text on how to become a man-hating, radical, hairy-armpitted lesbian. If that's what you think this is about, my review isn't going to change your mind so you might as well just go shoot a ruffled grouse and make your woman cook it for you.The Feminine Mystique does, however, bring attention and awareness to the mystique that is femininity - that women are good for use of their wombs and their cooking skills and maybe one or two other things, so long as those things benefit the husband (and maybe the children) more than anyone else. Friedan noticed that there was this "problem that could not be named" (and no, it's not Voldemort), this increase in fatigue in women across the country, this deadness about them that made them want to sneak a few drinks when the kids were off to school or to pop a couple Valium while they vacuum the house every couple of days. What Friedan wanted to bring attention to was that it didn't need to be that way. That women could be educated, and they did not have to get married right after high school, that they could have a career as well as a family, if they so desired.Her thesis is that women stop growing after a certain point - for some women it's in grade school, for some women it's in high school. Even the women who went to college (keep in mind that this book was published in 1963 so her focus was primarily on the fifties in America) went just to hone their skills as a woman and to (hopefully) find a man. Once the ring …