The word essay derives from the French verb to try.
Perhaps one of the most famous essays ever written - The Problem That Has No Name was published by Betty Friedan in 1963 - was an attempt to put words to something very hard to explain. A creeping societal malaise that I think is still is alive and well in today’s consumer culture, albeit morphed into a different shape:
The problem of feeling ashamed that you’re not truly happy or fulfilled, despite seemingly having had your aspirations met.
Friedan points to a creeping, crushing dissatisfaction and deep ‘emptiness’ in white middle-class American housewives. For her, this nameless problem “is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.”
"The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years…a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning.”
A yearning for what? These were women who had it all. They were living the American Dream, with all the material comforts, stability and safety of a seemingly idyllic post-war lifestyle.
But Friedan, who interviewed many, many of these women, kept spotting the same pattern of unhappiness. This apparent contradiction has been dramatised over and over again in fiction and film. Just look at Betty in Mad Men or April in Revolutionary Road.
Cautionary tales
Betty Draper is the perfect wife with the perfect life. Her friends and community admire and envy her. But no matter how hard she tries, she remains, in her words: profoundly sad and empty. She turns to drink. She turns to the ‘shrink’. The knot cannot be untangled. But what she was feeling was real - so real it’s slowly killing her. Betty literally unravels as the seasons progress.
Kate Winslet’s character April in the movie adaptation of Richard Yates’ (divine, like near-everything he wrote) novel Revolutionary Road is violently torn between her duty as a housewife and mother, and her desire to self-actualise as an individual thinking woman. She bottles it up and weeps, becoming bitter and brittle, raging at her husband, played by Leo DiCaprio (who treats her as if she’s mentally ill…which she isn’t). Man, she should have gone to Paris.
The real-life versions of these women - however spoilt, privileged and sheltered we may see them as - were grieving losing themselves, their individualism, in pursuit of a life they’d been conditioned by society to aspire to. Such is the strength of social norms. Such is the power of aspiration and mimetic desire - our magnetic pull to align with the tribe.
These were women whose core (only?) means of self-expression was what they bought and consumed rather than through who they were and what they thought: shopping for new clothes and cosmetics, having their hair done, redecorating their homes, investing in new household gadgets and technologies, buying things for their children, planning holidays. They consumed the same few magazines, TV shows and radio programmes as each other. Which all normalised aspiring to this way of life. And discouraged thinking critically about it.
There were no individual hopes and dreams encouraged in these women. In fact they were conditioned to feel suspicious of women who pursued anything other than a good marriage, a couple of kids and a nice modern home in the ‘burbs. See: Lessons in Chemistry, a 1960s female chemist and strong, capable single mother treated with extreme derision.
But the whole thing was a construct. These women were contorting and erasing themselves to aspire to an idea someone else made up. Men like Don Draper.
"The suburban housewife—the myth, the dream—was born out of the minds of advertising men and reinforced a million times by the media, TV, commercials, books, newspapers—everywhere she looked, she saw herself in the images of long, gleaming kitchens and living rooms and backyard barbecues." - Betty Friedan
Post-war, America’s production lines and resources were freed up to create consumer goods in quantities never before seen. Buying things - new cars, washing machines, anything - was seen as a positive act, supporting the economy.
Economic progress, yes. Social progress, no!
But if anything, this was a back-slide from the 1920s-50s era when women’s voices were actually, finally, being listened to more than ever. Think of the famous literature of that era about heroic women. Or suffrage. The home front. Parisian intellectualism. The dawning of equality, e.g. legal formal education for girls and universities beginning to admit women.
But after WW2 an idea was constructed of the utopian woman who was not dangerous or disruptive, just safe, calm, perfect mothers and wives supporting the men and comforting the children. In Friedan’s opinion, by the early 60s when she was writing…it has gone too far.
Friedan’s essay (and her many other writings) sparked a movement. She became renowned, appearing on TV and speaking at universities. She was also roundly and rightly lambasted by black women, poor white women, and others that were excluded from her view of this women’s malaise. This wasn’t an all-woman issue. It was a privileged white women’s issue.
But what’s so interesting about this = it might be the first time anybody dared be this publicly honest about the actual notion of aspiration…and the bewilderment and disappointment - the shame - of finding your aspirations have been met, exceeded even, and still feeling unfulfilled, unhappy and lost.
I think it’s interesting because it’s still happening, every day, all over 21st Century consumer culture.
A wardrobe full of clothes but nothing to wear.
Stuff-ocation.
The misery caused by ever more unrealistic beauty standards.
Disillusionment with the career ladder and Corporate America.
The steady decline of our generation’s mental health.
The steady rise of the wellness industrial complex.
The % of folk who say they don’t feel fulfilled in their lives.
The barricades people are putting up against the systemic temptation of hyperconsumption - no-buys, deinfluencing, 75 Hard challenges. And finding ways to desperately express their own identity through fashion: the discourse on personal style, Allison B’s 3-word-method, having your colours done, identifying your Kibbe body shape, and so on.
So I think we still have a problem with no name. It’s changed and broadened out a lot since Friedan’s day, affecting many more of us than just those privileged white women, but still it lurks, don’t you think?
In this era of late-stage capitalist consumerism, it’s not all that unusual to feel a sense of emptiness or dissatisfaction despite ALL the material comfort and abundance we have access to. It’s not unusual to kind of lose yourself in the relentless pursuit of status and the constant pressure to consume and accumulate.
The pressure to align ourselves with societal/social norms of success and appearance has been creating feelings of emptiness, inadequacy or self-alienation (and debt) for decades. Back then it was keeping up with the Joneses and chasing the so-called American Dream. Right now it’s the pressure to stay ‘relevant’, and chasing highs with the short-term dopamine spikes of hyperconsumption.
Trying to contort and erase ourselves to fit the ideal of the day didn’t seem to work for those women back then, and it doesn’t seem to be working for everyone right now.
But like Friedan said, we need to look beyond ‘blaming’ the individual and take a long hard look at the system, the society, that made that person think this was what they wanted.
In fact, maybe the problem with no name now DOES have a name: herd aspiration, the insidious power of social norms, the corrosive effect of peer pressure. All dialled up to 11 in our 21st century screen-led lives, where we’re presented with a window into more people’s lives than ever before.
Like any problem, the solution starts with recognising it. Then doing something about it. Betty’s solution? Don’t just consume. Create.
"The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way." - Betty Friedan
Thanks for reading/see you next time.
Beth :)
Betty's story always hits so hard, and when she finally found something for herself in going back to school she then learns she's dying, it just really is a sad but profound note of her trajectory. Really hits the theme of a quietly unfulfilled life. Her line to Henry, when he asks why she'll still go to school knowing she's dying and what for- "What was it ever for?" still haunts me.
Wow, the parallels are so accurate!