SOURCE: Richardson, Laurel. Review of Femininity, by Susan Brownmiller. Contemporary Sociology 14, no. 1 (January 1985): 80.

In the following review, Richardson offers a negative assessment of Femininity, criticizing the work for its overgeneralizations.

[In Femininity,] Susan Brownmiller sets herself the task of analyzing femininity as a survival strategy. She contends that femininity, built upon an aesthetic of powerlessness, is a “slippery subject to grapple with, for its contradictions are elusive, ephemeral and ultimately impressive” (19). Unfortunately, Brownmiller, a journalist, has not provided an organizing principle through which that elusiveness might be captured and our sociological understanding deepened.

Between the prologue and epilogue are eight chapters about the ways in which femininity is displayed: Their topics are the body, the hair, clothes, the voice, the skin, movement, emotion, and ambition. In her discussion of each substantive topic, she draws upon her own experiences and upon historical and cross-cultural evidence. In the “Body” chapter...