in these new suburban communities, but most wives claim they are “too busy” to take on leadership positions. When women do volunteer, it’s often for minor, one-time events like bake sales, leaving men to handle substantial civic leadership roles.

Magazines examine the phenomenon of female boredom but generally conclude it’s just a woman’s fate. Friedan argues that full-time housewives aren’t engaged in mature work—studies indicate that an eight-year-old can perform most household chores—which is why they feel both bored and unfulfilled. Housewives strive to find some sense of fulfillment in their work and become authoritative within the home and their roles as domestic experts, but this effort is a tense and often futile one. Their attempt to find meaning in their work is an effort to gain some form of power or identity, to have a meaningful domain.

Besides exaggerating the importance of housework, housewives also place too much emphasis on sex as a source of fulfillment. Their intense pursuit of satisfaction through sex, whether with their spouse or through an affair, reflects their lack of fulfillment in other aspects of life. When these women demand more and better sex from their partners, or seek to recapture the intimacy they once felt earlier in their marriage, it indicates that they don't necessarily need better sex but rather more fulfilling lives overall. Ironically, the more women push for sex, the less interested men become.

Sex turns into a power struggle or a form of coercion. Because many women under the feminine mystique use sex to seek fulfillment, the media, movies, and popular novels are saturated with sexual references. Friedan notes that between 1950 and 1960, such references nearly doubled in some cases. However, this increase in sexual content is often mechanical and impersonal; the quantity of sex depicted does not equate to quality. Women interviewed by Friedan mention that their partners lose interest in sex as their own desire for it grows. This is paradoxical because, according to the feminine mystique, sex should fulfill these women or relieve their boredom, but it fails to do so.

Friedan points out that women’s desire to find meaning in their relationships and roles as housewives has a demoralizing or irritating effect on men. Men are increasingly having affairs, often to assert their independence rather than out of love for another woman, and they are starting to resent women’s control over the home. Additionally, some doctors report that women's heightened sexual and reproductive desires are sometimes leading to early menopause. The more a woman depends on sex for her identity, the more severe her complications during childbirth or recovery from gynecological procedures. Friedan also links the rising awareness of male homosexuality to the concurrent increase in women's sexual assertiveness, noting that while homosexuality has always existed, it is manifesting differently as women assert their sexual identities.

Analysis
The first four chapters of Friedan’s work define the feminine mystique and its context. The following four chapters discuss the institutionalized thinking in psychology, anthropology, and education that created and perpetuated it. Chapters nine through eleven reveal the devastating effects of the feminine mystique on the women it claims to fulfill and provide with purpose.

Friedan uncovers that consumerism, driven by advertising, is central to the feminine mystique. While magazines and stories may depict the ideal housewife, their true aim, she reveals, is to expose these housewives to advertisements found in magazine pages or during popular family TV shows. The language used by advertising agencies and their clients to discuss women acknowledges that women live in self-deception—they are unfulfilled, feel guilty about not using their minds, and are bored with their household duties. Instead of addressing the underlying truth many housewives suppress, advertisers seek to manipulate them into maintaining their deceptive lives. They promote products that make housewives more efficient—but not too efficient, as that would undermine the mystique's claim that housework is challenging. They advertise items that make a woman appear "modern" and capable of running a contemporary home.

What advertisers are truly promoting, Friedan notes, is the continuation of the feminine mystique. They encourage women to fill their shopping carts instead of confronting the emptiness of their daily routines. Advertisers and their clients have both financial and social interests in keeping women at home, using their products, rather than allowing them the freedom to pursue work and other interests outside the home. The belief is that if women frequently left the home or shifted their focus from "thing buying," the economy would collapse. Advertisers never consider a woman's happiness, mental health, or the possibility that she can both clean and engage in meaningful work. Women are seen merely as consumers whose sadness drives them to shop for products that offer only temporary relief. Perfect, the advertiser thinks—once that relief fades, she’ll shop again.

Friedan searches for a housewife who is genuinely fulfilled but finds only working women. The true housewives, as shaped by the mystique and advertising, are bored and depressed. They feel empty and speak in flat, lifeless tones. Many are using drugs, having affairs, or contemplating suicide. These women might not realize their housework is unfulfilling, but regardless, they often stretch it out all day—either to rationalize their work as more challenging than it is or because they lack motivation and have nothing meaningful to do once the housework is done. Friedan suggests this behavior is a symptom of the mystique's detrimental effects.

Another issue stemming from the mystique is that housewives tend to overemphasize sexuality in their relationships, seeking more frequent and emotionally intense sexual encounters with their partners. For women engulfed by the feminine mystique, sex becomes the sole domain where they feel "alive" or purposeful. The mystique's message that a woman's role is purely biological makes their fixation on sex somewhat understandable. When a woman's identity is confined to her sexual "achievements," frequent and intense sexual activity or repeated pregnancies become her primary objectives.

If a woman's only roles are as a procreator or a sexual object, she feels compelled to pursue frequent and meaningful sex to validate her importance. This overemphasis on sex, however, is actually eroding the very marriages the feminine mystique was supposed to strengthen. Men feel overwhelmed by their wives' constant sexual demands and are puzzled by what the women truly want. Meanwhile, women find their sex lives with their partners less fulfilling than anticipated and often resort to affairs, which also fail to provide the "identity" they seek from another man.

This dependence on sex underscores deeper issues introduced by the feminine mystique: women lack any intellectual or spiritual foundation for their identity. Under the mystique, they are reduced to mere bodies whose primary functions are cleaning and procreating.