If there is one book that I need more women to read, then that book is The Feminine Mystique which was written by Betty Friedan, a prominent American feminist, sociologist and writer.
It is a book that explores what leads to most women abandoning their dreams for marriage, the fact that women are hardly saved by men and the way a lot of American women in the early 1950s still were not satisfied with their roles as stay home mothers.
Although The Feminine Mystique was published by an American woman in 1963, it is a book that I believe is relevant to every woman.
Especially every woman living in today’s world who continually gets bombarded with ways to be feminine on every social media app that she opens.
In the past five years, there has been an increase in people peddling ideas of feminine energy to women. The crux of these ideas is that there is a particular way women can act, talk and behave in order to get a rich man who would keep them as stay home wives.
Some go as far as saying that you must abandon any aspirations or a personality of yours if your goal is to be a stay home girlfriend to a man even.
Feminine energy rhetoric is one that also sees the promotion of concepts like hypergamy, lowering yourself and voice as a woman and in more recent times…aspiring to turn off your brain when with a man.
In the Nigerian context, feminine energy rhetoric is one that is seeing young women active on Tiktok especially, aspire to having “Odogwu’s” and being the “Emi Oga” and even third or fourth wife to rich man.
As an Igbo woman, I find it very perplexing how the word “Odogwu” went from being a gender neutral term that celebrated sheer strength and industriousness of character in both men and women…to being a word that speaks about a man who provides.
What fuels this behaviour can be traced not only to how women are praised for how desirable they are to men, but also to how the past five years have seen a decrease in the standard of living of most countries.
Women now see having a rich man as a better alternative to facing the harsh economic realities of today’s world. But the question is: “Is it really a better alternative?”.
Even more, does having a rich man as a partner actively translate to you also having access to the riches? Does embodying feminine energy or “resting in feminine energy” truly mean that you rest from the worry of where to get money for body lotion should your Odogwu decide to cut off your allowance?
Is it possible to really really “turn off your brain” and not be in a state of constant anxiety when you have birthed female children? Can you turn off your brain and rest when you know that the only way to access some measure of wealth long term is if you have a son?
Away from even the concept of wealth sharing and how feminine energy infuses a spirit of giving up into young girls, it is also important that feminine energy directly normalises the idea that grown women are to act like children.
It normalises that just like a father, a man in a relationship is to play an authoritarian role and lead a grown woman as though she were a child. It sees women as properties to romanticise being with men who direct every aspect of their lives and tell them what to do in the name of “leading, guiding and protecting”.
Would it be disingenuous then to state that Biblical submission and feminine energy are both twins born to the same parent called pedophilia? Why should a grown woman act like a child and be obsessed with showing men that she has no backbone or assertiveness that should naturally come with growing older?
Why is the idea of a woman with audacity, assertiveness and the financial wherewithal, so against the tenets of those who push for feminine energy? Is it because those who push it essentially want women to stay in situations where their dignity would be trampled upon because they are afraid to boldly call out bullshit and leave?
The honest truth is that there needs to be more questioning of why the attributes deemed “feminine” very often mean qualities that lead to low self esteem and being a doormat.
To be truly human, women must learn to speak up for themselves and be assertive. An assertive woman would never dream of “turning off her brain” because she knows that in any sane relationship, your thoughts must matter.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.