Wonderwoman: Comic Myth or Idealized Icon?, NeMLA 2018
We know the four tenets of True Womanhood and understand the Feminine Mystique. But, today, what gender role prescriptions still proliferate concerning domesticity and work, family affairs and public relationships? Anne-Marie Slaughter tells us women still can’t have it all. Barbara Spar shreds the Superwoman myth. But, Ariana Huffington tells us we can THRIVE if we just have the third metric. These three notably professional women have differing views. Can and should women decorate like the Gaines, cook like the Barefoot Contessa, thrive professionally like Huffington, be sexy as Kim Kardashian, not miss kids’ soccer practices, and all the while smiling? Has or can contemporary women break out of the American ideological boundaries?