Following in the footsteps of Vance Packard`s, The Hidden Persuaders(1957), and drawing on material from an extended interview with one of Madison Avenue`s Mad Men, Friedan also exposes how the advertising industry helped underpin the feminine mystique. What is striking about the book`s treatment of the topic is the appreciation shown for its complexity. The intention may be to sell women as many consumer goods as possible but to do this, subtle tactics have to be used. Thus, although appliances to make housework easier are fine, housewives must be made to feel that they have an active role - even it is only to make the wise choice of the best appliance. Similarly, a cake- mix or a can of food requires the preparer to do something to create the meal other than simply heating it up. Advertisers understand that wives and mothers want the drudgery of their lives removed but only up to a certain point; otherwise guilt about not being a good homemaker is triggered.
Friedan`s recognition of the neo-scientific approach of the advertising industry to selling to women is certainly one of the strengths of The Feminine Mystique and one of the reasons for its appeal. Readers are taken behind the glossy surface of the ads to uncover the hidden ways in which they are manipulated to behave as the commercial world wishes. Thus, the seemingly innocent Department Store is presented as a site on which women can be `educated` to appreciate the multiplicity of consumer goods available and to make choices in accordance with either her current or her wished-for social-status. Even the partially repressed longing to escape the feminine mystique, at least temporarily, provides a selling opportunity for the sales-person; a car, for example, may become a source of `one`s re-conquered privacy`. Advertising and consumerism are then for Friedan, `the most powerful perpetuators of the feminine mystique... it is their millions which blanket the land with persuasive images, flattering the American housewife, diverting her guilt and disguising her growing sense of emptiness.` At the root of the exploitation is a `sick society` that underestimates women and `chooses to ignore` their strength. Making connections between the specific and the general, Friedan demystifies the messages of advertising to write a damning indictment of the times - an indictment that puts women at the very centre of things.
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