Susan Faludi
Susan Faludi is a prominent American journalist and feminist known for her critical examination of gender portrayal in media. Born in 1959, Faludi grew up in a family that encouraged her outspoken nature, influencing her later work in journalism. She gained significant recognition with her book "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women" (1991), which critiques media narratives that undermine feminism and explores the societal backlash against women's rights in the 1980s. Faludi's investigative approach is evident in her Pulitzer Prize-winning piece on corporate layoffs, showcasing her ability to tackle complex topics.
Her subsequent book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man" (1999), shifts focus to the emotional struggles men face due to evolving gender roles. In "The Terror Dream" (2007), she analyzes the post-9/11 media portrayal of masculinity and femininity, critiquing the return to traditional gender norms. Faludi's work emphasizes the need for both men and women to resist cultural definitions of their identities. Her writing has sparked important dialogues about feminism, generational differences in feminist thought, and the impact of media on gender roles, making her a significant voice in contemporary discussions on gender and society.
Susan Faludi
Journalist
- Born: April 18, 1959
- Place of Birth: New York, New York
JOURNALIST AND FEMINIST
Faludi, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, is best known for her reporting on and critique of gender portrayal in American media. Her widely recognized book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women(1991), explores women’s roles in society and the media’s attack on feminism.
AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT: Journalism; women’s rights
Early Life
Susan Faludi was born in 1959 to Steven Faludi, a photographer, and Marilyn Lanning Faludi, a writer and an editor. Susan Faludi’s parents no doubt influenced her propensity for outspokenness and telling the truth. Faludi’s father, a Hungarian Jew who hid in a cellar with his family during the Holocaust, shared with her his love of woodworking, chemistry, and other uncommon activities for a young girl. Furthermore, her father spoke with his daughter about advanced topics and issues, such as the function of the Federal Reserve Board. However, while Faludi’s father was progressive in his daughter’s upbringing, he reserved traditional gender roles for his wife.
Faludi’s mother lived a traditional marital role for many years, but her frustration with its limitations led her to divorce her husband. Faludi credits her mother’s experience as illuminating her understanding of the limiting power of gender roles.
Faludi showed signs of a talent for journalism in fifth grade when she conducted a survey of her peers on their views of the war in Vietnam, the legalization of abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Perhaps foreshadowing the controversy her later works would create, the survey gained attention from leaders of the local John Birch Society, a conservative organization, who accused Faludi of inciting communism. Nevertheless, this early experience did not diminish Faludi’s attraction to journalism. In high school, as editor of the school’s newspaper, she wrote articles about the separation of church and state, and these put a halt to Christian meetings on the school’s campus.
Faludi attended Harvard University on a scholarship, and she became managing editor of the Harvard Crimson. When she wrote about sexual harassment on campus, it resulted in the reprimand of a Harvard professor. In 1981, Faludi graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and received an Oliver Dabney History Award for her senior thesis. After graduation, Faludi went to work at the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and West Magazine, and she became a contributor to Mother Jones, Ms., and California Business.
Life’s Work
In 1990, while working as a staff writer for the San Francisco bureau of the Wall Street Journal, Faludi wrote an article about the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, which resulted in a massive layoff of Safeway employees. The Pulitzer Prize jury was impressed with her ability to report on such a complex topic, and Faludi was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 1991.
In 1986, Newsweek published a marriage study stating that a college-educated, thirty-year-old woman had a 20 percent chance of getting married; at thirty-five years old, the woman’s chances dropped to 5 percent; and, at age forty, she had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married. Skeptical of this research, Faludi took time off from her job at West Magazine to look into the study. After contacting the US Census Bureau, Faludi found that the researcher’s methodology and conclusions were questionable. Yet, the media ignored her findings, leading Faludi to write Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (1991).
In Backlash, Faludi not only exposes the myths of the American media and the antifeminist icons used to create a backlash against feminism in the 1980s but also uncovers the repercussions this backlash had for American women. Faludi makes this argument by refuting popular statistical research about the devastating effects of women’s liberation, examining the ways popular culture promoted a feminist backlash through press trends, and the political climate of the 1980s.
Following its publication in 1991, Backlash climbed the bestseller list and won a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 1992. While wildly popular, Backlash was also heavily criticized. Common critiques included skepticism of her sources and the assertion that Faludi believed women were unable to take control of their own lives, allowing the media to influence their decisions.
Her findings in Backlash led Faludi to wonder why male resistance to feminism was so strong. As a result, she spent six years asking men to answer this question. This research led her to refocus her research on the limiting and emotionally damaging effects cultural standards of masculinity have on men. The result of her research was Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (1999). Stiffed recounts the experiences of men from different backgrounds and occupations who feel emasculated in a world where traditional views of masculinity are changing. Faludi identifies these feelings as a symptom of capitalism, which has made it difficult for working-class men to sufficiently support their families.
Faludi’s conclusion from her findings in Backlash and Stiffed is that both men and women must refuse to allow American culture and media to define and dictate their lives and societal status. Her interest in gender roles inspired her to write another book on the media’s treatment of men and women. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (2007) examines the reactionary return to traditional gender and familial roles provoked by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on American soil. Faludi points out the media played a large role in promoting these ideas through its depiction of men as protectors and women as fragile creatures in the wake of the attacks.
In 2016 Faludi wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, “Not Their Mother’s Candidate,” which examined generational differences between older feminists and younger feminists regarding the 2016 Democratic presidential primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Faludi cites the results of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, in which women under thirty voted for Sanders 4:1, while women sixty-five and older voted for Clinton 2:1. Faludi, a Clinton supporter, analyzes these and other differences and urges understanding between feminists from different generations toward each other because “the lives of underprivileged women of all ages and races” are at stake in the general election. She won the Kirkus Prize and was a Pulitizer for Biography finalist for her 2016 work In the Darkroom, which is about transsexuality. Faludi has said she was inspired to write the book by her father who came out as a transgender woman.
Significance
Faludi’s ability to speak up in the face of controversy contributes to the ongoing conversation on gender roles in American society. Her commentary on how the media and the political climate impose gender roles provides readers with a fresh perspective on how culture influences their everyday lives. Faludi’s focus on gender brings a feminist perspective to everyday Americans. In an era when feminist theory is often reserved for academics, Faludi is critical of academic feminism, which she believes to be elitist and inaccessible to nonacademic individuals. Yet, Faludi’s journalism, free of jargon and terminology, allows readers to critically analyze gender with a feminist perspective, keeping feminism in the public eye.
Bibliography
Bennett, Jessica. "I Saw 'Barbie' With Susan Faludi, and She Has a Theory About It." The New York Times, 25 June 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/barbie-movie-faludi-feminism.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.
Browne, Victoria. “Backlash, Repetition, Untimeliness: The Temporal Dynamics of Feminist Politics.” Hypatia 28.4 (2013): 905–20. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Chin, Paula. “Male-ady.” People 53.6 (1999): 143–46. Print.
Conniff, Ruth. “Susan Faludi.” Progressive 57.6 (1993): 35–40. Print.
Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women. 15th anniversary ed. New York: Three Rivers, 2006.
Faludi, Susan. “Not Their Mother’s Candidate.” New York Times. New York Times, 13 Feb. 2016. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. New York: Morrow, 1999. Print.
Faludi, Susan. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. New York: Metropolitan, 2007. Print.