What Measure is a Non-Woman?

Both of the readings deal with the specific problem of a woman's everyday life, something which can generally be accepted as different from a man's but doesn't seem to have been specifically addressed in our earlier readings.

Much of how Giard describes cooking makes it seem like one of de Certeau's tactics; she would come up with her own unique individual methods of meal preparation within the strategic framework of tradition, of the media and of inherited memories and sensory pleasures. I found her use of the phrase "a very ordinary intelligence" particularly compelling, because it evokes the idea of the common and everyday as well as the special talents, memories and actions of the individual, syncretizing both without ignoring either. She then brings up the point of the self-immersion that comes with cooking, in contrast to the alienation of everyday work (which, in this case, does not seem to mean housewifely duties).

The fact that Giard appears to relish in the idea of cooking stands, to me, in stark contrast to Friedan's nameless problem of femininity. Where Giard takes pleasure in the act, Friedan describes it as one of many actions which women were finding themselves distanced from; they did not object to the act of cooking itself, but the apparently unquestioned performing of it made them feel unfulfilled.

I noticed the use of the phrase "female anomie" in the introduction to Friedan's text - anomie referring to a lack of ethical or social standards. This seems to imply that in the mere reproduction of expectations of femininity, women of the '50s and '60s had turned those expectations into an unspoken code of ethics. Women who felt dissatisfaction with those standards would thus perceive themselves as being dissatisfied with the ethical framework of society, leading to cognitive dissonance and desperation, then a search for some kind of resolution. But there could be no resolution, because to do so would be to accept an alternative code of ethics at odds with the standards of the time. I don't know much about the history of the feminist movement, but I feel like we haven't completely developed past those standards of femininity, only added some alternative archetypes like the successful businesswoman and female scholar.