After years of obsessing over the issue, Andelin, however, had come to a much different conclusion than Friedan: To experience happiness in marriage, women should be utterly submissive, defer to their husbands in all things, change their personalities, maintain trim figures, deny themselves of all optional activities, ball their fists and stomp their feet like petulant children when angry, wear ribbons in their hair, and act helpless and dumb. Concurrently, Betty Friedan made the same observation and famously published her perceived solution in The Feminine Mystique, the book widely credited as the catalyst for second-wave feminism in America. Neuffer’s new book, Helen Andelin and the Fascinating Womanhood Movement, gives an unprecedented look into the personal experiences and social/political climate that spurred Andelin’s pursuit of an antidote for divorce, the growth of her idea into an international enterprise, and the supposed enemies she made along the way (“…the feminists, the abortionists, the liberals, the BYU Family Relations Department, and the General Presidency of the Relief Society.”)Ĭoncerned by rising malaise among housewives, Andelin considered it a calling from God to find the cure. Thanks to historian and author Julie Debra Neuffer, that situation has now been rectified. Up until ten days ago, I’d never even heard of Fascinating Womanhood, a how-to-save-your-marriage manual- cum-lifestyle popularized by a Mormon housewife in the early 60s.