Free The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

the advertisements for fabulous real estate, furs and jewels. Nowadays the uniformity of the year’s fashions is severely affected by the emergence of the pert female designers in Britain who direct their appeal to the working girl, emphasizing variety, comfort, and simple, striking effects. There is no longer a single face of the

    year: even Twiggy has had to withdraw into marketing and rationed personal appearances, while the Shrimp works mostly in New York. Nevertheless the stereotype is still supreme. She has simply allowed herself a little more variation.
    The stereotype is the Eternal Feminine. She is the Sexual Object sought by all men, and by all women. She is of neither sex, for she has herself no sex at all. Her value is solely attested by the demand she excites in others. All she must contribute is her existence. She need achieve nothing, for she is the reward of achievement. She need never give positive evidence of her moral character because virtue is assumed from her loveliness, and her passivity. If any man who has no right to her be found with her she will not be punished, for she is morally neuter. The matter is solely one of male rivalry. Inno- cently she may drive men to madness and war. The more trouble she can cause, the more her stocks go up, for possession of her means more the more demand she excites. Nobody wants a girl whose beauty is imperceptible to all but him; and so men welcome the stereotype because it directs their taste into the most commonly re- cognized areas of value, although they may protest because some aspects of it do not tally with their

    The myth of the strong black woman is the other side of the coin of the myth of the beautiful dumb blonde. The white man turned the white woman into a weak-minded, weak-bodied, delicate freak, a sex pot, and placed her on
    a pedestal; he turned the black woman into a strong self-reliant Amazon and deposited her in his kitchen…The
    white man turned himself into the Omnipotent Administrator and established himself in the Front Office.
    Eldridge Cleaver, The Allegory of the Black Eunuchs,
    ‘Soul on Ice’, 1968, p. 162

    fetishes. There is scope in the stereotype’s variety for most fetishes. The leg man may follow mini-skirts, the

    tit man can encourage see-through blouses and plunging necklines, although the man who likes fat women may feel constrained to enjoy them in secret. There are stringent limits to the variations on the stereotype, for nothing must interfere with her function as sex object. She may wear leather, as long as she cannot actually handle a motor- bike: she may wear rubber, but it ought not to indicate that she is an expert diver or water-skier. If she wears athletic clothes the pur- pose is to underline her unathleticism. She may sit astride a horse, looking soft and curvy, but she must not couch over its neck with her rump in the air.

    She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.
    Mary Wollstonecraft, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’, 1792, p. 66

    Because she is the emblem of spending ability and the chief spender, she is also the most effective seller of this world’s goods. Every survey ever held has shown that the image of an attractive woman is the most effective advertising gimmick. She may sit astride the mudguard of a new car, or step into it ablaze with jewels; she may lie at a man’s feet stroking his new socks; she may hold the petrol pump in a challenging pose, or dance through woodland glades in slow motion in all the glory of a new shampoo; whatever she does her image sells. The gynolatry of our civilization is written large upon its face, upon hoardings, cinema screens, television, newspapers, magazines, tins, packets, cartons, bottles, all consecrated to the reigning deity, the female fetish. Her dominion must not be thought to entail the rule of women, for she is not a woman. Her glossy lips and matt