• DOI:10.1353/RAP.2003.0028
• Corpus ID: 143094250

Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology

@article{Dow2003FeminismMA,
  title={Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology},
  author={Bonnie J. Dow},
  journal={Rhetoric \& Public Affairs},
  year={2003},
  volume={6},
  pages={127 - 149}
}

• Bonnie J. Dow
• Published 30 April 2003
• Art
• Rhetoric & Public Affairs

When Joanna, the central protagonist in The Stepford Wives, utters these words in a conversation with her best friend, she is discussing the formation of a feminist consciousness-raising group. Both women feel stifled by the atmosphere in Stepford, Connecticut, the New York suburb to which they recently have moved with their families. In Stepford, as anyone familiar with the film remembers, formerly strong-willed, dynamic women are mysteriously transformed into perfectly groomed, robotic beings obsessed with housekeeping and the sexual satisfaction of their husbands, a fate that Joanna and her friend are desperate to avoid. The Stepford Wives was released in 1975, at the end of what historian Alice Echols has called the peak period of radical feminist activity in the United States,1 and the second wave of feminism is, in many ways, the subtext required for making complete sense of the film. Seen in its original historical context, The Stepford Wives is a feminist horror film. It argues that American men, given the opportunity, would erase their wives’ individuality by literally killing them and replacing them with identical automatons dedicated to domestic chores and sexual service. Despite their invocation of feminism, Joanna and her friend are no match for the forces of evil, and both become Stepford wives by the end of the film. Indeed, after the film’s release, Stepford wife FORUM