Do women dress for men or women? I’ve always wondered why that eternally provocative question is put in terms of approval - as if the heart of the matter, the answer, were indeed a question of approval by either sex. But the question is never satisfactorily answered because it is incorrectly posed. It’s disapproval, the fear of it, that motivates most women, and with disapproval it doesn’t matter where it comes from.

magazine (“This woman is not a feminist”)[citation needed] Nancy Friday has predicated her career on the belief that feminism and appreciation of men are not mutually exclusive concepts. Nice Girl”—of being “bombarded from birth with messages about what a ‘good woman’ is.

” Her writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of womanhood which was outdated and restrictive and largely unrepresentative of many women’s true inner lives and that openness about women’s hidden lives could help free women to truly feel able to enjoy being themselves. “Nancy Friday’s successful fantasy revelations (My Secret Garden Forbidden Flowers) have seen her placed among the feminist erotic pioneers.