Book Review

The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter March/April, 2000, Vol. 7, Number 2. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (William Morrow & Co., 1999) 662 pp. by Susan Faludi Reviewed by Meri Ann Merikoski

W hen Susan Faludi's first book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, was published in 1991, I was entering my senior year in college. Women on campus carried the tome under their arms as they shuttled across the quads between classes. The eye-catching red, white, and blue cover became like a secret handshake among young self-declared feminists, who gave each other knowing looks of recognition when catching a glimpse of it stuffed under a woolen overcoat. What Faludi did in Backlash was to breathe new life into what, at the time, was essentially a floundering feminist movement. Her book enabled women frustrated or disappointed by the feminist movement to see that a large part of the problem lay not only within the movement itself, but also in a culture that refused to accept the progress women had made. Ms. Faludi's almost painfully detailed work methodically deconstructed literally hundreds of false or wrong-headed portrayals of women by the American media. Backlash became what Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique had been for a previous generation: a feminist rallying cry that spoke to all segments of a fragmented movement.

Admittedly, Backlash was a tough act to follow, but Susan Faludi has taken her best shot, and last year gave us Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. Perhaps the fact that the author had chosen another provocative, colon-containing name for yet another exhaustive treatise (608 pages) ought to have tipped me off that I was going to have to work hard to make it through this oeuvre. Faludi attempts, in Stiffed, to explain that men have fallen prey to the cultural mythologizing of maleness and masculinity. Her premise is that men are plagued by overwhelming pressure to live up to a masculine ideal that is both rigidly unachievable and constantly shifting.

"Her premise is that men are plagued by overwhelming pressure to live up to a masculine ideal that is both rigidly unachievable and constantly shifting."

Stiffed takes the reader through three generations of American manhood starting with America during World War 11, and the men that came home from a glorious battle to father the baby boom generation that would be the first to experience this identity crisis of masculinity. As Faludi writes, "The United States came out of World War II with a sense of itself as a masculine nation, our 'boys' ready to assume the mantle of national authority and international leadership." Growing up in the shadow of men who had served their country so famously led some baby boomers to feel purposeless, unneeded. The author traces this male malaise from post-WWII suburbia through the Vietnam controversy, NASA space program down-sizing, the standoff at Waco, hazing at the Citadel, the sexual aggressions of the teenage Spur Posse in 90's L.A., the departure of the Browns football team from Cleveland, not-so-intimate bonding sessions of Promise Keepers in arenas across the country,and Sylvester Stallone's own personal masculine identity crisis. And that's just the beginning.

For most of her career, Ms. Faludi has been a hard-nosed journalist, writing for such publications as "The New Yorker", "The Nation", and "Newsweek". She even won a Pulitzer Prize for her chronicling of how corporate restructuring affected workers at the Safeway grocery chain. Faludi has never (that I have seen) eschewed the title of feminist author; indeed, she has often embraced it. Now, with two major works of non-fiction under her belt, she is seen as a "serious" author. But the transition has not been an easy one for her readers. Backlash and Stiffed are both journalistic in tone, consisting of years of mind-bogglingly careful research and interviews. (Stiffed contains 40 pages of footnotes.) For her dedication to penetrating accuracy, Ms. Faludi deserves praise. However, as a reader, the thoroughness can sometimes be daunting, if not annoying. Perhaps it's because I'm no longer a twenty-year old college student looking for a cause, but I have to admit that I put Stiffed down more than once because I was quite simply overloaded with information. Faludi's investigative style could desperately have used better editing, and none of her "message" would have suffered in the process.

Nonetheless, the stories in the pages of Stiffed are truly incredible descriptions of the pressures on men to "be men". Particularly disturbing are the accounts of hazing rituals at the Citadel military academy in South Carolina. Faludi describes in horrific detail the acts of, quite simply, torture inflicted on first-year cadets.

"What was, at its best, a strategy for replicating a mother-child relationship in masculine terms out of view of female inspection was becoming, at its worst, a sadomasochistic relationship in which what was 'feminine' had to be brutally crushed."

Though she never really gets at why these young men commit acts of forcible sodomy against each other, the author does get at the crisis of sexual identity that these acts suggest. For example, the author describes how upperclassmen belittle younger cadets by calling them various misogynist epithets, as though nothing could be worse than being called a "pansy". In reference to the hazing rituals as a means of bonding, Faludi writes: "What was, at its best, a strategy for replicating a mother-child relationship in masculine terms out of view of female inspection was becoming, at its worst, a sadomasochistic relationship in which what was 'feminine' had to be brutally crushed." Her relentless investigation later turns up the most fascinating twist in this tale of militaristic uber-masculinity drag queens at a nearby gay bar date cadets on a regular basis. One performer in particular explains that, besides sexual intimacy, these cadets form relationships with the drag queens because they are so desperately in need of someone to talk to after months of physical and psychological torture. That Faludi succeeds in portraying the young men at the Citadel in an even remotely sympathetic light is no small feat.

Eight years after Backlash was published, Susan Faludi attempts to repeat her ground-breaking analysis of gender roles in Stiffed. This second work is not nearly as successful, largely because it gets lost in its own journalistic meanderings. Faludi also appears to suffer from some confusion about whether she wants to be a serious journalist or a best-selling author. On December 16th of last year, Faludi made a book-promoting appearance on the daytime talk show "Leeza", accompanied by one of her subjects, a young man from L.A. whose infamy derived from having had sex with sixty-six women. This Leeza appearance was a far cry from the galvanizing book tour lectures that followed the release of Backlash. But then again, would you want to be responsible for promoting a 600-page discourse on the decline of the American masculine ideal?

Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women" (Anchor Books, 1992) which won the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Her articles have appeared in Newsweek, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Nation, and The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.