ABSTRACT
This article takes as its starting point Naomi Wolf's claim that the argument of The Beauty Myth (1991) does not amount to a conspiracy theory. In order to understand what might cause her rhetorical insistence, the figuration of conspiracy is traced through the trajectory of popular American feminism from Betty Friedan to Wolf. A reading of The Feminine Mystique (Friedan, 1992) demonstrates its reliance on the cold war language of brainwashing, as well as a conspiracy theory of mass culture, in its description of being a housewife in the early 1960s. If the language of conspiracy provides Friedan with a metaphor which highlights the political dimension of personal experience, then an analysis of some of the feminist groupings later in the decade reveals an increasing literalization of the figure. A discussion of Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology (1984) provides the next key moment, leading to the observation that during the 1970s and 1980s the emphasis in popular feminism shifted from ‘naming the problem’ to the problem of naming. A close reading of the rhetorical strategies of The Beauty Myth indicates that Wolf's text marks a crisis point over the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical, centred on the notion of conspiracy. It emerges that what this textual anxiety points to is a deeper division between academic and popular feminism. In effect, this article argues that feminist cultural studies should seek to read popular feminism in a fashion similar to its engagement with popular culture.
