Why Do Young Women Today Like This 47 Year Old Book?

That a novel by Alix Kates Shulman, first published in 1972 is being embraced by young women today seems to suggest that we’ve made little progress on the issues like sexual harassment, job discrimination, the sexual double standard, rape, abortion the beauty standard and the impact of marriage and motherhood on women. Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen was a controversial book, excoriated by reviewers of the mainstream media when it first came out. Although much of the terrain covered is now well understood, young women today are chuckling with recognition of the same struggles that the protagonist waged in the 1950s.

Some victories haven’t been reversed but the backlash has whittled away at many women’s rights, according to Shulman in this interview on National Public Radio’s “All of It” https://www.wnyc.org/story/memoirs-ex-prom-queen-reissue/.

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