The ideal woman has always been conceptually overworked, an inorganic thing engineered to look natural. Historically, the ideal woman seeks all the things that women are trained to find fun and interesting—domesticity, physical self-improvement, male approval, the maintenance of congeniality, various forms of unpaid work. The concept of the ideal woman is just flexible enough to allow for a modicum of individuality; the ideal woman always believes she came up with herself on her own. In the Victorian era, she was the “angel in the house,” the demure, appealing wife and mother. In the fifties,
...more
