Prescriptions about female behavior, Solnit notes, are often disingenuously expressed in terms of happiness—as if we really want women to be beautiful, selfless, hardworking wives and mothers because that’s what will make them happy, when models of female happiness have always tended to benefit men and economically handicap women (and are still, as with the term “girlboss,” often defined in reference to male power even when theorized in an ostensibly emancipatory way). But even when women get married, look beautiful, have children, et cetera, they are still often found deficient, Solnit
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