Dinner With Betty by Abigail

Dinner With Betty by Abigail - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

“Man is not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.” This is from Betty Friedan’s most famous book, The Feminine Mystique. In this book she not only gave a name to the problem most women faced in the latter half of the 1900’s, but also gave reason for it. Through this book, Friedan helped extend women’s rights. Because of this I would love to have dinner with her!
Can you imagine? Like just as you sit down the steaming, main course meal she looks at you and you can tell she’s thinking about how far women have come. I see in her face all the hard work and dedication she had. I respect her beyond words. Because of her, society was able to look at its happenings and see that women were not happy and were being objectified. Women also saw that they were letting this happen.
Friedan was more than just someone who pointed out the corruption and the strangulation of women’s rights, but she embodied the women and gave a voice to them. She brought life into women to allow them to see what was happening and to show them the change had to start with them.
I don’t know about you, but I want to have dinner with someone like that, someone who keeps me accountable for my own life and forces me to change for the better. She pushed for women to not let anyone look down on them, and to certainly not believe that they are lower.
My dinner table would sit, untouched, as me and Friedan talked endless for hours. That would most certainly be a night I could never forget.