Some Words from Sylvia Plath and Betty Friedan's Forgotten Sister
Before <em>The Bell Jar</em> and <em>The Feminine Mystique</em>, another young Smith College grad had some sharp words for the cookie-cutter lives American women were expected to lead.
Thinkpieces about young American women written by young American women have a long, storied history, and the pages of The Atlantic Monthly were no exception. "The modern American female is one of the most discussed, written-about, sore subjects to come along in ages," author Nora Johnson wrote in her 1957 essay "Sex and the College Girl." "She has been said to be domineering, frigid, neurotic, repressed, and unfeminine. She tries to do everything at once and doesn't succeed in doing anything very well."
Written when Johnson was a 24-year-old graduate of Smith College, the essay articulates a dilemma faced by many
