Nancy Friday (born August 27, 1937) is an author who has written on the topics of female sexuality and liberation (with a small "l").
Her writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of womanhood which was outdated and restrictive, and largely unrepresentative of many women's true inner lives, and that openness about women's hidden lives could help free women to truly feel able to enjoy being themselves. She asserts that this is not due to deliberate malice, but due to social expectation, and that for women's and men's benefit alike it is healthier that both be able to be equally open, participatory and free to be accepted for who and what they are.
Biography
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Friday grew up in Charleston, South Carolina and was educated at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She worked briefly as a reporter for the San Juan Island Times and subsequently established herself as a magazine journalist in New York, England, Italy and France before turning to writing full time and publishing her first book, My Secret Garden, in 1973. This book, which compiled interviews of women discussing their sexuality and fantasies, became a bestseller; Friday has regularly returned to the interview format in her subsequent books on themes ranging from mothers and daughters to sexual fantasies, relationships, jealousy, envy, feminism and beauty.
A frequent guest on television and radio programs such as Politically Incorrect, Oprah, Larry King Live, Good Morning America and NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Friday also maintains a web site, which acts as a forum for development of new work and interaction with her diverse audience. As of 2005, Friday is currently working on her first novel.
She currently resides in Key West, and spends time in New York and Connecticut with her husband, Norman Pearlstine (Editor in Chief of Time Inc.) and her dog Bongo (a Shih Tzu). Despite the judgment of Ms. magazine ("This woman is not a feminist”) she has predicated her career on the belief that feminism and appreciation of men are not mutually exclusive concepts.
- Source: keywestliteraryseminar.org
Bibliography
- My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies, Simon & Schuster, 1973
- Forbidden Flowers: More Women’s Sexual Fantasies, Simon & Schuster, 1975
- My Mother, Myself: The Daughter’s Search for Identity, Delacorte Press, 1977
- Men in Love, Men’s Sexual Fantasies: The Triumph of Love Over Rage, Dell Publishing, 1980
- Jealousy, M. Evans & Co., 1985
- Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Sexual Fantasies, Simon & Schuster, 1991
- The Power of Beauty, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996
- Our Looks, Our Lives: Sex, Beauty, Power and the Need to be Seen, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999
External links
Last updated: 05-26-2005 21:09:16
