Although The Second Sex was written in 1952, even before the heyday of feminism, I found many of Simone de Beauvoir"s 50+-year old observations disturbingly, disappointingly, relevant. In today"s world (and I am sure this is the same in France, even if not in all other areas of the world) women have much more economic autonomy than in the 1950"s, when they choose to exercise it. Today, a woman can far more easily choose to marry or not; marry early or late; have children or not; divorce; remarry. Her "otherness" (as Beauvoir puts it) is still there, but it restricts her less than it did in the past. In the 1950"s, probably more in Europe than in America, female autonomy of any kind was harder to exercise. Women who insisted on it anyway risked ridicule, ostracism, harassment, loneliness, economic instability, poverty. There was enormous stigma attached to being labeled a "divorcee"; "single parent" or "spinster" (a never-married woman). Today, no one bats an eye. Routinely women make a wide range of personal choices without criticism or censure. .

             Still, the "femininity" issues Simone de Beauvoir raises have current relevancy. There is as much or more pressure on women now to be beautiful, thin, sexy, pleasing to the male eye. If a woman nowadays seeks a job, and she is, say, overweight, disabled, scarred, pock-marked, o otherwise unattractive to men (although, interestingly, other women also buy into this) she still has less chance of being offered the job than a more attractive woman, even one with lesser skills. Therefore, I found some of this reading out of date, but the "femininity" aspects were as relevant today as then. Simone de Beauvoir makes the point, early on, that the word "woman" possesses both a denotative (objective) and a connotative (subjective) meaning. As she states: ". .