ansformed cultural values that may have released men from a sense of obligation to marry and raise a family, making them "transients in the lives of women" (181), whether the women are traditional housewives dependent on husbands for survival or women in the workforce. The values conflict was between feminist advocacy for women's financial independence and antifeminist criticism that feminism, even more than male rebellion, destroyed traditional family arrangements (Ehrenreich 151-3). On the other hand there was also a values conflict between the popular idea that women held vast domestic power, not only in their perverse ability to entice men away from bachelorhood but also in their control (supposedly) of the domestic pursestrings. The "smirking assessment of women's [domestic] power and place contributed to the feminist revival even as it declared feminism unnecessary" (Ehrenreich 100).
The values debate against traditional domesticity was initially unsavory, led by Playboy, which apart from its girlie-magazine attributes more or less instructed men in the consumerism of male rebellion against domestic family values: "Playboy shed the burdensome aspects of the adult male role at a time when businessmen were still refining the 'fun morality' for mass consumption, and the gray flannel rebels were still fumbling for responsible alternatives like Riesman's 'autonomy'" (Ehrenreich 45-6). Playboy was well positioned to co-opt and exploit for advertising purposes, while also giving voice to, moral, ethical, and/or psychological difficulties associated with dominant-culture
...