In her notorious 1973 bestseller Fear of Flying, Erica Jong championed the idea of loveless, guilt-free sex for women, which she coined with the infamous "zipless" phrase (Jong, 11). Subsequently, Jong was viewed as a symbol of hedonism and Jong herself argued that Fear of Flying provided women with a sense of libidinal license (People Weekly [Sep 1994], 37). However, Jong also stated that "[m]y generation had Doris Day as a role model, then Gloria Steinem -- then Princess Diana. We are the most confused generation." Thus, she also argued that Fear of Flying was her attempt to define womanhood and femininity, even as it related to female sexuality. In particular, Jong stated that in writing Flying, she had a sense that she was "going to open the top of a woman's head and show what was going on inside." Significantly, Jong argued that despite the notoriety attending the novel's sexual content, "if you read the book, you'll see it's more head than genitals" (People Weekly [Mar 1994], 36).
Fear of Flying follows one month in the life of young wife Isadora Wing, who journeys to Germany with her psychoanalyst husband, Bennett, to cover a professional conference and embarks on her own quest for sexual adventure. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, in her essay on Jong for the American Writers Series, argues that one of Isadora's most notable qualities was her awareness of how gender roles were constructed in contemporary society:
Growing up female in America. What a liability! [] What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! [] "Love your hair." [] "That shine on your face should come from him, not from your skin." [] "How to score with every male in the zodiac." What all the ads and all the whoreoscopes seemed to imply was that if only you were narcissistic enough, if only you took proper care of your smells, your hair, your boobs, your eyelashes, your armpits, your crotch, your stars, your scars, and your choice of Scotch in b...