Nancy Friday
Encyclopedia
Nancy Colbert Friday is an author who has written on the topics of female sexuality and liberation.
'Nancy Friday's successful fantasy revelations (My Secret Garden, Forbidden Flowers)' have seen her placed among 'the feminist erotic pioneers'. Her writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of woman
hood which was outdated and restrictive, and largely unrepresentative of many women's true inner lives, and that openness about women's hidden lives could help free women to truly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.
, Friday grew up in Charleston, South Carolina
and attended the only local girls' college-preparatory school, Ashley Hall, where she graduated in 1951. She then attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts
where she graduated in 1955. She worked briefly as a reporter for the San Juan Island Times and subsequently established herself as a magazine journalist in New York
, England
, 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
, BDSM
and beauty
. She had not written a book since the publication of The Power of Beauty (released in 1996, and then renamed and rereleased in paper-back form in 1999) - despite contributing an interview of porn star Nina Hartley
to XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits a book by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
published in 2004 - until Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age (2009).
Throughout the 80s and early 90s she was 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 has a web site, which was created in the mid 1990s, to complement the publication of The Power of Beauty. Initially conceived as a forum for development of new work and interaction with her diverse audience, it has not been updated in several years. As of 2005, Friday is currently working on her first novel.
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.
Friday considered that 'more than any other emotion, guilt determined the story lines of the fantasies in My Secret Garden...women inventing ploys to get past their fear that wanting to reach orgasm made them Bad Girls'. Her later book, My Mother/My Self 'grew immediately out of My Secret Garden 's questioning of the source of women's terrible guilt about sex'.
When she returned twenty years later to her original topic of women's fantasies in Women on Top, it was in the belief that 'the sexual revolution' had stalled: 'it was the greed of the 1980s that dealt the death blow...the demise of healthy sexual curiosity'.
Friday, like other feminists, was especially concerned with the controlling role of the images of 'Nice Woman...Nice Girl' - of being 'bombarded from birth with messages about what a "good woman" is...focused so hard and so long on never giving in to "selfishness"'. However, as feminism itself developed 'a stunning array of customs, opinions, moral values, and beliefs about how the world of women...should conduct itself', so too it ran into the difficulty of moralism versus human nature - the fact that 'feminism - any political philosophy - does not adequately address sexual psychology
' eventually sparking the 'feminist "sex wars"
...from the early 1980s' onwards. Against that backdrop, Friday's evidential and empirical concerns continue to address the 'open question of how many of their sexual freedoms the young women...will retain, how deeply they have incorporated them'.
My Secret Garden was greeted by a 'salvo from the media accusing me of inventing the whole book, having made up all the fantasies'; My Mother/My Self was 'initially...violently rejected by both publishers and readers'; while Women on Top 'was heavily criticized for its graphic and sensational content'.
, formerly the editor-in-chief of Time Inc.
. They were married at the Rainbow Room
in New York on July 11, 1988, and divorced in 2005.
Nancy Friday sold her home in Key West
and now resides in New York City
.
'Nancy Friday's successful fantasy revelations (My Secret Garden, Forbidden Flowers)' have seen her placed among 'the feminist erotic pioneers'. Her writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of woman
Woman
A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
hood 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
Group dynamics
Group dynamics refers to a system of behaviors and psychological processes that occur within a social group , or between social groups...
, 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, PennsylvaniaPittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
, Friday grew up in Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
and attended the only local girls' college-preparatory school, Ashley Hall, where she graduated in 1951. She then attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
where she graduated in 1955. She worked briefly as a reporter for the San Juan Island Times and subsequently established herself as a magazine journalist in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
before turning to writing full time and publishing her first book, My Secret Garden
My Secret Garden
My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies is a 1973 book compiled by Nancy Friday, who collected women's fantasies through letters and taped and personal interviews. After including a female sexual fantasy in a novel she submitted for publishing, her editor objected, and Friday shelved the novel...
, in 1973. This book, which compiled interviews of women discussing their sexuality and fantasies, became a bestseller
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
; Friday has regularly returned to the interview format in her subsequent books on themes ranging from mothers and daughters to sexual fantasies, relationships, jealousy
Jealousy
Jealousy is a second emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, particularly in reference to a human connection. Jealousy often consists of a combination of presenting emotions...
, envy
Envy
Envy is best defined as a resentful emotion that "occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it."...
, feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, BDSM
BDSM
BDSM is an erotic preference and a form of sexual expression involving the consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation, and fantasy power role-play. The compound acronym BDSM is derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , and sadism and masochism...
and beauty
Beauty
Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
. She had not written a book since the publication of The Power of Beauty (released in 1996, and then renamed and rereleased in paper-back form in 1999) - despite contributing an interview of porn star Nina Hartley
Nina Hartley
Nina Hartley is an American pornographic actress, pornographic film director, sex educator, feminist, and author.-Early life:...
to XXX: 30 Porn Star Portraits a book by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is an American portrait photographer known for his strikingly intimate portraits of world leaders and major cultural figures. The majority of his work is shot in large format, 11x14 inch black-and-white film and 8x10 color film...
published in 2004 - until Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age (2009).
Throughout the 80s and early 90s she was a frequent guest on television and radio programs such as Politically Incorrect
Politically Incorrect
Politically Incorrect is a late-night, half-hour political talk show hosted by Bill Maher that ran from 1993 to 2002. It premiered on Comedy Central from 1993 to 1997, and later on ABC in 1997, which cancelled it in 2002....
, Oprah
The Oprah Winfrey Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show is an American syndicated talk show hosted and produced by its namesake Oprah Winfrey. It ran nationally for 25 seasons beginning in 1986, before concluding in 2011. It is the highest-rated talk show in American television history....
, Larry King Live
Larry King Live
Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....
, Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
and NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
’s Talk of the Nation
Talk of the Nation
Talk of the Nation is a talk radio program based in the United States, produced by National Public Radio, and is broadcast nationally from 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Its focus is current events and controversial issues....
, Friday also has a web site, which was created in the mid 1990s, to complement the publication of The Power of Beauty. Initially conceived as a forum for development of new work and interaction with her diverse audience, it has not been updated in several years. As of 2005, Friday is currently working on her first novel.
Despite the judgment of Ms. magazine
Ms. magazine
Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...
("This woman is not a feminist”) she has predicated her career on the belief that feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and appreciation of men are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Literary motivation
Friday has explained how 'in the late 1960s I chose to write about women's sexual fantasies because the subject was unbroken ground, a missing piece of the puzzle...at a time in history when the world was suddenly curious about sex and women's sexuality'. The backdrop was a widespread belief that 'women do not have sexual fantasies...are by and large destitute of sexual fantasy'.Friday considered that 'more than any other emotion, guilt determined the story lines of the fantasies in My Secret Garden...women inventing ploys to get past their fear that wanting to reach orgasm made them Bad Girls'. Her later book, My Mother/My Self 'grew immediately out of My Secret Garden 's questioning of the source of women's terrible guilt about sex'.
When she returned twenty years later to her original topic of women's fantasies in Women on Top, it was in the belief that 'the sexual revolution' had stalled: 'it was the greed of the 1980s that dealt the death blow...the demise of healthy sexual curiosity'.
Friday, like other feminists, was especially concerned with the controlling role of the images of 'Nice Woman...Nice Girl' - of being 'bombarded from birth with messages about what a "good woman" is...focused so hard and so long on never giving in to "selfishness"'. However, as feminism itself developed 'a stunning array of customs, opinions, moral values, and beliefs about how the world of women...should conduct itself', so too it ran into the difficulty of moralism versus human nature - the fact that 'feminism - any political philosophy - does not adequately address sexual psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
' eventually sparking the 'feminist "sex wars"
Feminist Sex Wars
The Feminist Sex Wars and Lesbian Sex Wars, or simply the Sex Wars or Porn Wars, were the acrimonious debates within the feminist movement and lesbian community in the late 1970s through the 1980s around the issues of feminist strategies regarding sexuality, sexual representation, pornography,...
...from the early 1980s' onwards. Against that backdrop, Friday's evidential and empirical concerns continue to address the 'open question of how many of their sexual freedoms the young women...will retain, how deeply they have incorporated them'.
Criticism
'Critics have labelled Friday's books unscientific because the author solicited responses', thus potentially biasing the contributor pool.My Secret Garden was greeted by a 'salvo from the media accusing me of inventing the whole book, having made up all the fantasies'; My Mother/My Self was 'initially...violently rejected by both publishers and readers'; while Women on Top 'was heavily criticized for its graphic and sensational content'.
Personal life
Nancy Friday married novelist Bill Manville in 1967, separated from him in 1980, and divorced him in 1986. Her second husband was Norman PearlstineNorman Pearlstine
Norman Pearlstine joined Bloomberg L.P. in June 2008 as chief content officer, a newly-created position. In this role Pearlstine is charged with seeking growth opportunities for Bloomberg’s television, radio, magazine, and online products and to make the most of the company’s news operations.Prior...
, formerly the editor-in-chief of Time Inc.
Time Inc.
Time Inc. is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, the company formed by the 1990 merger of the original Time Inc. and Warner Communications. It publishes 130 magazines, most notably its namesake, Time...
. They were married at the Rainbow Room
Rainbow Room
The Rainbow Room was an upscale restaurant and nightclub on the 65th floor of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center, Midtown Manhattan, New York City.-Cuisine:...
in New York on July 11, 1988, and divorced in 2005.
Nancy Friday sold her home in Key West
Key West, Florida
Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
and now resides in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.