What Do Women Want

What Do Women Want: Exploding the Myth of Dependency by Luise Eichenbaum & Susie Orbach

A book review by Gertie Bulaong

It was a regular day in my Principles of Mass Communication class until our professor, Sir Nate Rondina, announced that we will be choosing a book for our book review assignment. I, for one, was ecstatic at the thought of reviewing a book. Ever since I was a little girl, my mother would encourage me to read books. With that, I also had the support of my grandfather who would bring me to Powerbooks in Alabang Town Center every Sunday and buy me books of whatever I want (which I was too shy to do so). I had a small collection of books back then, those that I really owned. Most of the time, I borrowed books from relatives and friends.

My personal preference in books would be fiction and self-help. I could literally drown in books under these categories. For this certain review assignment, Sir Nate gave us a few book genres to choose from: art, environment and women’s issues. We also get to choose if we want it to be fiction or non-fiction. I obviously wanted to get a book with a fictitious story, but my favorite one, Eleven Minutes by Paolo Coelho was taken by my friend, Chen. No worries, though. I decided on a non-fictitious one instead. This book I chose, What Do Women Want, is more like a thesis or conclusion of two psychotherapists. Women’s issues or absolutely anything about women are very close to my heart for two reasons: one, I am a woman and two, I live in an all-female household and was raised up solely by my mother.

“What Do Women Want: Exploding the Myth of Dependency” was written by Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach, two psychotherapists who aimed to understand and explain the reason behind the ‘clingy’ attitude of women.

The introduction of the book briefly explained why women seem dependent and clingy. The authors say it is because of the “Cinderella Complex” by Collete Dowling in 1981. Upon my own personal research, I found out that the Cinderella Complex is as basic as it sounds: women feel that they should be the Cinderella or the princess and that someone should always be taking care of them. To quote Ms. Dowling, she says that dependency is not “the refusal to accept responsibility”. Dependency is a basic human need, to have someone to rely on and someone that will be with us not only during times of despair but in whatever mood we are in. Another detail pointed out in this chapter is that we women are brought up with the fact that we are to be depended upon: by our husband, children and everybody else. This greatly affects the way we perceive how people think of us. At the same time, a little thought entered my mind about what men are fed about women. If women are brought up to depended upon by others, men on the other hand, are told that women will follow and do what you ask them to do. Another fact is the stereotypical world we are brought up in. Quoting the authors, “Girls are supposed to be sweet and demure, boys are supposed to be active and brave.” As I finished this chapter, I conclude that the demure attitude of women are sometimes perceived as a sign of weakness and therefore emphasizing the belief that women get married to gain their strength from their significant other, thus mistakenly thought of as being dependent.

I read the next chapter, and it’s about the ‘forbidden feelings of women’. Generally, it’s the clingy attitude women have. This later on leads to the ‘forbidden feelings’ like wanting to move in together because of worry or jealousy. It’s funny how this book also has a section of it dedicated to men’s dependency, headlined with “The Great Taboo”. Through the course of me reading this chapter, only one question was in my head: “Why is it a great taboo?” At the end of the chapter, I felt as if this is the reason why some men develop the ‘air-head’ factor. Men (or humans, in general) need to have someone to depend on. No man is an island, as the saying goes. Therefore, we cannot survive to be alone.

I liked reading about the “Cha-Cha Phenomenon”. To better explain this, think of the cha-cha dance where it has to be danced by two people and move together to gain a smooth and clean flow of dancing. This also touched on the stereotypical wife and husband, where the former is to stay at home and the latter is to work for the family. This brings about the idea that women solely depend on the husband for money and for them to get by on a daily basis.

My favorites are the last two chapters of the book: Sex and Dependency & the Effect of Pregnancy on the Dependency Dynamic. They are my favorites among all topics discussed in the book because this is a pretty sensitive issue to talk about. Having sex strengthens the need of women for dependency even more, which is both a good and a bad. Good, because then a certain amount of clinginess is healthy for a couple. Bad, because sometimes things get out of hand and both individuals end up just wanting sex and not the relationship anymore. Having sex is also linked to getting pregnant because, as my mom put it, “When you have sex, there is always that hundred percent chance of getting pregnant.” So after getting pregnant, there is the best scenario and the worst scenario. The best thing that can happen is that you develop a stronger love for each other, like how the elders perceive having a child is a blessing. The worst scenario (which has a great chance of happening when a couple is not married) is that the man leaves the woman to raise a child on her own. Sad, but it happens.

After finishing and closing this book, I conclude that being raised stereotypically has a strong effect on the whole life of an individual. I felt that What Do Women Want touched directly on how women should and should not be which leads to mistaken perceptions about them.

As a Mass Communications student, this opened my eyes even more to pay attention to women and our place in the world. Should we let ourselves be the underdog to men at all times, or should we step up our game and prove that we are not as weak as the world makes us seem we are.

What Do Women Want was written in a way that people will easily understand the message they want to convey. In every chapter, they start with a different story and write it in a very descriptive way so that people’s imaginations will be put to work. In the first chapter, they started with: “Helen is twenty-seven, a bookkeeper and unmarried. She used to live with Bob but they broke up two years ago. Since then she has dated a lot of men. We see her now getting ready to go out on her first real date with Paul, a thirty-five year-old divorced social worker whom she met a week before on a blind date. It is a Saturday evening and Helen is lounging in her bath, steaming her face before the big event. The afternoon was spent at Macy’s buying new shoes, a belt and a scarf to complete tonight’s outfit. She’s been so excited by the date, she’s hardly eaten all day.” That’s the reason why I love books. They have this power that brings me into a new world, a world that is my imagination.

I recommend this book to the ladies who want to know more about themselves and to mothers because of all the eye-opening knowledge about the dependency or clinginess of women. I found out ways to justify why we are like this, and it reminds us that not because we are most of the time perceived weak, we have to stick to that. We can always stand on our own two feet, show independence and women power!