Think Feminism Made Women Unhappy? Try Television

"Commercialism is a vacuum," my mother warned me. "It will suck you in."

I was seven or eight years old and my mother was running a bath for me. I imagined being sucked down the drain into a wet underworld of nefarious Disney characters.

I was getting the lecture because I'd been caught watching television beyond my allotted hour and, even more horrifying to my mother, I'd been making my Christmas list during the commercials.

I figured I was multi-tasking.

My mother figured otherwise. "How do you think you can figure out what you want while the commercials are bombarding you with images of what they want you to want?" my mother asked me. To her eyes, I was a sitting duck.

Later that night, she picked up our television and lugged it out the garage, never to be seen again.

"Thanks a lot," my sister snarked...

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