An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1949
One Becomes a Woman
Womanhood is a situation, not a destiny.
Beauvoir's celebrated opening of The Second Sex Volume II. To be born female is biological; to be a woman is to be socialized into a particular cultural situation. The book traces, through anatomy, psychoanalysis, history, literature, and lived experience, how the situation is made — and so might be unmade.