Nancy Friday's writings argue that women have often been reared under an ideal of womanhood, which was outdated and restrictive, and largely unrepresentative of many women's true inner lives, and that openness about women's hidden lives could help free women to truly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.
10 Facts About Nancy Friday
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Nancy Friday 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.
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Nancy Friday was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Walter F Friday and Jane Colbert Friday.
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Nancy Friday grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and attended the only local girls' college-preparatory school, Ashley Hall, where she graduated in 1951.
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Nancy Friday then attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she graduated in 1955.
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Nancy Friday worked briefly as a reporter for the San Juan Island Times and subsequently established herself as a magazine journalist in New York City, England, and France before turning to writing full-time.
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Nancy Friday created a website in the mid-1990s, to complement the publication of The Power of Beauty.
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Nancy Friday married novelist Bill Manville in 1967, separated from him in 1980, and divorced him in 1986.
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In 2011, Nancy Friday sold her home in Key West and moved to New York City.
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Nancy Friday died at her home in Manhattan from complications of Alzheimer's disease on November 5,2017, at the age of 84.