Just hours after the Twin Towers were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, Susan C. Faludi ’81 knew something fundamental had changed when a journalist who called her for a phone interview remarked, “This sure pushes feminism off the map!”

That statement would prove to be portentous, the Pulitizer-Prize winning writer and feminist said at the Harvard Book Store on Oct. 5, because it signaled a substantial shift in the national psyche of the American society, press, and government.

“The nation responded in ways…that are strange and disturbing,” said Faludi, who is a former Crimson managing editor. That set of responses became the focus of her new book, “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America.” In studying the media coverage that immediately followed 9/11, Faludi said that she uncovered a bizarre slew of stories that, unexpectedly, focused on bringing back traditional family arrangements.

Faludi, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has penned two previous books, says that the sudden movement towards traditional family arrangements was a reaction to the trauma of Sept. 11.

“On that day, we suffered a physical attack that destroyed buildings and people, and a symbolic attack that destroyed the myth of invincibility,” Faludi said. The nation as a whole then turned to a mythical frontier past to cover its post-9/11 vulnerabilities with the idea that men are the rugged, fearless superheroes and women are their frail counterparts in need of rescue, she said.

This idea dates back to King Philip’s War, a conflict between American settlers and Native Americans in the 1670s, Faludi said.

According to her, it was a time in which pre-revolutionary Americans were forced to fend for their lives on a constant basis by the original “terrorists”—a phrase she said the settlers used to describe the Native Americans. This phenomenon began the tradition of historical rewriting by male authors, which she described as an effort to glorify the hyper-masculine settler who supposedly defended his home.

In our modern day, Faludi notes the predominance of the cowboy mentality in politics: “We get candidates that fit the climate,” Faludi said. And after Sept. 11, Americans were drawn to an individualistic cowboy President who sought terrorists “dead or alive,” she said.

Even the film industry contributed to this surge in national machismo, according to Faludi.

In the 2005 film “War of the Worlds,” Tom Cruise’s character represents what Faludi characterized as the deadbeat father who rescues his daughter from molesters and aliens and thus recovers his manhood.

It is her former media colleagues, though, who bore the brunt of Faludi’s scorn in her talk at the bookstore.

She cited numerous examples from publications like the New York Times, USA Today, and Newsweek to underscore their apparent efforts to erode the progress of the feminist movement in favor of traditionalism.

Post-9/11 articles would often cast single women as unpatriotic, lonely, and out of sync, she said. In addition, a “media cloud” of stories that Faludi described as “irrational” predicted that single women would rush to the altar, return to the homes as housewives, and become “security moms” who were worried that terrorists would attack their children.

“I don’t even know where to begin with the media,” she said, sounding exasperated. “It’s a very bleak period. We should hit the press over the head with ‘Freedom of the Press’ so that they can be a counter to the government.”

Faludi attributed recent attitudes in the press to the growing trend of newspaper ownership by large corporations and the decline in investigative reporting at major newspapers.

For Faludi, England’s more measured reactions to the July 2005 bombings in London provided a stark contrast to the post-9/11 American response, which convinced Faludi that the anti-feminism reaction was something distinctive to the U.S.

She added that recent efforts by new British prime minister Gordon Brown to avoid the “chivalry and bluster” of President Bush exemplifies a more realistic response to the situation.

Despite what she has uncovered in her writing her book, Faludi said that she remains hopeful and optimistic.

“The attack on 9/11 gave us a historic opportunity to confront the past and resolve our myth,” she said, “To see ourselves in a realistic light.”

—Staff writer Andrew E. Lai can be reached at lai@fas.harvard.edu.