A Midwestern housewife supports her large family by entering contests for ad slogans sponsored by consumer product companies, while dealing with abuse from her alcoholic husband. Based on a true story.

Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.

Louise, who has just written a novel, comes to Paris to meet with a potential publisher. While in the city, she stays with her older sister, Martine, who in many ways is the exact opposite of Louise: she lives in a fashionable neighborhood, is cold to others, and has snobby friends, while Louise lives in a small town and is thoroughly unpretentious. Louise's apparent happiness -- and similarities to their mother -- gradually gets on Martine's nerves.

Having just moved to a new town, widow Elaine Freedman and her teenage daughter Justine are greeted by the effusive, terribly nice Dr. Calvin Lawrence. Sensing that Justine is bit testy and out of sorts, Dr. Lawrence recommends that she begin taking a special vitamin which he manufactures in his own home. Before long, Justine is the model of perfection -- just like all the other teenagers in town.

Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

Alice Tate, mother of two, with a marriage of 16 years, finds herself falling for a handsome sax player, Joe. Stricken with a backache, she consults herbalist Dr. Yang, who realizes that her problems are not related to her back, but in her mind and heart. Dr. Yang's magical herbs give Alice wondrous powers, taking her out of her well-established rut.

A henpecked housewife ekes out a meager existence, surrounded by a host of colorful characters: her ungrateful husband, her delinquent sons, her headstrong mother-in-law, and her sex worker neighbor, among others.

An advertising man is slowly sliding downhill. When he is fired from his job in Detroit, he signs up for unemployment. One day they find him a job: teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. He arrives on base to find that there is no structure set up for the class.

Jean, a reclusive housewife who is terrified of the outside world, begins to descend into madness when she suspects that her husband is a serial killer. In her escape, she must decide whose version of reality she chooses to believe.

Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis.