p. 1
1. What does “the expression ‘Be a man!’” mean to Paul Theroux?
2. What does he think of the current ideal of “manliness,” and why?
3. What happens to men who come to believe “the masculine ideal”?
4. What is “the female version of this male affliction”?
5. According to Theroux, what is the fundamental difference between femininity and masculinity as they are currently understood?
p. 2
6. What does Theroux mean when he says that “the quest for manliness [. . .] is [. . .] philistine”?
7. What, according to Theroux, is the problem of the male writer?
p. 3
8. Provide two examples to support the answer to number 7.
9. Is being a man in America today “a privilege”? Why?
10. Why do “men often object to feminism”?
“The Beauty Myth” (1991), by Naomi Wolf (1962-)
1. According to Naomi Wolf, what good things have happened for women since the early 1970s?
2. So what’s the problem for “liberated women of the First World”?
3. What does this have to do with female beauty?
4. What has “the beauty myth” done to older women?
5. What is the current paradox of how women feel about themselves financially and politically versus how they feel about themselves physically?
p. 2
6. What happened as women “released themselves from the feminine mystique of domesticity”?
7. Why is “the contemporary backlash [. . .] so violent”? How does this differ from Theroux’s understanding?
8. Name two examples the author provides to support the answer to number 7.
p. 3
9. What is the “story” “the beauty myth” “tells”?
10. What is meant by “’beauty’ is a currency system”?
11. Explain what Wolf means by “’beauty’ is not universal or changeless.”
12. Name one example Wolf provides to support the following statement: “Nor has the beauty myth always been this way.”
p. 4
13. What does Wolf mean when she says, “The beauty myth is not about women at all.”
14. What does Wolf mean when she says, “The qualities that a given period calls beautiful in women are merely symbols of the female behavior that that period considers desirable”?
15. Where did the beauty myth “in its modern form” come from?
p. 5
16. What does technology have to do with it?
17. How did the beauty myth counteract any gains women had made in the twentieth century?
p. 6
18. Explain what Wolf seems to mean by writing, “The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal.”
19. Which industries, according to Wolf, stand to gain from the beauty myth?
p. 7
20. According to Wolf, why do Western economies depend upon the beauty myth?
21. Once it was no longer possible to value women exclusively for their domesticity, what, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, happened?
p. 8
22. What does Wolf seem to mean when she writes, “If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see”?
bulkbulk
study_guide_2.docx
0
