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English 101 Name_______________________

Theroux and Wolf Study Guide

“Being a Man” (1983), by Paul Theroux (1941-)

p. 1

1. What does “the expression ‘Be a man!’” mean to Paul Theroux?

The expression means being hard, be courageous, be ignorant of the bad things that may occur while doing your duties. He takes being a man as being “stupid” ready to accept anything and being ready to face all hard things without minding the effects to you.

2. What does he think of the current ideal of “manliness?”

Manliness is emotionally damaging and socially harmful.

Why?

Because he says it denies men natural friendship of women and says that men are made to be social misfits, recipe for creating bad marriages moral degenerates, sadists, latent rapists as plain louts. This is because of the way men are brought up and under the conditions which they are brought up

3. What happens to men who come to believe “the masculine ideal”?

They spend the rest of their life finding woman a riddles and a nuisance

4. What is “the female version of this male affliction”?

Mothers encourages little girls to be smart, appealing and are urged to please the adults with kind of coquettishness. Young ladies are able to learn to be sexually indispensable, socially decorative and always alert to man’s sense of inadequacy. The boys are enjoined to behave like monkeys towards each other

5. According to Theroux, what is the fundamental difference between femininity and masculinity as they are currently understood?

He says that femininity is being ladylike and needing a man as witness and seducer while masculinity celebrates the exclusive company of men

6. What does Theroux mean when he says that “the quest for manliness [. . .] is [. . .] philistine”?

He meant it was being anti-intellectual, being smugly low of mind, being ignorant and ill-behaved.

7. What, according to Theroux, is the problem of the male writer?

The problem of a man writer is that he is not taken as a man, he is supposed to prove his manliness. He says there is a pain to prove manliness and writing is not taken as a manly profession

8. Provide two examples to support the answer to number 7.

Example is a man must prove his manliness by killing a lion, example Hemingway

Or hunts ducks example Nathanael West

9. Is being a man in America today “a privilege”? Yes

Why? The writer says that even now in feminist-influenced America is a privilege. This is because women are not supposed to prove their motherhood as the men are supposed to prove their manhood.

10. Why do “men often object to feminism”?

Man object to feminism because of the bad treatment they get in name of being a man. Being a man is bad enough and the writer says that it is sinister silliness of men’s fashions that inspires dress code if the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston. He says being a man is pathetic and that is why men often object to feminism. Females get very good treatment as compared to the one given to men.

“The Beauty Myth” (1991), by Naomi Wolf (1962-)

1. According to Naomi Wolf, what good things have happened for women since the early 1970s?

Women have gained legal and reproductive rights, they can pursue higher education and have entered trades and professions.

2. So what’s the problem for “liberated women of the First World”?

The women do not feel free as they want to. They are complaining of lack of freedom to things that they can no longer restrict themselves from like frivolous issues that they think they shouldn’t really matter.

3. What does this have to do with female beauty?

This affects the freedom on their physical appearance, how they dress, how their bodies are, face and hair

4. What has “the beauty myth” done to older women?

The older women feel that it has burned them out and many young women show little in touching new fire to torch

5. What is the current paradox of how women feel about themselves financially and politically versus how they feel about themselves physically?

The women don’t feel comfortable physically despite of having money, power and legal recognition. They say the way they feel about themselves physically are worse than before

6. What happened as women “released themselves from the feminine mystique of domesticity”?

The beauty myth took over its lost ground, expanding and improved in carrying on its work of social control

7. Why is “the contemporary backlash [. . .] so violent”?

Because the ideology of beauty is the last one remaining of the old feminine ideologies that still has power to control the women whom second-wave feminism would be otherwise made relatively uncontrollable.

How does this differ from Theroux’s understanding?

This differs from Theroux’s understanding because he takes the women to be the ones controlling almost everything and much of the conditions made are in favor of females and not men.

8. Name two examples the author provides to support the answer to number 7.

a. Feminine mystique of domesticity

b. Discrimination based on gender.

9. What is the “story” “the beauty myth” “tells”?

The myth tells a story of the quality called “beauty” objectively and universally exists. Women must want to embody it and men must want to possess women who embody it. The embodiment is an imperative for women and not for men, which situation is necessary and natural because it is biological, sexual and evolutionary: strong men battle for beautiful women and beautiful women are more reproductively successful.

10. What is meant by “’beauty’ is a currency system”?

Just like other things with money value, beauty also has that value. It Is determined politically and it is the last belief system that keep the male dominance intact. Women are assigned values according to culturally imposed physical standard making beauty to be considered as a currency.

11. Explain what Wolf means by “’beauty’ is not universal or changeless.”

He meant that beauty can change, in fact he says it rapidly changes. It is a function to revolution

12. Name one example Wolf provides to support the following statement: “Nor has the beauty myth always been this way.”

Example of an older woman a beautiful but expendable youth Ishtar and Tammuz, Venus and Adonis, Cybele and Attis…. their only function the service of divine “womb”

13. What does Wolf mean when she says, “The beauty myth is not about women at all.”

He means that this myth is not only about women but there are many things involved. He says the myth is about men’s institution and institutional power.

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”?

She means that beauty is not permanent, it changes after sometime and it is the behavior seen at a certain and it might be absent in another time.

15. Where did the beauty myth “in its modern form” come from?

It originated from industrial revolution and gained ground after the upheavals of industrialization.

16. What does technology have to do with it?

Technology could reproduce in fashion plates, daguerreotypes, tintypes and rotogravure images of how women look. It changed the way women looked.

17. How did the beauty myth counteract any gains women had made in the twentieth century?

The emergence the ideology that made women feel worthless

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.”

He that this was a spreading of images of how the women have changed due to technology and their new look. He says there is fact that little is sex about it.

19. Which industries, according to Wolf, stand to gain from the beauty myth?

Cosmetics industries, diet industries, cosmetic surgery industries and pornography industries.

20. According to Wolf, why do Western economies depend upon the beauty myth?

Because they need to promote images of slaves that justify institution of slavery. The economies depend on continued underpayment of women

21. Once it was no longer possible to value women exclusively for their domesticity, what, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, happened?

The behavior that is essential for economic reasons is transformed into a social virtue.

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”?

She means that this femaleness is not good at all. It is ruining the lives and how they conduct themselves. She see this as a disadvantage to them.