Chapter 4

I disagree with a lot of Shalit’s statements in the fourth chapter. She is so protective of women and almost abusive towards men and this makes me not believe a lot of what she says. Another thing that I don’t like about her style of writing is the way she hardly ever makes a statement on her own; it seems that almost every other sentence is a quote about how some girl was raped or how society used to be better when women were more modest. I think it is ridiculous the way she quotes Helen Gurley saying that women should “keep a married man or two”. Why would it be acceptable for a woman to seduce a married man, when she knows he is married, but it is not acceptable for that married man to be seduced? I understand the part on “immodesty in dress” where she says that girls have to dress a certain way in high school but at the same time I don’t understand why. If they didn’t want to dress “slutty” or however the “norm” is to dress there is nothing that says they have to. My high school I imagine as being very normal in the sense that everyone formed cliques and groups of their friends that would hang out with each other and they all seemed to dress alike within their groups. If they had to dress slutty why did they not just get decent friends that would not make them feel odd for dressing the way they want to. I think the final thing that I did not like about the way she writes is the way she always seems as if all the problems with immodesty are men’s fault. Shalit implies that men make women dress like whores and men are responsible for women having eating disorders. I say that if a woman (or a man) has an eating disorder that it is their own fault for not having the courage to stand up for themselves and not having a “healthy self image”. Although there were many of her views in this chapter that I did not like, I did like her point about “forbidden questions”. I have always thought it was ridiculous that there were questions that were tabooed against asking especially ones that would help people learn from other people’s mistakes.