Summary Of Hard To Get By Leslie Bell

Leslie Bell in her article Hard to Get writes about the troubles young woman have getting a clear balance between a healthy relationship and sexual desires. Many women believe that they need to sacrifice one for the sake of the other. Bell calls this belief “splitting” - the idea that people can not want or have “two seemingly contradictory desires at once.”(28). This leads women to create an identity to adapt to their choices and this is mainly caused by the ideas imposed to them by parents, friends, community and society. The ideals are forced by magazines like Cosmopolitan or Vogue, or relentless nagging by their relatives. Often, women are compared to others and the society forces women to conform to those requirements. However, a common …show more content…
They deny themselves this opportunity. If women choose to rebel, they lose the security and clarity for the future and deny themselves for a stable relationship in the future. The fact that women are forced to choose between these two options, not allowing them to find a stable ground between the options, speaks more to society than the young women. Women are not allowed to do both; they should be allowed to explore their sexual desire while maintain their identity or find a stable relationship. First, Bell discusses the life story of Jayanthi. Jayanthi’s case showcases the Sexual Woman but more importantly, that she rebels against the expectations of her parents and the neighborhood she lives. Jayanthi comes from a traditional upper-middle class Indian family with conservative ideas about sex. Throughout her childhood, she was forced to act as a good girl, fitting into a stereotype which she did not identify herself towards. Conforming to this attitude was unappealing to Jayanthi as she felt a lack of individuality. She always wanted to break the stereotypes placed upon her. To find an identity, …show more content…
(36). In her case, the strategies she used as the Relational Woman, but like Jayanthi, she rebels against the expectations of her surroundings. Although Alicia and Jayanthi enacted different strategies, they both worked out different than the anticipated result. Alicia, who was abstinent until the end of college, lived in a community where her peers were pregnant while they were in high school. She believed that delaying sex would help her get out of poverty but also find a healthy relationship. She was determined to change her future. As a child, she looked up to role models not in her family or neighborhood, but among Caucasian middle class people. She coveted the experience that her friend, Christine, had as a child who had a devoted and loving mother and a stable household. The time spent with this family instilled the middle class values, as Bell describes, mainly the fact that “education is a valuable investment and worth delaying pregnancy for.”(39) However, as she grew up, she found trouble finding a man and stable relationship. As a child, Alicia was inappropriately touched and kissed by her father which factors into her trust issues with men. Bell states that Alicia has no trouble flirting with men she will not see again as she appreciate that others find her attractive. The problem came when it came to men she was close to. She would not flirt with