Where Are You Going Where Have You Been Women

When thinking of the year 2017, the present, the thing that comes to mind is usually that it is the year Donald J. Trump became the president.One of the years that women are able to freely express their identity and sexuality without being shunned for it. However, in Oates story ‘Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?’ set in the mid-1960s, Oates highlight that a revolution was happening. American women were starting to assert their rights and independence from men's patriarchal tendencies and claiming their very own sexuality like they never had before, yet still remain fundamentally conservative and naive prompting vulnerability among women. In the 1960’s, post-war America was shifting into a new idealistic view of women's roles in …show more content…
Oates defines Connie as a sexually awakened vain girl that “ knew she was pretty and that was everything” to show assertion that women were attempting to deviate from the validation of men to know their self worth, but in the end still show vulnerability because Connie sees herself as only a reflection of how others view her (2). She has “habit of craning her neck” to check her image in the mirror to be assured and judges the success of a night out by the amount of attention she receives from the boys (1). Connie’s character is the general representation of how young adolescent girls and women view themselves at that time. Oates characterizes Connie as someone that has “two sides” that is “one for home and one for anywhere that was not home” to further highlight women still not being able to freely express themselves in fear of being shunned by the society that promotes the idea of beauty(2). The beauty that is described as being “plain and chunky and steady…” that Connie’s sister, June, posses. Oates characterize June as the model of womanhood to show the shifting of culture and to