The Dead Girl

You Going? Where Have You Been, the understanding or initial misunderstanding of characters, are pivotal to the reader’s roller coaster experience of the plot. The story revolves around the character of Connie, a fairly typical 15-year-old teenage girl, who comes to be confronted with a dangerous situation. This story and the character of Connie were particularly interesting and engrossing to me. As Oates illustrates Connie’s character and her motivations, I was brought along on a dramatic ride…

When I was around five or six years old, my sister and I were playing with Barbie dolls in my grandmother’s house. All of the dolls had pale white skin except for one that was black, which, at the time, did not matter to my sister or me. But at some point during our time, one of us mentioned the word “black” in reference to the doll. My mother, who was sitting in the dining room, maybe fifteen feet away, turned back, appalled, and told us to never say that. Neither of us really understood what…

In Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne shows us that their are in fact hidden messages in advertising. That women are to be flawless everyday, from the tone of their skin to the size of their bust. Kilbourne points out that men don't have to live in a world where their bodies are routinely scrutinized, criticized and judged. Women on the other had have to live with it in all aspects (Killing Us Softly 4. 2010). From being photoshopped to not being able to be in an ad because of the way one looks…

a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. In today’s society objectification, of women especially, is treated as the norm and accepted as a part of everyday life. This creates a harmful ideology for young girls as they grow up with it all around them at all times. It is also harmful for women trying to get further in life and being respected as people as they are only noticed for their looks not by their professional skill sets. The mainstream media is…

The setting consists of the couple sitting outside a bar in a train station in Spain. What makes this story so enduring is the fact that it is a coming of age tale. During the course of waiting for the train, the young women grows from a naïve girl into a woman, fully in charge of her destiny. The struggle between the couple reaches a climax right before they board the train to Madrid. Although it is uncertain what the topic of their argument is about, I believe it had to do with whether the…

A Woman’s Worth "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid reveals the overwhelming pressure on young women to look and act in certain ways in order to please men and society. Through the use of literary elements such as style, tone, and characterization, Jamaica Kincaid is able to place the reader into the shoes of a young Caribbean girl as her mother describes to her what she must do in order to protect her reputation and grow into a respectable woman. While there are many cultural topics specific to…

have changed for the better, for the female sex since Katha Pollitt’s essay was written over twenty years ago. As a mother of a preschool-aged little girl, I have seen my fair share of Disney movies. Movies such as Tangled, Mulan, Frozen, and Brave are some of the many movies that have come out since 1991, that are not about poor defenseless girls, with nothing in mind but meeting their prince…

A Matter of Appearance In the short story A & P, by John Updike the narrator/main character Sammy quits his job at the A & P store after defending three girls dressed in bathing suits from the “stingy” A & P manager Lengel, however the girls leave the store without even noticing Sammy’s attempt at gaining their attention. This then raises the question about why he quit. What was his reason? Was it wrong? Was it right? It is quite possible that Sammy may have had a deeper subconscious reason for…

Americans saw a drastic social change in the years immediately following World War II. Young women sought out help and support from major magazines, specifically Seventeen Magazine in the years 1946 and 1947. Both teenage girls and young women were the targeted audience, and though they were close in age, their social interactions and fashion senses were on separate ends of the spectrum. In a Seventeen ad. published in 1947- the company influences it’s audience to invest in their new…

Koivula’s study points out the evidence of the impact of social construction of male-female relations that maintain, strengthen, and naturalize differences in genders as the results are measured by motives to participate. From birth, both boys and girls have different socialization as it relates to athletics and physical activity resulting…