Sammy watches each of the girls as they look around the store, but there is one that catches his attention right as they walk in. He is so busy staring at her that he makes the customer he is "ringing up" very mad at him. Sammy describes the young girl as a "chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft - looking can with those two crescents of white just under it..."(Updike, 734). He notices everything about the girl, even down to the fact that she does not have a tan line, so she must have just bought the bright green, two piece bathing suit. He also notices that she is very conscience of being a little over weight, because she "…fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought she put the packages back"(Updike, 735).
The girls were barefoot and wore their bathing suit, which is how they caught Sammy’s attention. Not because they were wearing the bathing suits but in the confidence the girl’s had while grocery shopping. The girls were “The kind of girls that other girls think are “Striking” and “Attractive.” (1111) Updike wants to let the reader know that the girls wanted the attention when he described what the girls were wearing and how they walked with confidence. Another event happens when the girls approach Sammy’s register. When they get to the front of the line they placed the item into Sammy’s hand.
Throughout John Updike`s short story "A & P" the protagonist Sammy, a young 19 year old male, is constantly judging the cliental who walks into the grocery store, A& P. For example, when three girls walk into the store with nothing but their bathing suits; Sammy’s mind begins to be very active when he is judging the girls. As Sammy watched Quennie “buzz” over to her friends, it made his stomach (and who knows what else) rubs the inside of his apron (Updike 2). Sammy also observed the women in the store turn away when they noticed the girls almost as if they knew what would happen and were ashamed for young girls (Updike 2). At which point, Sammy views all the older, less attractive shoppers as “sheep” pushing their carts around in a herd, or as “house slaves in pin curlers” (Updike 2). Through the choice of words by the author in these references from the book, the reader is led to believe that women were generally portrayed as passive individuals, known to stay at home, cook for their husbands and care for the children while the men were active at work.
I found it to be very humorous that the parents of the teens were more excited about the baby. It was ok for their kids to be pregnant. They portrayed the characters’ lives as if they weren’t really teenagers in high school. In fact they were teens who were just living adult lifestyles. These kids were open to their parents about having sex and wanting to have a baby.
The “Beauty” contest In John Berger’s “Ways of seeing” he mainly focused on the influence that traditional oil painting and western culture has had on the society and modern day publicity. In chapter 2, the pictorial essay presents us the difference between the definition of “Beauty” between men and women. Berger used no words but pictures and imagination of us to show how “Beauty” was defined by us. On page 36 of the book “Ways of seeing”, there are two photos of two different women. The first photo shows a woman who is working at a store.
Aspects of the way the story is written are important, but equally important, as we shall see, is the date of publication. The story revolves around a visit of three scantily clad young women to the A& P store where the narrator, Sammy, and his contemporary, Stokesie, work. From the very beginning of the story Sammy takes an appreciative interest in the physical attractive ness of the girls, describing them in detail. One, the slightly chubby one, is wearing a two-piece bathing suit and the most attractive of them all, whom Sammy dubs Queenie, has the straps of her bathing suit rolled down so that above her breasts you can see simply her bare skin and her shoulders and neck, leading up to her face. It is obvious from Sammy’s description that he finds Queenie’s appearance sexually alluring: With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clear bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light.
Lengel is the store manager and he is determined to let the girls know they are in the wrong for not dressing decently. Just as Lengel was scolding them Sammy was daydreaming about being in their living seeing their fathers in “Ice cream coats and bow-ties” and the women were wearing sandals eating snack while drinking
Although advertising promotes new products to improve people’s lifestyles, advertisers in Seventeen magazines target teen girls using a fantasized model causing the reader’s self esteem to go down and creating an easy opportunity to sell their product to the vulnerable reader to cover the flaws these girls believe they have. In Seventeen magazines there are many subtle signs and imagery that is directed towards the young women reading the magazine that cue them to believe that sexuality is power. Seventeen magazines’ message of gaining self worth through emphasized femininity and beauty resonates with teen girls, regardless of class or race. Teen girls define this sexualized power as the ability to control one’s own life. Likewise, teen girls often use exaggerated sexuality to resist outside control of their lives.
Which impacts their sense of self. For example one of the girls has something that the other wants such as breasts. For two girls who were so close to suddenly stop being friends is surprising but not when you think of the jealousies between them. In the short story “Jinx” Aimee Bender focuses on two young girls, Tina and Cathy, who are inseparable. The way both of these girls are entering adult hood and becoming of age is that they both realize they are growing up and their bodies are changing for example, when “they were both wearing the hot new pants and both had great butts, discovered on their bodies, a gift from the god of time, boom a butt.
She also talks about her life now and how much it has improves, how she got the boy she wanted. Although the song does a 180, it so accurately portrays the life of a teenager. “And I have come to believe all of the things I am seeing, in magazines and TV of every singly perfect being” This highlights the expectations that teenagers have to live up to, forced upon them by society. “Oh how I would kill to live the life that they are in.” This indicates how the singer feels about her life and how she compares her ‘menial’ life to others. This is a common thought felt by most female teenagers as celebrities are idolised and praised for the glamorous lifestyle they lead.