Journal Entry #1

In this first section, it is assumed that men are very competitive and this is true, but at the same time they want each other to succeed so that they will have better competition. In the book the author finds herself to be the worst bowler in the league, but the other men around her go out of their way to help her become a better bowler. In contrast she tells a story of how when she was younger she went to a tennis camp and experienced the exact opposite from the other girls that were there. One of the girls in camp said that she would rather be pretty and bad at tennis than look like the author and play well. Our group thought this experience was very interesting and seems to be very true about men compared to women.

Nora is surprised that when she tells the men in her bowling league that she is a woman, they take it extremely well and accept her for who she is. They didn’t get mad or stop talking to her even when she told them she was a lesbian. Their bowling league continued and she even went to the bars and socialized with them. She talks about how they seemed to be more open and willing to talk to her after she exposed herself. They came to her with their problems and even said that they liked her more as a woman. They trusted her even after she lied to them, and for that, she felt guilty. Norah's assumptions on men were changed after this experience.

“The four F’s. That’s all you need to know about women. Find‘em. Feel’em. Fuck’em and Forget’em.” From a women’s point of view that may be the assumption that they have about how men deal with women. This is a common stereotype that exists about men, but surprisingly that’s not all there is to it. This book proves that men tend to respect their wives even if they do go to strip clubs and find time away from their wives. The author talks about how the men are willing to get lap dances from the strippers in front of other men and they are willing to do this because there is no intimacy to the situation. They don’t care about the stripper the same way they care about their wife. She explains how the experience with a stripper doesn’t include: emotions, seduction, imagination, and mental connection. These are things she believes are missing from the strip clubs and also things that women feel are necessary in female sexuality. This kind of says that men like to get straight to the point sometimes. At one point the bartender asks who wanted to see the girl naked as if all of the men would not enjoy the show until the stripper was completely exposed. The men of course wanted to see her naked but because this was such a day-to-day thing for them, there was no longer the same enthusiasm as there once was. They don’t want to have to deal with the things that women like to include such as foreplay and emotional involvement. This of course is not the case for all men because most married men that go to strip clubs come home to their wife and keep a perfectly healthy connection with them. They’re willing to use their emotions in the relationship and do what is necessary to make it work.

The ideal audience for this book would be young adults to adults. The reason for this is because Anna appropriate for young kids and the older generation wouldn’t appreciate or care for the topic. The chapter about the strip club is really graphic and raunchy. The language surprised everyone in our group and made discussion a little awkward. The complication of vocabulary would make it difficult for younger teens to read because they may not have expanded their vocabulary as much as a college student or young adult. People biased toward people who are homosexuals would not like the writing of this author. Her being a lesbian greatly affects the way she writes, the things she discusses, and the way she describes her experiences. She makes it known she is a lesbian and isn’t afraid to discuss this topic. She is a very outgoing person which also affects her experiences and in turn, her writing. What makes it a good book is the fact that she is willing to do so many things and be so open about them. It wouldn’t be half as interesting if she wasn’t an extrovert and didn’t write about her experiences so honestly.