Looking At Women

8 Pages 1965 Words

The Difference
I can still remember those excruciatingly hot summer days when not being sixteen years old was just horrible, since my friends and I did not have the privilege of being that wonderful age in owning a car. To get to our desired destination, we would have to walk quite a lot, sometimes for hours. I recollect being so tired and hot from the summer sun that my friends and I would stagger into a place when we would finally get there. During those years we prayed every day for that wonderful age to arrive. I enjoyed those experiences with my friends. But there was one aspect I did not enjoy, (my friends would disagree with me) the constant honks, hollers, and inappropriate comments men of all ages made. My friends loved them and even sometimes kept count of how many we received. I found them disgusting and degrading to women. I did not understand how my friends could find it to be a compliment, when I found myself to be disgusted. Why do men react to women in such a way? Why are women perceived as objects? Will the boundary line ever disappear? Can men and women ever come to understand each other with respect?
In the article “Looking at Women,” Sanders spends half his lifetime searching for an answer to his question: “How should men look at women?” (255). To answer his question he begins by going back in time to the age of eleven. He remembers staring at a girl who was dressed in a pair of pink shorts, wondering how she caused that weird feeling in his stomach. He saw her as someone who was trying to draw attention to herself. He then jumps to the time when he was attending college, staring at the nude pictures of women on his roommate’s wall. He remembers other guys gathering at that wall to discuss women as though they were parts of the “meat market” (Sanders 256). During his years in college Sanders remembers seeing girls dressed in revealing clothes and having their faces covered with makeup. He saw thei...