Masculinity

He sulked in the department store courtesy chair, two shopping bags in his keep. Other men walking by glanced at Adam with admiration, respect, and a hint of envy. "He got the chair," they thought. "That's the man's chair, the chair that we sit in while our wives and girlfriends and daughters do the shopping. I wish I was sitting in that chair right now." Similarly entrusted with shopping bags, these men, like Adam, reflect the masculine principle in operation in modern society. Adam's sigh and his slouching posture point to the "pressure of making one's way in a harsh, difficult world," and to the "unrelieved seriousness" that accompanies that pressure (Brownmiller 278). In contrast, the women around them, fully in their element, rejoice at the rainbow of colors on display, from cosmetics palates to silk scarves, on the department store shelves. As Susan Brownmiller suggests in her article...
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