The author of this brief response took a look at four chapters from a particular book. What follows in this report is a direct and measured response to those chapters. The readings themselves had a good variety and variance to them. They all involve very personal subjects but all center on the coming of age of teenage girls during the first generation after World War II ended. However, they are not monolithic or too much alike in nature. It is important that literature explore the human condition and what drives people to act and behave as they do. Of course, nobody lives or behaves in a vacuum. Despite what some people might suggest, what a given person does can affect the behaviors and reactions of others and/or the same thing can happen in reverse.
Analysis
The first reading and topic is one that tends to be explosive and controversial. Indeed, that would be sex and how teenagers handle the same. The treatise starts off by recounting what tended to happen when Baby Boomers were traveling through puberty. There is no understating the progression that is stated on the very first page, that being the shift from the post-war mindset and worldview of the...
The “mixed messages” that are referred to on that same first page are easy to fathom and expect given that quick and visceral shift. The use of specific examples like the movie Cleopatra and the book Lady Chatterley’s Lover drive home the point of what was considered tawdry and scandalous just a half century ago (Douglas). The second reading is actually another chapter in the Douglas text. Just as with the prior reading snippet and much of the Douglas text at large, there is a reference to a generational “standard” of womanhood as defined by that era and coming of age for the same. Indeed, the chapter starts with the litmus test of having women from that era, ostensibly or proven, listen to Will You Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles. The point made by the author is that any “true” Baby Boomer woman will know that song by heart. The author then points to other songs with that pattern and aesthetic. However, Douglas is wise to point out that the Shirelles should stand alone because of when they broke through, the fact that the group was four black women and…
