Are Men Necessary?, by Maureen Dowd: a book review

I got Are Men Necessary?, by Maureen Dowd and read it, but I can't say I was wildly impressed. Considering this person is a Pulitzer Prize winner, I was expecting something better, sharper, wittier, something like a liberal Florence King perhaps. No such luck.

The book is mostly treading old ground. I've lost count of how many articles I've read about frustrated career women who can't get men, because men don't want women as successful as they are, they can't cope with intelligent, strong women, they want women who won't compete with them, so they marry secretaries, nurses etec (it doesn't apparently occur to Ms. Dowd that a woman may be a secretary or a nurse and yet have a glimmer of intelligence).

The book goes over all the desperate advice given to women over the years on how to get a man, from 1950s guides to the arch outpourings of Cosmopolitan. Reading about all these desperate women, I reflect how extrardoinary the lengths women will go to to entice men, adopting all sorts of desperate stratagems to appear more attractive, less intelligent, more seductive, or whatever. When I was young I liked men as well as the next woman, I wanted boyfriends, I wanted (eventually) to get married and have children. But it never occured to me to DO anything about it. I mean, I just used to assume that either men were attracted to me or they weren't, either they wanted to marry me or they didn't, I never thought it was possible to influence them in any way, so I never tried.

Ms Dowd laments the modern fad for women to be wholly obsessed with their appearance, and to go to extraordinary lenghts to augment their looks with plastic surgery etc, but she doesn't have any interesting insights into this, or any other, subject. The part about plastic surgery produces what I thought was the only really amusing line in the book. Discussing liposuction she writes, of the chairman of the Liposuction task force:

Liposuction task force? In the ’50s, women vacuumed. Now women are vacuumed. Our Hoovers have turned on us!

The most ineresting part of the book is where she discusses whether men are necessary from an evolutionary point of view. Apparently it would be possible for women to do without men altogether, according to some scientists, or at least to get by with very few. I was struck by this arresting sentence:

Every time a man has sex, he makes enough sperm to fertilize every female in Europe.

Now that's food for thought.

Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky are discussed at length, and one of the most interesting passage in the book comes when Maureen Dowd comes face to face with Miss Lewinsky;
“Why did you write such scathing articles about me?”, Miss Lewinsky asks her. “I don't know” Ms Dowd replies.

And I don't really know what this book is for: it doesn't seem to have anything very new or very interesting to say on any of the subjects discussed within its covers; it's all been gone over before.

I hope that the columns that won her the Pulitzer Prize were better than this.

Louise C

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2006 Jul 9 - 20:36 | login or register to post comments | latest article | previous article | next article |

Good job, Louise...

I was far more impressed by Louise's review of Dowd's book (which I hadn't read, and will not read) than I was by any of Ms. Dowd's columns that I had read (albeit not that many - it's not so much that her views are very much not to my liking, but how she expresses her views.)

Anyway, good review Louise.

Sam (of Sam & Missy)

by Sam2020 on 2006 Jul 10 - 21:57 | login or register to post comments

Mean Mean Maureen...

Maureen Dowd needs a boyfriend... Of course, I've always wanted to take a tour of her personal dungeon... because I'm sure she has one... ;)

by EJZero on 2006 Jul 11 - 00:17 | login or register to post comments

Are Men Necessary, by Maureen Dowd: a book review

Try To Hell with All That, by Caitlin Flanagan.

I found it more interesting, more nuanced--and certainly less cartoonish than Maureen Dowd tends to be in her writing. P. J. O'Rourke blurbed it: "Lotharios, feminists, social critics, metrosexuals and other confused moderns--read Caitlin Flanagan and learn why men love their wives." I would only improve that by ending his review with "why men love women...who are more Taken In Hand than MoDo."

--Richard

by Richard on 2006 Jul 11 - 01:59 | login or register to post comments

You are Brave

I took the book out of the library a few months ago and couldn't get into it at all so I returned it after reading just a few pages.

Whatever she had to say, she wasn't able to draw me in. And this woman won a Pulitzer Prize? What am I waiting for then?

"Pat"

by a Taken In Hand reader on 2006 Jul 11 - 04:06 | login or register to post comments

To Hell With All That

If P.J. O'Rourke blurbed it, that's good enough for me, I would read absolutely anything he blurbed, I will get it forthwith!

by Louise C on 2006 Jul 11 - 04:56 | login or register to post comments

Caitlin Flanagan

Interesting that you should mention Caitlin Flanagan. I refered to her earlier essay, Housewife Confidential, written for the Atlantic Montly when I commented on a recent Taken In Hand article. What I like about her point of view is that she challenges certain articles of faith that comprise what the current American feminist agenda requires us to believe about womanhood without being strident. It is refreshing to read a viewpoint about being a wife and mother that honors traditional housewives without embracing the fundamentalists position. I have not read "To Hell with All That", but if it is anything like her earlier essays for the Atlantic Monthly, it is worth checking out.

by Stephen on 2006 Jul 11 - 13:00 | login or register to post comments

Speculating...

One of the reasons for Maureen's anger towards men could have been her last public break up with the actor/producer Michael Douglas. After the end of their relationship, Michael Douglas got involved with then 30 year old Catherine Zeta-Jones and started a family. Just speculating...

by JosephB. on 2006 Jul 11 - 23:17 | login or register to post comments

Female mutilation

She has a point which others have made too that so many young girls want to mutilate their bodies, have surgery to change their breasts... it's so so sad. Yes, you can be feminine and pretty and please a man but all these TV makeover programmes and the junk films thrown at us and raunchy MTV pop videos and the like show there is a long way to go before men and women have a reasonable amount of equality and fairness in the world. I have always been very submissive and I like to look pretty but I am not happy with current trends, not content with the objectification of women in the media and in particular the attitudes of many younger girls. The schools and media and of course parents are getting things wrong.

Are men necessary? Anyone who has studied the science knows they aren't but sex and relationship are fun and I prefer men to women. One suspects we wouldn't have a middle east crisis or even a prison population if men weren't around or women were in charge but hopefully as we move to greater equality particularly around the world we can solve those issues.

I really hate by the way the polarisation that often seems to come out - that we either have to want women chained to the sink in subservience or career women and that you can't be submissive/takeninhand and have a fulfilling career. The two are not contradictory and I have never been out with a single dominant man who hasn't admired and respected my career and thought better of me for it nor has that ever been a problem in my submission/relationships.

by Hera on 2006 Jul 16 - 22:45 | login or register to post comments

Making a point

What I found rather unstaisfactory about this book was that she didn't seem to be making any point really. she described in detail a lot of things that have already been chewed over at length by many other journalists, high-powered women having difficutly finding relationships, sexism at work, women's obsession with their looks etc, but she had nothing very interesting or insightful to say about any of these subjects. Only one line in the whole book actually amused me, the one about women who had been vacuuming now being vacuumed themselves.

I think that men are necessary for a lot more things than just propogating the species, and I am not at all convinced that there wouldn't be wars etc if there were no men. I think of all the things that men have achieved that have made the world a better place. All the technological inventions and medical discoveries that have been made by men that have made life less unpleasant. I think particularly of my own personal hero, Ignaz Semmelweiss, the Hungarian physician who discovered that if doctors washed their hands before delivering babies, the mothers were much less likely to develop the dreaded childbed fever that made childbirth such a hazardous business for women. Millions and millions of women since then must have lived who would not have died without Semmelweiss.

I think of my own husband's usefulness as being about much more than simply getting me pregnant. Who else can control our horrible children as well as he? Not me, I can tell you. Who can fix things like him? Again, not me. Who can keep the burglars away at night? He can, but not me (all right, we've never actually had a burglarly, but nevertheless, every night my husband is away I am convinced that they're in the house). Who can handle a boat like he can? Not me (I couldn't even get it in the water). And there's a lot of other things he can do for me that I couldn't do for myself (I don't need to go into details about that again). His usefulness goes far beyond impregnation.

Whatever Maureen Dowd was trying to say in this book, she didn't manage to make her point, if she had one, at all clear to me. I kept thinking, like Cyrano de Bergerac: "Oh, what you might have said" as I tried to imagine how Florence King, for instance, would have handled the same material. How incisive, witty, and ironic she would have been, while Ms. Dowd rambles on, as far as I could judge, to no purpose at all.

Louise

by Louise C on 2006 Jul 17 - 05:23 | login or register to post comments

Gray Lady Sinking

Dowd's musings are largely misandric. Although the diametrically opposite in her politics, Dowd has much in common with Ann Coulter. Both women are out of their intellectual depth in politics.

When writing on political subjects, Dowd's pen drips argumentative acid. Otherwise, she is a talented feature writer.

Hired for her supposed ability to walk on journalistic water, Dowd's sophist style is helping sink the Gray Lady - a name by which The New York Times, the newspaper for which Dowd writes, is sometimes known. Much like The Times, her esoteric writings have lost touch with most Americans.

by Noone on 2006 Jul 17 - 11:00 | login or register to post comments

No Men, No Wars???

Anyone who's been to my office and observed the, "ladies" in action would disagree.

My, one would think that they invented the firefight. Certainly, their skills at grenade-throwing would put them right up there with the best combatants. And ambushes!!! No one can set up another woman like these ladies.

Take away the men, juice up the hormones of these ladies, and you've got all the makings of a kill zone.

Sam (of Sam & Missy)

by Sam2020 on 2006 Jul 18 - 02:08 | login or register to post comments

Fighting Women

Somewhere in the book Maureen Dowd quotes someone as saying:
"Put eleven men together and you've got a football team. Put eleven women together and you've got a riot."

Louise

by Louise C on 2006 Jul 18 - 14:20 | login or register to post comments

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