"A &P"

In John Updike's short story "A & P," he contributes to the male chauvinistic roles in society by the view in which the nineteen year old cashier has about the women who he helps in his line, female stereotypes, and showing skin. Updike's description of the first woman he encounters, " She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up," (p. 599). The nagging stereotypical housewife that had nothing better to do but make his life miserable, like most women of a certain age do, nag their husbands. She is a typical  1950's female. Updike also reveals the males lust towards the leader of the pack whom he calls "Queenie" dresses inside the store. It kind of gives him sexual excitement, being a man an all, "With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from her shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean it was more than pretty" (p.600). Woman are sexual objects, they dress that way because they want the attention from a man, to notice them, and want them, even thought the girls were asked to dress more appropriately by the manager, they still got noticed, they still got their attention. He describes how the behavior of others in the store react to how the girls dressed, "A few housewives in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what they had seen was correct," (600) reflects oh societies view of how "girls ot to dress" when they are out in public, let alone inside the grocery store. They were in the middle of the town, not on the Cape at he beach. In a the eyes of society of that period, this sort of behavior was frowned upon because a lady would never go into a store with their bare shoulders showing. In the 1950's girls just didn't do such things if they were a lady. The story was definitely written by a man, in his point of view.