![]() And yet, somehow, the alarmist portrait she draws of female life feels skewed. Much of what Dowd observes in the piece is true-the nostalgic passion for the 1950s, the increasing number of educated women opting to be housewives or change their names when they marry, the success of books like The Rules. But Dowd is pretending to cover cultural trends with journalistic accuracy, and it is this pretense that gives her arguments a shoddy feel. It would be one thing if Dowd were writing pure, straightforward polemic, ranting against the people she feels the need to rant against. The problem with this approach is that one could go out and find a 29-year-old publicist who would say the opposite. The formula is basically this: “Carrie, a 29-year-old publicist, says … ” And from Carrie’s experience she extrapolates to the universal. ![]() She cobbles together anecdotal evidence from people she encounters. In Are Men Necessary? she gravitates toward quotes like this: “Deep down all men want the same thing: a virgin in a gingham dress,” or “if there’s one thing men fear it’s a woman who uses her critical faculties.” To support these generalizations, Dowd relies on the faux journalism of women’s magazines. But this strategy is better-suited to satirizing a real person (say, President Bush) than it is to offering insights into the already cartoonish “war” between the sexes. Like the crude, sexist men she lampoons, Dowd is extremely fond of clever stereotyping.
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