Barbara Ehrenreich's What I Ve Learned From Men

A Warrior underneath the Soft Exterior

In the essay “What I’ve Learned from Men”, Barbara Ehrenreich stresses on the idea that women must quit being too ladylike, and focus instead on learning how to be tough as men. Her urge to become tough aroused after a personal experience she faced with a “prestigious professor” (229) in which she found herself incapable of defending herself when he started acting inappropriately with her. Then as the plot unfolds, Ehrenreich starts to shed light on the things women should stop doing in order to be tough such as avoid smiling when it’s unnecessary, “take credit when credit is due” (232), and stop trying too hard to start a conversation with men. However, at the end of her essay Ehrenreich

reconsiders the situation she got engaged in and imagines herself acting tough as a WOMAN and not as a man. (228-232) Therefore in the final paragraph of her essay we can conclude and comprehend that the feminist author wants her female audience to act like women and not like men.

Throughout the essay Barbara Ehrenreich perpetually reiterates the idea that women should be tough like men, in order to be recognized and complimented for their achievement.

She criticizes the soft and nice nature of women, and blames herself for being too ladylike. From her experience, she implies that women are inferior and defenseless, and accuses females of being too nice and caring. However, I disagree with how the author portrays women based on her own experience. To me women must embrace the fact that they’re born with such amazing nature. They do not need to be taught what toughness is. They are innately strong. They do not need to be like men in order to succeed, because men have their insecurities too. In fact if women were not strong God would not have chosen them to carry a human being for nine month and endure the pain of labor. Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Conservative Party once said that:” If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done ask a woman” by that I can say that a woman is better at holding responsibilities. However I agree with Ehrenreich when she says at the end “I walk out-slowly, deliberately, confidently. Just like a man. Or- now that I think of it – just like a woman” (232) Here the she relates the word “tough” to women and by that we understand that we cannot learn something from men except the ridiculous things as she previously noted in the introduction “What else

can we learn from men? … How to make those weird guttural gargling sounds in the bathroom? ” (Ehrenreich 229)

In addition the ladylike behavior is not a negative thing as Ehrenreich portrayed it after a bad experience she had. I disagree with her when she says that women are always smiling and hiding their emotions, and how they act less capable to not be seen as audacious. On the contrary a lady is well-mannered, and confident. A lady can call the waiter, she is not inferior and timid as Ehrenreich glimpses “I believed that woman had only one thing to learn from men: how to get the attention of the waiter…” (228) I believe that a lady is not cloaked in the shadows of men. For me a ladylike is a preparatory stage to become a woman or in other words “tough”. I disagree with how the author neglects the fact that it was her fault for not standing up for herself in front of the professor, and instead she throws it all on her ladylike behavior. In that way the author is ruining the image of feminism and in return denying her feminist principals. No matter what as a feminist she must always defend women and not depict them as weak in society.