“Size 6: Women’s Harlem” Analysis

Fatema Mernissi text, “size 6: Women’s Harlem” takes an inside view of the place that a women gets in a men world. Also it demonstrates how women live up to the expectation that men have for them. She describes her own life and how men places her in her culture, how she is not allowed to be in the public space because that space is only allowed for men. Also how she is forced to covered her face with a veil because that is the rule that the police men in Morocco enforce. She discusses how her coming to American open her eyes and she begins to notice that the men have the same control over the women. When she goes into an American store a woman that is the same age as her but who look half her age begins to tell her that there are no skirts her size. This women then begins to offend the author by telling her she is too big, this is a surprise for her because in her country no one would ever tell her that but then soon she realizes that this is the way that men keep the women under control in America. A men in America wants a girl that is the perfect size, so women are most likely force to be skinny and look young to be able to please men, which is living up to their expectations. She then because to analyzes that both here in American and her country women are control by men and often put down by them. Here she describes why this happens and how these two different cultures connect for the one reason that men find a way to control women and put them to live by their expectations.

Vocabulary.
None for this one

Tone
Informative; passionate

Rhetorical Terms
Anecdote- “It was during my successful attempt to buy a cotton skirt.…”
Metaphor- “..more dangerous and cunning than the Muslims ones because the weapon used against women is time.”
Allusion- “You can’t escape it. There is Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Gianni Versace, Giorgio Armani, Mario Valentino…”
Emotional Appeal- “I am so happy that the conservative male elite does not know about it.”
Rhetorical Question- “how can you stage a credible political demonstration and shout in the streets that your human rights have been violated when you cannot find the right skirt?

Discussion Questions
Clarification- Why is the author in a look for a skirt in the first place?
Application- Would you agree with the author when she assume that the Western women has it worse than the Muslim Women? Why?
Style: Do you believe that all around the world (not only in the Muslim and Western life) women are made to live up to a men expectations?

Quote
“The objective remains identical in both cultures; to make women feel unwelcome, inadequate, and ugly.”