This book follows the journey throughout a whole year of one
woman, Norah Vinent, as she disguises herself as a man to gather a different
perspective on the world and sexuality. One evening, Norah decided to dress up
drag with her friend, and the idea for this book seemed to grow from there. In
the first chapter, She talks about the birth of her alter-male-ego, Ned, and
the purpose of the book. It takes the reader through different steps of her
process in order to alter her appearance.
In the second chapter, Ned joins a bowling league in order to get a foot
in the male world. She befriends the three guys on her bowling team and learns
about the difference of friendships between females and males. In the third
chapter, Ned delves deeper into male sexuality as he visits strip clubs and
reveals the female perspective in a male appearance of what goes on in these
clubs. The fourth chapter Ned decides to focus on Love and dating as a male and
what it’s really like for guys. She finds rejection is rough, even in the
smallest amounts and becomes glad she is lesbian because of how she perceives
the male/ female interactions and how closed off and guarded they are when
meeting one another.
So far, this book has really impressed me. It’s nothing like
I thought it would be, but definitely lives up to the hype and praise given by
its reviews. Norah definitely had to be emotionally, physically and mentally
prepared to immerse herself in this project and I believe she has covered all
of the bases. I mean she began lifting weight and even wear a fake penis to
make the project even more real life. She definitely went above and beyond than
I ever expected. She is persistence, inquisitive, and courageous throughout her
journey. In each chapter she goes behind
the scenes to expose different complete male environments that women rarely get
a glimpse at. The second chapter was cool because she talked of the
similarities and differences between guy friendships and female friendships and
I know with the female ones she was spot on, and the male ones, she was
directly in the situation so it could be exposed. Chapter three really blew my
mind when she went to the strip clubs! I was so shocked at the things she
witnessed, and even more shocked at the things she had the balls to do. If I was in that situation, I would have been
totally disgusted, as I was just reading it, and would have left and not been
able to finish that portion of it. But she had persistence and perseverance and
it really shows throughout the book. Her discussion of male sexuality was also intriguing,
like how the bowling guys still went to strip clubs and didn’t tell there
wives, but they still loved them to death and had the upmost respect for them.
As I woman, I wasn’t really okay with this, and it angered me as I was reading,
but the farther I got, I realized there is nothing I can do to change anything
like this, and I think that’s how Norah expressed it as well in some of the
pages. The last chapter takes a closer look at dating and men asking woman out.
I found this chapter to be kind of amusing, but sad as well, because of all the
rejection. There have been times in my life when I have rejected people and I
never really put myself in their shoes and thought about there side of it.
However, she never really talked about when a girl asks a guy out, mainly because
this experience didn’t happen to her as Ned. I was the one who asked my boyfriend out, so
it would have been interesting to me to see this from a guys perspective.
Overall, the book has been a great read, and I am excited to see what the final
four chapters bring to the table! Applause for Norah(:
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