Question

questions 6 through 9 refer to the following.
(the following passage is excerpted from a book published by an american journalist and
author in 1988.)
even without the appropriate toys and clothes, lessons in the art of being feminine lay all
around me and i absorbed them all: the fairy tales that were read to me at night, the brightly
colored advertisements i poured over in magazines before i learned to decipher the words,
the movies i saw: the comic books i hoarded, the radio soap operas i happily followed
whenever i had to stay in bed with a cold i loved being a little girl or rather i loved being a
baby: process for that was who i thought i was.
as i passed through a stormy adolescence to a stormy maturity, femininity increasingly
became an exasperation, a baliant subtle aesthetic that was bafflingly inconsistent at the
same time that it was manifestly uncompromisingly concrete, a rigid code of appearance and
behavior defined by dos and donts that went against my rebellious grain femininity was
a challenge thrown down to the female sex, a challenge to no proud, self-respecting young
woman could afford to ignore, particularly one with enormous ambition that she nursed in
secret, alternately hating or staring its include life in tremendous confusion.
dont lose your femininity and dont it remarkable how she manages to retain her
femininity ? had to terrifying implications they spoke of a bottom-line failure so irreversible
that nothing else mattered the pitfall machine was registered tit the game had been
called desperation was marked on the forehead of a woman whose femininity was lost
no records would be entered in her name for she had destroyed her birthright in her

7
mark for review
in the first two paragraphs, the author describes experiences from her girlhood and early
adulthood primarily to
a show that attitudes toward femininity can change over time
b argue that the structures of femininity are less severe for young girls
c foreground the comforting aspects of adhering to feminine ideals
d introduce two different attitudes toward femininity

Explanation:

The first two paragraphs describe the author's experiences from girlhood (e.g., loving being a girl, following comic books, radio soap operas) and early adulthood (e.g., the "Tilt" machine incident where femininity was lost). This shows a change in attitudes over time. For example, in girlhood, there was a positive association with femininity (loving being a girl, following certain media), but in early adulthood, an event (the "Tilt" machine) led to a loss of femininity as defined by societal norms. This indicates a shift in how femininity was perceived and experienced over different life stages.

Answer:

A. show that attitudes toward femininity can change over time