A&P

In John Updike's story A&P he portrays the life of a typical teenage boy. As a group of very attractive girls walks into the grocery store Sammy works at he can't help but watch and wonder as they walk around. He starts to fixate on everything about the leader who he calls "Queenie". He goes into such detail as "With the straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from her shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I mean it was more than pretty" (p.600). He clearly feels something for this young girl who came in wearing nothing but a skimpy bathing suit. What guy wouldn't notice this? What person wouldn't notice this? Queenie even caused the lady's in the store to turn heads, although for different reasons. In these women's eyes no girl should come into a store dressed like that, its not proper and looked down upon. One older lady did get in Sammy's way for a few minutes. As she was checking out, Sammy scanned an item twice, being so distracted and all, the lady didn't hesitate to jump all over him for that one. Not only did Sammy judge the pretty young girls, he was judging this older woman. claiming she had been waiting the past fifty years just to catch a mistake at the cash register. he went to say how old ladies have nothing better to do. Luckily for Sammy the girls chose his lane to go through. This excited him and as he was trying to get the girls items scanned the manager came over. Lengal, the manager who is much older and much more mature, refers to a store policy as to how the girls are dressed and that it is inappropriate. Sammy saw that this embarrassed the girls and with a last attempt to make a good impression he, very loudly, announces that he quit his job because of how Lengal embarrassed them like that. As he was leaving the store to see how appreciative the girls were he saw that they were gone. he was left job-less alone in a parking lot. this shows the kind of power women have over men and there actions. A pretty half naked girl walks into a store and manages to get a guy to quit for her. Its almost sad that somebody would where such skimpy clothes just to get some attention but its even worse that somebody would quit there job in the hopes of being a "hero".
Clearly Updike doesn't think to much of women. He sees them as a piece of meat and nothing else.