Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide (Hardcover)

by Maureen Dowd (Author) "I don't understand men..." (more)
Key Phrases: slump busters, alpha women, men necessary, New York, White House, Bill Clinton (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
She may be smart, incisive, witty, and keenly observant but with the release of Are Men Necessary?--a series of pithy (some might say piqued) ruminations on the sexes--Maureen Dowd will never, ever be championed by guys. Not that she cares. Even those who seek to avoid her columns in the august pages of The New York Times are certain to stumble over her invective in syndication. Dowd, it often seems, is everywhere. So those seeking even more via this book should be warned: Are Men Necessary? not only asks the eponymous question; it seeks to answer it with myriad examples (some convincing, some not) drawn from the Toronto Star to Kenneth Starr, from Cosmopolitan to Condoleezza Rice. You can bet a lot of folks aren't going to relish the answer.

With hands on hips and eyes wide open, Dowd surveys gender relations in contemporary settings such as the workplace, the White House, the mall, and the media, comparing and contrasting as she goes. And while her secondary sources are endless--and, let's face it, the subject of gender inequality is not exactly new--Dowd manages to produce a fair share of bons mots. To wit, this pearl on the subject of plastic surgery and men: "I have yet to see a man come out of cosmetic surgery without looking transformed into some permanently astonished lesbian version of himself," Dowd quotes a source as saying. "It's terrifying. My friend's father had just his eyes done by the best, most highly sought-after cosmetic surgeon in New York City. And he doesn't look refreshed or well rested. He looks like he's being stabbed to death by invisible people." Dowd's generously dispersed anecdotes, though seldom as funny, are equally readable. In the end, though, one wishes Are Men Necessary? went beyond simply grocery listing examples of sexual disparity to offer concrete suggestions for change. Then again, maybe that's too great a task even for a woman like Dowd. --Kim Hughes

From Publishers Weekly
Dowd's Bushworld, collecting her amped New York Times op-eds, hit big during the 2004 presidential campaign. This follow-up is as slapdash as the earlier book was slash-and-burn. What Dowd seems really to want to do is dish up anecdotes of gender bias in the media, which she does with her usual aplomb—everything from how Elizabeth Vargas was booted out of Peter Jennings's vacant chair at ABC during his illness ("I'm not sure if she has the gravitas," opines an exec) to the guys who won't date Dowd because she's got more Beltway juice (and money) than they. The rest is padding: endless secondary source and pundit quotes ("In Time, Andrew Sullivan wondered: 'So a woman is less a woman if she is a scientist or journalist or Prime Minister?' "); examples of gender relations gone wrong in books, film and TV; random interview blips ("Carrie, a publicist in her late twenties from Long Island, told me...."); little musings from girlhood that are rarely revealing enough; endless career rehashes of everyone from Anita Hill to Helen Gurley Brown. A chapter on dating is a mishmash of everything from The Rules to He's Just Not That into You; one on reproductive science (that asks the title question for real) ends up referring a lot to orgasm. It's intermittently entertaining, but neither sharp enough nor sustained enough to work as a book.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; Book Club (BCE/BOMC) edition (November 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399153322
• ISBN-13: 978-0399153327
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (151 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #323,126 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

348 of 427 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars lacks introspection, but Dowd is a genius at flippancy, November 14, 2005

By	Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Dowd is a fabulously sarcastic writer. When my opinion synches with hers, I revel in the deliciously wicked way that she expresses herself. It is a good laugh and the writing is truly unique. But when I don't agree, I find her style and opinions irritating and superficial, that is, unwilling to look beneath the surface in either a constructive or a genuinely insightful way. I suppose that is why she is a great columnist - you never have to get beyond about 800 words and you can forget her opinions as you step off the subway.

Well, this book in my opinion brings out the worst in her. She masses statistics about why so many talented women remain unattached, and makes an argument that it proves feminism has failed: because men basically want bimbos and women want to "trade up", the most interesting women (like, uh, her) get left without enduring relationships. Behind this funny and elegantly written argument, Dowd utterly fails to ask herself any of the harder questions that require introspection. Why can't she find a good relationship? Why do certain types of men approach her? Etc. It is not she who is deficient or somehow repellant to those who might love her, but men as a category and even society as a whole that come up short. This is OK for a pithy column, but in a book it wears awfully thin after the first chapter. Her lack of introspection is, well, depressingly relentless on such a personal subject. This is singularly unimpressive.

Moreover, what about all the talented women who DO find relationships that work? I am married to one of great talent and intelligence, who challenges me constantly and does not allow the marriage to stand still, even when it hurts. To have it any other way would be boring. My wife is, I think, an example of feminism as applied to married life and I dare not take anything for granted.

But my greatest disappointment in this book is that it posed no questions that got me to ask myself questions about who I am as a man and why I want what (or whom) I do. I learned nothing from this, even while I admired her writing style. There is more pose than substance and I don't believe this book is intended just for the humor.

Not recommended.

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bunch of Baloney, December 18, 2005

By	Ono No Komachi (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I'm a married professional woman and and consider myself a feminist, but I probably disliked this book as much as the angry males on here.

The book primarily a collection of stereotypes. There is an element of truth in some of these, but some of it is just wrong.

For example, Dowd states she would have had a better chance at being married if she had chosen a career as a maid. That's possible, but most likely in that case she'd probably be married to a janitor, not one of the high status males she seems to feel she deserves.

Maureen Dowd is the female equivalent of all those angry men who complain they aren't getting any because women are too focused on men with money...It's always easier to blame the outside world for your failures then look in the mirror.

She does have a point that "society" still values women primarily as sex objects, but men are not the only ones to blame for this either. A much, much better book on that subject is "Female Chauvanist Pigs".

I admit this book is entertaining, but don't give Ms. Dowd your money - buy it used.

37 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Why Can't I Get a Date With a Rich White Shallow Man?", September 2, 2006

By	onlyInSF (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

Since this seems to be the subtext of the book Are Men Necessary, I think it should have been the title.

I read her excerpt from Are Men Necessary: "What's a Modern Girl To Do." I am giving it two stars because as a graphic designer, I like the 50s-style book cover illustration of the woman in the red dress reading a book in a subway train while the male passengers are watching her.

I am a single woman just like Maureen Dowd. But I think I know why she is having trouble dating.

She only goes out with rich, powerful men; usually celebrities, Republicrat or Demopublican politicians, and Beltway journalists sycophantic to them. These men probably really don't want a smart, talented woman. Why would they, when they're used to dating women who are just as shallow as themselves, and, if they're Beltway journalists, don't seem to dare criticize the Bush Administration like she does? For this very reason, her making fun of the Bushies and John Kerry in her columns probably alienates these men from her even further. I wouldn't be surprised if these very same men loathed Stephen Colbert and anonymously left death threats on his voicemail after he ranked on George Bush at the correspondents' dinner last April. Although her columns do sound bitchy and childish and no less superficial than her dates do; since these articles dwell on the politicians' personalities more than their policies.

I live in San Francisco, and do computer art and consulting for a living. I'm sure this requires more brain-power than writing a fluffy book complaining that men don't like smart women. I've been to Burning Man. I'm in the Green Party. Why am I mentioning these all-too-personal-and-irrelevant things? Because if these men don't want to date Maureen Dowd because she's too talented as she claims, they would probably not want to even think about dating a computer geek like myself. If she's really too smart for them, they'd consider me too much of a freak.

But I accept this. I guess it's much easier for me to not lose sleep over the fact that elite men are probably not going to like someone like me than it seems to be for Maureen Dowd. Because these men are not part of my world, but hers.

I'm not surprised she assumes that all men hate smart, talented women. It's because these are the only types of men she associates with. Fortunately, there are lots of decent, thoughtful, hard-working men out there who are not nearly this petty. But if she really wants to find them, she'll have to get out of her Hollywood-Beltway ghetto/ivory tower and into the real world.

To summarize, "What's a Modern Girl To Do" is nothing more than a sour-gripes-fest complaining that she can't get a rich, powerful man. Well, I can't either.

Maureen needs to hang out with a different crowd, like I do.