The text’s male characters, and even some of its female characters, maintain misogynistic views of women. The exact form and severity of these views exist on a spectrum. Some misogyny idealizes women while nevertheless othering them. When Bud considers his daughters, for example, he thinks, “Women are ethereal creatures, […] always one foot in another world” (12-13). This characterization suggests that women are fundamentally different than men—and, perhaps, that they are fundamentally fragile and insubstantial. A similar tendency to paint all women as the same underpins Alabaster’s more traditional sexism; he claims that he finds women “grating,” thus expressing outright contempt for them. However, the strongest thread of misogyny lies in the objectification of women. Male characters even sexualize underage, a pattern that the novel implicitly links to misogyny; the dehumanization that reduces women to sexual objects impacts girls as well. These problems infuse the text, drawing attention to how pervasive they are in the contemporary American culture in which the novel is set.

The preoccupation with female beauty is intertwined with this sexualization, as it locates a woman’s value in her attractiveness to men. The novel says of Catherine, for instance, that “she was in fact very much afraid of the ravages of time—she ate like a hunter-gatherer and plied her face with soaps and serums intended to suspend one’s skin in youth” (28).