The negative portrayal of women doesn ’ t just stop at the three characters . When you look into the context of girls in general , there are many negative things said . When Ponyboy was giving context one what greasers were , he describes all greaser girls as “ Tough , loud girls who wore too much eye makeup and giggled and swore too much ” ( Hinton 14 ). The first mention of women in the book are negative , which foreshadows the rest of the sexism in the book . Additionally , Ponyboy describes normal traits in a negative way . ' Tough ,' while said to be a positive thing , is implied to be a negative thing here . ' Loud ' is a word you could use to describe Pony ' s gang , laughing a lot is a normal trait , and swearing is something I would assume Pony does too . But because it is girls doing these things and having these traits , it ' s really emphasized that it ' s a bad thing . Not only is that an incredibly sexist view , it ' s also harmful to girls who fall into that description . A single sentence can make a whole category of girls feel bad for having a certain type of personality .
Furthermore , when Ponyboy talks to Cherry about Dally ' s behavior , Pony ' s inner monologue goes on a tangent about the boys ' behavior towards girls : “ I don ' t know how to explain it — we try to be nice to the girls we see once in a while , like cousins or the girls in class ; but we still watch a nice girl go by on a street corner and say all kinds of lousy stuff about her ” ( Hinton 26 ). This quote likely means that Ponyboy and his gang catcall girls , sexualize them , or both . This is an extremely poor characteristic to have , and very sexist--but it ' s just thrown around for no reason and never mentioned again . Even though this book is set in 1965 , it has always been a disgusting thing for a person to do . This sets a terrible example for young readers of all genders : it makes it seem fine to catcall women and to be catcalled . This piece of evidence as well as the former lead me to believe that Hinton didn ’ t just accidentally make all the women characters bad people / poorly written , but she intentionally put unchecked sexism in her book . There are no positively portrayed women in The Outsiders . While this isn ’ t directly important to the novel , it is directly important to every young person who has ever read the book . The beautiful story with important messages completely lacks any positive women , which hinders the story ’ s message . It normalizes and even encourages poor thoughts of women , as well as making it seem like women simply can ’ t be heroes . While this was a normalized idea in 1965 to the point where a woman held these views , almost 60 years later it ’ s something that you can ’ t just shrug off . After coming to terms with the sexism in The Outsiders , it ’ s important to take a look into other loved but dated novels to point out this type of negative portrayal on women so we can hopefully improve ourselves in our writing .