单选题 The days of elderly women doing nothing but cooking huge meals on holidays are gone. Enter the Red Hat Society—a group holding the belief that old ladies should have fun.
"My grandmothers didn't do anything but keep house and serve everybody. They were programmed to do that," said Emily Cornette, head of a chapter of the 7-year-old Red Hat Society.
While men have long spent their time fishing and playing golf, women have sometimes seemed to become unnoticed as they age. But the generation now turning 50 is the baby boomers (生育高峰期出生的人), and the same people who refused their parents' way of being young are now trying a new way of growing old.
If you take into consideration feminism (女权主义), a bit of spare money, and better health for most elderly, the Red Hat Society looks almost inevitable (必然的). In this society, women over 50 wear red hats and purple (紫色的) clothes, while the women under 50 wear pink hats and light purple clothing.
"The organization took the idea from a poem by Jenny Joseph that begins. When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple. With a red hat which doesn't go," said Ellen Cooper, who founded the Red Hat Society in 1998. When the ladies started to wear the red hats, they attracted lots of attention.
"The point of this is that we need a rest from always doing something for someone else," Cooper said, "Women feel so ashamed and sorry when they do something for themselves." This is why chapters are discouraged from raising money or doing anything useful. "We're a ladies' play group. It couldn't he more simple," added Cooper's assistant Joe Heywood.
单选题 The underlined word "chapter" in Paragraph 2 means ______.
  • A. one branch of an organization
  • B. a written agreement of a club
  • C. one part of a collection of poems
  • D. a period in a society's history
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 根据该词的定语“of the 7-year-old Red Hat Society”可猜测出这个词的意思是“某个组织的一个分部”。
单选题 From the text, we know that the "baby boomers" are a group of people who ______.
  • A. have gradually become more noticeable
  • B. are worried about getting old too quickly
  • C. are enjoying a good life with plenty of money to spend
  • D. try living a different life from their parents when they were young
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 第三段“But the generation now turning 50 is the baby boomers, and the same people who refused their parents' way of being young are now trying a new way of growing old.”说明她们想过一种新的生活。
单选题 It could be inferred from the text that members of the Red Hat Society are ______.
  • A. interested in raising money for social work
  • B. programmers who can plan well for their future
  • C. believers in equality between men and women
  • D. good at cooking big meals and taking care of others
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第四、五段内容可推断出这个组织的成员相信男女平等。
单选题 Who set up the Red Hat Society?
  • A. Emily Cornette.
  • B. Ellen Cooper.
  • C. Jenny Joseph.
  • D. Joe Heywood.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 从倒数第二段“...Ellen Cooper, who founded the Read Hat Society in 1998.”可知，Ellen Cooper创建了这个组织。
单选题 Women join the Red Hat Society because ______.
  • A. they want to stay young
  • B. they would like to appear more attractive
  • C. they would like to have fun and live for themselves
  • D. they want to be more like their parents
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 根据第一段“Enter the Red Hat Society—a group holding the belief that old ladies should have fun.”及最后一段“Women feel SO ashamed and sorry when they do something for themselves.”可判断出C正确。