The Makeover Trap Rhetorical Analysis

A photograph, painting, canvas, or drawing today is not the same as it was a decade ago. Technology has evolved to the point where we can photoshop a person into a picture, enlarge a person’s butt, or even whiten people’s teeth. At what point do those technological advances cross a line? With social media ranging from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and Tumblr, do these media sites promote egotistical behavior? In January of 2013, John Paul Titlow discusses some of the disadvantages and advantages that Instagram has in his essay: “#Me: Instagram Narcissism and the Scourge of the Selfie” that was posted on a website called ReadWrite. Although Instagram was primarily created to simply share pictures, it has evolved to do much more than that. Some businesses use it to advertise, some people use it to share their art, but then there are some people use it to flaunt their own personal lives in the form of pictures. Titlow acknowledges that Instagram is a desirable way to share art and diverse imagery, but additionally acknowledges that it can be a place where one can promote their own self-popularity. He explains that Instagram has become remarkably important in people’s lives to the point that they cannot view life past those Instagram likes (Titlow). Ultimately, Titlow succeeds in emphasizing the issues that Instagram has created by reason of the way he expresses his text, while furthermore expressing who the audience of his essay is, and by making his overall purpose clear.

“An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.”- Jonathan Kozol. The author of the script “Eye of the Beholder”, Rod Serling, puts his point out there about how segregation is going on all around us and it will never stop. The audience he is trying to portray his message to is everyone. He wants to make them aware of the segregation that is still going on today. Through the use of diction and experience, the author uses pathos, logos, and ethos to show that segregation still goes on today and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In her essay “Living Like Weasels”, Annie Dillard explores the idea of following a single calling in life, and attaching one’s self it this calling as the weasel on Ernest Thompson Seton’s eagle had. Dillard presents her argument using the analogy of a weasel and how the; “weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity” (Dillard). In constructing her argument, however, she often contradicts herself undermining the effectiveness of her argument and leaving the reader confused. Dillard primarily uses ethos and pathos to support her argument and concerning both, the reader discovers; inconsistencies in her character, and conflicts between her perceptions of the weasel’s emotions and its actions. Concerning her ethos, Dillard presents herself as a part of suburbia and then is suddenly, inexplicably overcome by the desire to live wild. Dillard also uses very detailed language throughout the essay in describing her surroundings and thoughts, however; this further undermines her argument and ethos as she is trying to convince the reader that she could simply become as simple and single minded as the weasel she has focused her argument around. With her use of pathos, Dillard begins her essay with descriptions of the weasel’s brutality, yet; she concludes by stating the weasel lives as is necessary. By simplifying her experience and presenting a reasonable explanation for why she wanted to

We fix our appearance, our homes, our cities, and about everything else. However, we as humans also have the contradictory idea that we should accept everyone for who they are. In our society, we even praise and romanticize the idea of standing out from the crowd. We

Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bait and Switch” describes the experience of going undercover as a white collar job seeker in order to observe the culture of current corporate in America, particularly the “transitional” life of those white collar worker who has been laid off and is seeking for reemployment. Nevertheless, getting a job was much harder than Ehrenreich expected, so she subjected herself to endless networking events, job coaching, and even to an “image makeover,” all designed to make her more attractive to potential employers. Unfortunately, six months of schmoozing, hustling, and spending do not only fail to help Ehrenreich to get an expectant job, but also cost her several thousands of dollars. However, Barbara Ehrenreich’s failure points out the issues people may face in job marker and gives several suggestions to help them to overcome those issues.

Paragraph 1- NASA is using all the money they have to keep what they have right now up and running, but if we sell the older spacecrafts and satellites the private companies can keep them running and being worked on while NASA builds bigger and better things. In Brian Berger's article “With NASA Budget Cuts Looming, SETI Eyes Private Funding”, he says, “NASA's astrobiology budget, the source of most of that grant money, is facing a steep decline. Under NASA's 2007 budget proposal, currently before Congress, the U.S. space agency would spend $32.5 billion on astrobiology in the year ahead--half of what it spent on astrobiology in 2005.” (Berger, pg 1). A survey was conducted between February 4, 2013, and February 6, 2013, by random people, the results were 75 percent believe that NASA’s budget should be doubled to 1 percent of the federal budget to fund initiatives including a mission to Mars.

Suffragist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her speech, "The destructive Male," argues for a new amendment concerning women's rights. Stanton's purpose is to not only rally the women who have suffered unfair treatment because of the existing patriarchy, but to ultimately construct these ideas into the minds of congressmen. She adopts a cloying tone to furthermore emphasize her ideas to ultimately change the course of rights for women.

In today’s world social media, television programs, and the Internet in general seems to define and set a model for how people should act, dress, and unfortunately in the end is a large defining factor in how young adults believe their bodies should look. This social setting is exactly what Susan Bordo is discussing in this particular writing. However, this social

This was my first Rhetorical Analysis, but I approached it the same way I would with any other paper. At first, I googled what an RA should look like but ended up not reading the articles I found, instead, I just did what I normal. It starts by putting off the task, but eventually I juggle some ideas around. Then, I generally pick a topic and write a little, shortly following I loose all motivation and stop writing for the day. I eventually come back and sit down for five to twelve hours, writing the bulk of the paper, or I totally change my mind and start over. Once my first draft is on “paper” I rearrange everything until it flows right. Then editing comes and I cut out as much as possible, while still being able to get my point across.

The purpose for my speech was to inform the audience about different experiments in social psychology and how they helped contribute to the field of psychology. In my speech, I believed I achieved this goal in communicating to my audience. I will go over some of my strengths, weaknesses, and what I will do next time to improve the quality of my speech. I know that for my next presentation for persuasive speaking, after viewing this last speech, will go better after critically analyzing my informative speech.

Social media is a big part in today’s society. Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat deliver the tools that allow teens to earn approval for their appearance and compare themselves to others. People follow the biggest stars and models, but what are these celebrities really doing? Where girls are required to be slim and short, the ideal for boys and men is a well-muscled and ripped look. Today, women everywhere want to get that fit body, the flat stomach, and the thigh gap or perfectly muscled body because most women are never satisfied; whereas the men are living at the gym and getting ripped: they are both looking for approval from their peers, the opposite sex, and the approval of society. Males may start an

Due to the increase in popularity of social media, today’s generation is bombarded with unrealistic standards when it comes to beauty. When young people today first turn on their cellphones, more often than not, they refer to a social media site. Whether it’s the ever-popular Instagram, where people can post pictures and followers can “like” to show their approval or post comments. Or, whether it’s Twitter, where people can post witty or inspiring or informational things for their followers to see and can be retweeted or favourited. Or they could click on the little blue Facebook icon, where all of the above can happen. These are some of the most popular social media outlets today because young people are

While defenders of this current generation may point to the development of powerful technologies and machines used in science and medicine, they ignore the many possible negative effects of mass culture. In one preliminary analysis of the effects of Facebook usage on academic performance in the 2011 Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, Sana Rouis and colleagues demonstrated the negative effect of networking platforms on academic achievement. In a similar study in the March 2015 issue of Body Image, Jasmine Fardouly and colleagues found that for women, Facebook usage resulted in a more negative mood and a negative body image. I think that by being exposed to a virtual reality, where every photo is altered and every setting pixelated, we begin to identify how we do not fit into that reality and begin to associate our differences as imperfections. For example, one thought could be that because I do not look like models altered by Photoshop, then my differences must be ugly or

If one looks up from their phone and looks around they’ will notice everyone around is on their phone too. This is not an issue, but it does create a few. Technology has many branches, but the one that pushes the importance of perfect beauty is social media. Most people who use social media use it to keep in touch with friends and talk about how their day is going, but like Dorian Gray, society puts emphasis on the importance of beauty and aesthetics. Social media is used as society’s tool to perpetuate these beauty standards. As a result, many people become obsessed with portraying the perfect image. In Wilde’s work, Dorian is a young man who immortalizes himself through his painting so that he may be beautiful and live beautifully forever, as one might do on social media, but it is only an image. Beauty today is faked. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray beauty comes from experience, while my adaptation reveals the obsession of the perception of beauty.

Social Media has a massive impact on a person’s self-presentation because of the different trends where everyone wants to fit in with society’s expectations of what we should look like. Celebrities are made to be our role models, however, magazines photoshop and make them more toned and a lot slimmer, which makes young people want to make their bodies more like theirs. This then leads to the modern generation becoming self-conscious because they feel they have to fit in and achieve an ideal self that fits in with those around them.