Persuasions: Identities, Stereotypes, & Fights

Its pretty interesting that only females completed the assignment first. This really reminds me of the article that we read from Tanner last week. It does mention how females are not objective in class. In addition, it mentions that men participate the most during class. So from this observation, where is that extra energy from the females most allocated towards? Perhaps actually completing what there suppose to do, or participating the most outside of class where the “Macho-ness” is less acclaimed…instead of battling teachers and voicing over each opinions. I don’t have enough evidence to draw any deep hypotheses but its worth observing. Tell me what you guys think.

A topic of debate that has been around for quite some time is: do appearances really matter? And the general consensus has been that it doesn’t. But in this time and age, looks have become more and more important. People buy things because they’re aethetically pleasing. People will pay a higher price for a different color. People spend hundreds, thousands, millions of dollars on clothes, shoes, makeup to better their own appearance. The opportunities to make something more pleasurable to look at are endless. Having a bigger, better decorated house and having a flashier car are just some of the many. People are willing to do anything to comform to the idea of beauty in every aspect, and plastic surgery proves this. Both women and men will spend money they don’t need to spend on fixing something that would not have needed any fixing at all were they not caught up in a fixed idea of beauty. Society is “effectively trying to define ugliness as a disease. Looks are, after all, a biological condition.”

Within the last decade, belief that appearances are important have taken the next step, and in 2003, Virigina Postrel brings to our attention in her article Going to Great Lengths, a new drug that has appeared on the market. This drug, called Humatrope, is for children who are abnormally short, and can add several inches to a person’s height without harming them in any physical way. The idea of this seems preposterous, that such a thing as height should really matter enough for a person to take such measures.

But in society today, it appears as if being less than average height, or weight or just not being pretty enough is all the reason a person needs to feel the need to change themselves. “…being short does, on average, hurt a person’s prospects. Short men, in particular, are paid less than tall men. The tall guy gets the girl. The taller presidential candidate almost always wins.” Postrel gives us several examples where society has given us reason to believe that the better the appearance, the better treatment you receive from society. Given that, the idea of using a drug to change something natural about yourself doesnt seem so preposterous after all. If appearances didn’t actually matter, the world wouldn’t be as it is today. “The power of aesthetics”, as Postrel calls it, is quite impressive.

Going to Great Lengths

http://www.dynamist.com/articles-speeches/opeds/greatlengths.html

Those who say that looks don’t matter are hypocrites. We are in a society that judges almost everything based on aesthetics.  When we first see an item we like, we are always almost attracted by the aesthetics. Whether we realize or not our first impression of someone or something is what’s on the surface and not what’s on the inside. We can’t tell a person’s personality by looking at them or well how well we may get along with them, so at times we may try to associate those with the way the person presents him or herself.

In Surface and Substance Postrel says that, “surface has a genuine value.” Indeed it does, it can put a label on the person you are or can be. There are so many different possibilities with looks that makes it the “very power of aesthetics,” and makes it hard for you to be truly right with your appearance. The style that you find to be accepting might seem vulgar to someone else.  For example, if your hair is tied up in a loose pony tail and you wear baggy clothing, it can imply that you’re a laid back person who goes with the flow. It can also imply that you were running late that day and just wore whatever you could find. Where you’re going that day can be affect that whole outfit too. If you were working in an office it would be inappropriate and you might look sloppy to your co-workers.

In the article Ralph Lauren: Still King Of Glamour, Postrel talks about the ad that was produced by the company and how it used photoshop to slim a model’s body so that her head was bigger than the rest of the body. What the company did was extremely wrong and by doing that it is sending a message to its consumers saying that it is not okay to be bigger than that model. The previous quote, “surface has a genuine value;” the company most likely believes that with a skinner model it can sell more clothing than with a fatter one. This shows how much our society is based upon looks.

I believe that it is okay for people to care about how they look like and that it is also okay for them to buy luxurious items. I disagree with Twitchell who says that only a superficial woman would be attracted by luxury and intelligent women wouldn’t. Not everyone buys pretty things because they are shallow or superficial; every now and then people just need something that will lift their moods. Substance is more important than surface, but it’s surface that affects your first impression to someone else.

Ralph Lauren: Still King Of Glamour

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/22/ralph-lauren-photoshop-glamour-opinions-contributors-virginia-postrel.html

Here are some of those photos of the mapping of Tannen’s essay…

I love how happy you all look, despite the fact that many of your maps feature “arguing”–what does this tell us about dialogue?

Welcome to ENG2100/Persuasions & welcome to our course blog. We will be using this space through out the semester in order to continue the conversations we have in class, as well as to share relevant ideas, questions, and media.

A few images to start with…

Psychology of Persuasion Mind Map