Post Secret

I chose the first postcard on the class blog. Written on a Lockout Receipt, it says "I locked myself out on purpose. (Because the safety officer is cute!)" I feel like the author is a young female and I feel like that's what the audience is too. She's basically saying that she'll do crazy things for cute people. Maybe the implicit claim is that cute people won't talk to her unless she goes to an extreme.

ICW 9/27/11

My reaction to the Menzel photographs is that some countries/people obviously have better access to more food. A few families were shown with tons of boxed and processed foods. Those foods were the kind you cook with an oven or microwave...not natural. Other pictures showed people with small amounts of food. A lot of the other families had food that was obviously fresh and natural (grains, vegetables/fruits, whole fish). These pictures show little to no cooking, and the picture that showed cooking was a fire...not oven.

9/27/11 HW

Pg.81, #1:

            At first, Wrangham makes a comparison between gorillas and chimps, to prove how a slight alteration in their diets makes a big difference in their bodies and how they live. He also talks about the differences in eating raw meat and cooked meat, since his argument is about cooking changing humans. Links are made in the energy use between humans and chimps. Towards the end, he talks about the social changes, such as the females cooking and the males gathering or “working”.

Pg.87, #3:

            Well, my book is missing page 83/84 so I’m unsure of what the full first point is. What I can read of it, it’s talking about making a compost and growing your own food. It’s hard for a college student to grow their own food, but a compost can easily be made from leftovers…I always have plenty, and given to a local farm or family. Point 2 is about preparing your own food. Some college students may not have access to a kitchen, but in the cafeteria they could pick out the healthier choices from the normal cafeteria-style line as opposed to the fast food choices. Points 3, 5, 6, and 7 are all about learning; learning about where the food comes from, the economy, farming in general, and food species. College students can do all of those just by asking around and doing some research. Point 4 talks about directly talking to the producer. At USC, there’s a farmer’s market once a week. Students can take advantage of that resource to talk to local farmers and other producers. 

Draft 1 concerns

The most challenging thing was meeting the length requirement...I made it to the 4th page but barely. I also kinda feel like some of my points of somewhat broad and scattered; maybe my paragraphs aren't in the right order, I don't know.

SWA#7

Title: Rhetorical Analysis of “The Women’s Crusade”

Thesis: Authors Kristof and WuDunn effectively make their argument that providing aid to women in poorer countries will positively impact the world by using a sense of kairos and by giving evidence to support their views, building pathos.

I.               Background

II.             Summary (not totally sure how to outline those)

III.           Kairos is a major aid to the effectiveness of this article’s argument.

a.     Published in 2009

b.     A time when women are gaining more ground…higher paid, better jobs, more education

IV.            Several stories were told within the article to build the pathos, emotional response, from the reader.

a.     Saima

1.     beat, poor, started own business and is now respected

b.     China

1. girl babies are killed, not given education

2. Tiananmen Square killing

c. Abbas Be

1. Sex slave, received education and is now helping support her family

d. Ivory Coast research

1. “When women command greater power, child health and nutrition improves”

e. Tinashe

1. married at 11 in Africa but received small education and is now working on her PhD

V. The authors present a problem but don’t fully give a solution.

VI. Conclusion Point: Kristoff and WuDunn spend majority of the article throwing out examples of stories in Asia and the Middle East. What the fail to do is thoroughly expand how educated women are impacting the world in other places. Even with that, they still make good points to prove their original argument.   

Working Thesis Statement

Authors Kristof and WuDunn effectively make their argument that providing aid to women in poorer countries will positively impact the world by using a sense of kairos and by giving evidence to support their views, building pathos. 

9/13/11

“The Women’s Crusade”

-The authors’ argument is that in the 21^st century, women are on the receiving end of “the paramount moral challenge”.

-gives the examples of the types of challenges, different stories about what happens to different women all over the world

- There’s a variety of examples given throughout. The authors don’t just talk about women in poor countries; they also talk about in the modern day work place as such. Some examples, like the Indian brothel, were a little too extreme for me.

“Lady Power”

-The whole thing is basically about Lady Gaga and how the author views her as a feminist.

-The author gives different examples about why they feel like Gaga’s a feminist.

-I don’t think the topic of “Lady Power” was fully explored because I feel like the author really only stuck to one example. That takes away from their ethos. 

"Womb for Rent-For a Price"

1. Goodman uses her article "Womb for Rent-For a Price" to make a claim that the surrogacy business is pushing the limits on boundaries. It's become a trend for international surrogacy and Goodman believes this is coming too close to "selling our children." She uses examples of Indian woman, becoming surrogate mothers to make a decade's worth of money they would get working otherwise. She also quotes a woman saying, "We give them a baby and they give us much-needed money."
2. I think anything that has to do with babies automatically has an appeal to pathos. She gives examples of Army wives and poor women. Talking about selling babies for money just gets an emotion from me, I'm sure it does for most people.
3. I asked myself "what is the writer's purpose". I feel like it's to discourage surrogacy.
4. I didn't like the negative word choices Goodman used or the way she was extreme. Comparing surrogacy to "slavery" or "selling children" is an extreme comparison and could be viewed as problematic.

Extra Credit

Cindy Sherman is a photographer. She typically shoots her photographs in series. I would categorize her work as feminist. All the pictures I saw were of women. The photographs aren’t just of women smiling, a lot of the pictures are eccentric looking; different colors, makeup, settings, and hair. She’s been quoted saying, “If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it. It was almost like it was made already…the challenge is more about trying to make what you can’t think of.” I definitely think Cindy Sherman and Lady Gaga are similar, in perspective. Lady Gaga’s music and appearance are severe and are used to make statements. Lady Gaga reminds me a lot of Madonna, but there isn’t really anything like her. I feel the same about Sherman; both women are unique with their talents. 

Beecher

When doing research on Catherine Beecher, I learned that her mother passed away when Beecher was only 16. She had several siblings and assumed a motherly-type role. She was educated at home and when she went to an actual school, it was a female school where only limited subjects were taught. One of her sisters was involved in the suffrage movement, which was basically women's rights. Beecher was kinda anti-suffrage. Beecher believed women needed to be educated for their roles as woman of the house; "women should devote themselves to the moral development and education of their children and to their home" (http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2001/beecher/catherine.htm). She opened several schools and wrote many books.

SWA#4

The housekeeper is in charge of the house. She’s in charge of keeping everything orderly while keeping a smile on her face. It’s important for the housekeeper to remain “equable and cheerful” because others don’t just rely on her to do everything around the house, they rely on her to stay happy too. If the housekeeper isn’t happy, nobody’s happy.

            Beecher has eight “considerations” for how women can keep their cheerfulness during her chores. 1. Think of duties as important. 2. Think of duties as difficult and slightly dangerous. 3. Plan for the worst to happen. 4. Consider the people you’re around. 5. Be neat and set a good example for your children. 6. Don’t use an angry tone of voice. 7. Expect to have an “off-day”. 8. God.

            Beecher’s distinguishes were hard to pick out. There wasn’t a set distinguishing between women and housekeepers, which complicates her implied definitions.