Blog Post 8 (Week 9) - Zarif

We see thousands of ads per day, and whether we like it or not, they shape our perceptions of society and each other. Many ads perpetuate societal norms, so when a commercial directly confronts stereotypes, we stand up and take notice. Some of the more than seven million people who saw The Pantene’s ad understand stereotype threat, and many learned something about sexism along the way. This ad features gorgeous, thin models with shining hair in go-getter jobs. 

It also overlays the different ways women are viewed compared to their male counterparts. In one minute, the Pantene #WhipIt commercial took negative stereotypes of women leaders and flipped those ideas on their head. Our readers know that negative labels aimed at women leaders are nothing new. What is new is a commercial that directly addresses and challenges these labels. We have to praise this Pantene ad for bringing feminist issues to a wider audience and rejecting the old, lazy, sexist advertising tropes many companies still use.

The Pantene ad shows high-powered women and men in parallel situations with the women receiving deprecating labels, while the men receive praise. The man giving a passionate speech is marked as “persuasive,” while the woman speaker is “pushy.” The man in the office addressing a colleague is the “boss.” The woman in the same office, same position, is “bossy.” According to Jean Kilbourne's film, "Killing us Softly 4", I found that the ego and the respect that was attached to men differs greatly compared to woman, even though the Ad shows the contribution or acts of both parties which stands very similarly. And even when a woman leader has confidence, she still needs her colleagues and bosses to recognize that they too need to reject sexist labeling and stereotypes. 

The connection between gender equality and shampoo is tenuous at best. We’ve come a long way from the days of hair commercials promising impossibly shiny hair with just one wash. Now, opportunities are ripe for companies to put out thought-provoking messaging that isn’t afraid to challenge societal norms. Nevertheless, Pantene Philippines still tried their best to attract attention of both worlds by playing it safe. The fact that they still hired good-looking models and actors in this ad implicitly opened our eyes subconsciously - attentive to the human traits of liking something or someone beautiful. This Ad really goes directly proportional to the argument that Kilborne mentions in "Killing Us Softly 4" that "beauty" had became the primary marketing strategy in todays world. Seeming to astray from the major point of this Ad, Pantene, in a way tells the female audience that beauty does equals to success.

However, in this Ad, women will continue breaking through the glass ceiling, but sexism isn’t over, and real barriers to equality in leadership for women in the workplace and politics still exist. Originally, the ad aired only in the Philippines but went viral online and even garnered praise from Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She even elaborates on her opinion in one of her tweets about this video : “This is one of the most powerful videos I have ever seen illustrating how when women and men do the same things, they are seen in completely different ways. Really worth watching. Lean In prize of the day for sure!”

Blog Post #8

This week in class we watched Jean Kilbourne’s film, “Killing us Softly 4”, that showed us how sexists ads are to women. Many ads demean women and do not represent any sort of respect we deserve. Another thing in advertisement is the type of girls that are modeling. They find very skinny girls but after that, they still recreate their body image using digital processes. The ads try to tell us what we should look like when in reality those women do not even exist.

            The ad I found was a model from Victoria Secret posing for a bathing suit advertisement(shown at the bottom). This picture has the women on her knees which Kilbourne mentioned in her film that girls are always posed as inferior humans. They are always laying down, on their knees, or wrapped around themselves in some sort of way. This picture also sets the bar extremely high of how girls should look in a bikini. Ads try to sell us “normalcy”, as Kilbourne put it. They try to tell us who we are and who we should be. This image of beauty is false and the obsession with thinness is increasing because of what type of advertisement is out there. Another thing Kilbourne mentioned is how sex seems to be the most important thing in advertisement and is now becoming everything. What kind of role does this play in society for girls? In this picture, boys probably rave over this and expect this sexy look from girls on the beach. Since this look is nearly impossible to achieve, the consequences for girls are endless. Young women are victims to diseases such as eating disorders and depression like Kilbourne said and it all starts with advertisements like these.

blog post 7-week8

This week in rhetoric we did group speeches.  All the groups went and tried to use the skills we learned in order to create good arguments with their topics.  One group that stood out to me was the abortion group.  This group had some very good points.  They had one host and two people who were for abortion and two people who were against abortion.  One person in the group really stood out to me because of their story.  She was against abortion and her story was about her mom.  Her mom was very young when she got pregnant and she was considering all of her options.  She ended up having her daughter and it was her best decision.  The daughter talked about how close she came to never being born and that is why she is totally against abortion.  This story really played on my emotion.  It showed me that there is still hope for everybody because even though she got pregnant at a young age she still had her daughter.  Her story was amazing and it was great to hear.  It was hard to listen to the people who were for abortion especially after her story.  There many story’s like this that were brought up this week in the speeches. 

blog post 6-week7, knightly

Chapter 6 was a very revealing chapter.  Many moments stood out to me.  One section in particular was the nightmares section.  This section talked about how pigs are raised.  In today’s factory’s ninety five percent of pigs are raised in a very poor way.  The pigs are drugged up on antibiotics and are treated very poorly.  There are very few farms that raise hogs the right way.  This means most of the pork or bacon we eat, that pig was raised in these conditions.  Some company’s only use farms that raise pigs the right way.  One of those companies is chipotle.  This section affected me in a negative way.  I feel bad for these pigs and anybody who eats these mutated pigs because they are not eating a real pig.  They are eating a pig that is mutated by antibiotics and are raised in confined areas that are over packed.  It is horrible to think about how these pigs are raised.  This section also had a positive impact on me.  This section showed me that some hogs are raised the right way.  They are raised with new innovations and are not mutated.  Also they are raised in open and not confined areas.  It is good to see that some farmers are doing the right thing and raising pigs the right way even though it might cut into their profits and also might take longer for the pig to be raised.

blog post 5-week6, knightly

In chapter four of eating animals there are many logical fallacy’s used.  One particular one was in the section of the chickens of tomorrow.  The author used the logical fallacy of appealing to emotion.  This means manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid argument.  In this section the author talks about how chickens are raised.  Farmers in the 1940s wanted to breed chickens and get more out of there breast meat and eggs.  Farmers tried many drugs and many different types of feed to create the perfect chickens for each.  One point that was maid said imagine feeding a child granola bars and vitamins and it gaining three hundred pounds.  These chickens were raised along with normal chickens to be processed.  No genetically enhanced chickens take over the industry.  The author describes them as drugged up, grotesque, and enhanced chickens.  The author wants to appeal to our emotion by showing how wrong this is.  These chickens now need these drugs and a certain type of feed to just survive.  I was amazed by this section, because I eat chicken all the time.  It is wired to think about chicken now.  Whenever I eat it, I feel bad for the chicken that was used to make it.  Farmers who do this are abusing the chickens and it isn’t right.

Post #8 Gordon

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/07/07/business/07doveA.ready.html

Killing us softly described how in modern media and in older media women are often, objectified, abused, frail, not "real looking" or completely photoshopped and fake.  I chose to look at an ad that apparently defies the norm of what we are seeing in advertisements.  This dove ad shows 6 women of all different body type.  Some are short, some tall, some thinner and some with a little more weight than your average model.  In addition they very in ethnicity.  From black to white to asian to spanish an more it is clear that this add is for a wide audience of women.  The ad is for dove body wash, and the tagline reads, "New Dove firming, as tested on real curves"  I understand that Dove is trying to sell a more typical body type, but does that mean if you are naturally skinny without wide hips or large breasts you should feel excluded.  I also question to what extent is this ad selling through sex or not.  The women are not your typical young and sexy models but they are still being portrayed on a large billboard in only their underwear and bras.  This aspect of the ad does resemble a more sexist way to ads because if there were larger men pictured in their underwear this ad would have been looked at as way more unappealing.  I can see that there are slowly becoming improvements in advertisements but there will always be flaws with the intentions of the ad.

Hart Week 8 Post (Post #7)

Week 8 Post

To begin, I would like to share that the class as a whole did an excellent job of their group speeches. Everyone was well versed in their topics and provided an interesting discussion that covered most, if not all, the bases for the issues.

As far as pathos appeals throughout the week go, I have to say Dani probably gave the best example of how to win over an audience using only their emotions. To sum it up, she basically told us that her character believed that there is nothing more sacred than life itself and that she is very appreciative for everything she has. The reality for her character was one that is very difficult to argue with. Her teenaged mother at the time of her birth could have had an abortion, and the person who we saw in front of us advocating for a pro-life agenda, would not be here. Now, is an argument like this a bit rash and maybe even a little bit of a stretch? Maybe. But it was effective. Nobody wants to think about death and she simply put that she could have easily been killed before she even got a chance. It’s a difficult point to argue because its so final and only someone without a conscious would be able to sit there and tell her that her argument was poor because they would basically be telling her that it wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t with us. It was a bold strategy, but I from a rhetorical standpoint , it was wonderful.

Hart Week 7 Post (Post #6)

Week 7 Post

Look back at the book as a whole and complete experience, I would like to talk about the moment that had the biggest impact on me as I read and how it contradicted some of my current beliefs.

First thing’s first, I believe this book is a desperate cry to encourage vegetarianism in the United States. That may be open to discussion but that’s the way I see it. That argument largely, not completely, failed with me. I’m not going to stop eating meat, enjoying meat, or wanting more meat. But I will now think for a second and half longer than I did before consuming after reading the section titled “Downers”. I’m not sure why that has stuck with me for so long, but the image of the sheep that was too weak to stand on its own power has been burned into my memory. That emotional appeal really got to me. It was the perfect image to highlight the cruelty and brutality of the factory farming culture. It is sad to think about. I’ve never had hard feelings about eating meat before in my life. There’s a food chain that mankind stands atop of and there’s no reason why I should feel bad about eating it. It could be that I do my best to ignore the simple truths of food manufacturing, but it has never been an issue. But knowing that there are helpless animals that are being treated so poorly has had a profound effect on me. I haven’t become an advocate for vegetarianism, but after reading Eating Animals, I have a small shred of remorse for whatever it is I’m about to eat.

Hart Week 6 Post (Post #5)

Week 6 Post

Logical fallacies are the silent killer to any good argument. They can be a spoken mistake or part of a manufactured scheme. Either way, when you catch a rhetor in on, odds are his argument is going to go south quickly. A logical fallacy is a part of speech, conversation, or argument that just doesn’t make sense. It makes a point that can’t be supported by fact or, worse, logic.

Beyond just one or two chapters of the book, I’m a believer in the fact that books like these are one big logical fallacy. As we discussed in class, Eating Animals is trying to persuade people to not eat meat, or possibly eat less of it. It is disguised as book that is meant to educate consumers but it’s merely on a campaign to stop the mass production and consumption of meat in the United States. Now, that’s all well and good and I am more than willing to hear about a solution to the increasing dietary issues of the United States and putting an end to animal cruelty. But why, if this is such a pressing issue in the United States, are we made to pay $19.99 for a stack of paper full of information that could easily be presented online, to more people, for free? It doesn’t add up to me. We have to pay for the information to save the American people? Sounds like a corporate scheme, rather than a passionate author trying to make a difference in the world.

Eating Animals as a whole is a logical fallacy.