Hello all,
Please read the three assigned essays. Then, post a comment, which does the following:
1. Briefly summarizes each essay.
2. Choose one of the essays to focus your response. For this essay, decide whether it relies primarily on definition, evaluation, or cause/effect. It may be some combination of the three. Describe the distribution of this combination.
3. React/respond to one of the essays. What did you learn about genre, structure, and/or the use of sources by reading this essay? What can you steal when writing your own essay?
NOW, respond to the ideas contained in someone else’s comment in a reply to that comment.
Please complete this assignment before class on Monday.
ucm writing 10 summer 2013 
In “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”, Stephanie Hanes explains her concern for the clouded message Disney princess movies are trying to convey through a woman’s story named Mary Finucane and her anxiety from her daughter’s behavior shaped from exposure to Disney princess movies like The Little Mermaid and Aladin. In the essay “The Trouble With Diversity”, Walter Benn Michaels explains how “racism” is evolving through common practices, such as ethnic acceptance rates in universities. As Michaels explains: “The general principle here is that our commitment to diversity has redefined the opposition to discrimination as the appreciation of difference”. In “Whatever Happened to Upward Mobility”, the author, Rana Foroohar basically explains how our country is falling behind with a balanced wealth distribution compared to other countries and one reason may be due to such technological advances in previous generations. Technology is becoming the middle class and dividing the public into “soft wear engineers” or “sales clerks”.
Stephanie Hanes’ article about the “sexualization” of little girls is an evaluation essay because the argument is based on different opinions regarding “The Disney Princess Effect”. Concerned women quoted by Hanes are evaluating the possible effects that Disney is having on their children.
From Stephanie Hanes’ essay, I learned she structures her essay by providing a lot of quotes from different people to prove her point as well as providing an analysis that explains her evidence. I found it encouraging and reassuring that this essay is also structured chronologically from the effects of Disney movies at the beginning to the repercussions from the internet and Facebook on girls, this is an style that I plan on using because of it’s effectiveness and how it keeps the writing organized.
It my opinion that Stephanie Hanes’s essay was a little difficult to fallow but it did not feel too much of a evaluation because no criteria was presented to address the issue. And she didn’t evaluate every thing very well and it seemed more of a casual argument paper.
@bmcfarland2013: I agree with you that Hanes evaluates the cause and effects in her essay, but I think that she also uses quantitative argument as well, such as including statistical percentage and specific year references to support her argument. Do you agree?
I agree but I also think she uses qualitative argument. Her emotional appeal to moms not only establishes an ethos that allows the author to communicate her credibility, but also uses pathos to question the values, emotions, and traditions that concern her.
The first reading of “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”, Stephanie Hanes talks about a mother who is concerned about her daughter who went through some changes that are possibly caused by movies from Disney (but also includes tv shows). She tells us that the mother believed she was the only parent noticing this change in her child. Then she finds out she isn’t alone after she gets followers on a blog about the issue. Then Stephanie rights about addresses why people should care by bringing facts in from surveys concerning women. Then she fallows up that with some with some possible solution to the problem. After that she talks about media and their side of the issue. Then finally she talks about an endless loop caused by the internet and social media cause to female.
—“The Trouble With Diversity”, Walter Benn Michaels explains different cases of the word “racism” has been practiced and that how he addresses the issue of diversity. An example that he talked about was the rich versus the poor people. But he his main point was addressing a definition of diversity because it appear he want it to affect economic structure.
—In “Whatever Happened to Upward Mobility”, is about the US not living up anymore to the belief that anyone has the chance to be rich. Main reason is that wealth is not distributed well. It has a period of focus that in which it compares the US with other countries to address solutions to some issues that we have. Then the author tells us that technological advances have also played a role in our current wealth scale which is unbalanced.
Rana Foroohar’s writing was a combination of casual argument and evaluation because the arguments made did fallow a cause and effect style. Yet it brought up some criteria that also can be looked at as a solution or a learning lesson.
Rana’s writing, taught me how to argue better because she was very easy to fallow and didn’t jump to much. What I mean by jump is moving from time line using flash back or personal experiences that are irrelevant. The paper did have a lot of claims made by numbers but they seemed a little weak at times because they were percentages. Percentages usually come from surveys which I am not a big fan of. In the other hand I think the percentages dumbed down the point that the paper was trying to make; so I did like although I feel it was weak. I plan on using this because it was easy to fallow and understand what the paper was aiming for.
I too agree that Foroohar used the casual argument technique but I feel her essay was leaning more into the cause and effect style.
1) “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”: Stephanie Hanes discusses about the issue of how Disney princess movies influence young girls and shape them to behave certain ways in her essay. In particular, she mentions how Mary Finucane, a concerned mother, is disturbed about how her daughter is acting and believed that Disney princess movies are the main sources that shape her daughter to be “less imaginative, less spunky, [and] less interested in the world” (482). Hanes’s essay further examines the issues of self-consciousness and dissatisfaction in young girls due to vast media exposures and Internet usages; this further contributes to the causes of the social stereotypes of women in our society.
“The Trouble With Diversity…”: Walter Benn Michaels discusses about how society defines diversity by interpreting the meanings of “richness”, “racism”, and “diversity”, and providing coordinated examples, such as “The Great Gatsby” and administration in universities.
“Whatever Happened to Upward Mobility”: Rana Foroohar discusses about the declining reality of the American Dream and how wealth distribution between social classes are not equal, widening the gap between the rich and poor. Foroohar believes that social mobility itself is “nuanced and complex” and how direct comparisons can’t be associated between different countries, such as how societies function in the U.S. versus in other European countries (904). The author further develops the essay by presenting variety of quantities evaluations and numerical data in order to strengthen the claim.
2) Stephanie Hanes uses a mix of both methods of casual argument and evaluation to construct her essay. Hanes presents the cause of how Disney princess movies influence young girls’ behaviors and further analyzes the future effects by mentioning: “6 girls drop out of sports for every 1 boy by the end of high school”; “girls’ values [are] primarily [depending on] her sexual appeal”; “sexualization leads to lower cognitive performance and greater body dissatisfaction”; “eating disorders, depression, and physical health problems” are common outcomes… (484-485). Also, Hanes uses quantitative evaluation by including statistical percentage and specific year references to support her argument.
3) In the article, “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”, Stephanie Hanes does a good job of clearly presenting her claim and providing relevant evidences that help to strengthen her essay. Her outline and structure are organized and obtain an easy flow that makes it easier for the readers to understand. Also, Hanes introduces her essay with a relatable and common example then explains the reasonable effects, along with statistical data and simple language. As a reader, I did not have any trouble understanding her claim and evidences; as a result, I found that these techniques are essential and useful for me to incorporate into my own essay so that my readers won’t have trouble understanding my claim.
1) “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”
-Stephanie Hanes evaluates how social, cultural, and economic factors shape the values of young girls, and ultimately challenges the current norms responsible for influencing detrimental behavior in the youth.
2) “The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Equality”
-Walter Benn Michaels’ argument traces the progression of values in U.S. history by challenging political precedence & citing examples from literature. This cause-and-effect argument utilizes sources F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway to build an ethos that serves to support the structure of the work. This argument could also be definition, as the author uses his sources to establish a premise or definition for what the author is going to challenge in the essay.
3) “What Ever Happened to Upward Mobility?”
-Rana Foroohar makes an evaluation argument to question our beliefs in regards to the socioeconomic system.
If I were to steal from these authors, then I would steal a modus operandi of using sources to which readers can relate in order to build an effective ethos, pathos, and logos.
I agree that using sources that readers can relate to is effective for establishing a pathos, but isn’t there more evidence and facts involved when forming an effective ethos and logos? I also agree that Michael’s essay can be a definition essay because he is trying to introduce the “new racism” today.
I think that out of the three, pathos would require the least facts and evidence while logos or ethos require more. Pathos seems to depend more on the author’s ability to use words to persuade. Logos requires more facts to lead to a logical conclusion and ethos requires proof that a source is credible.
“Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect” talks about the effect of the Disney Princesses on little girls and their self-image. It gives many comments about how the author discovered the effect and her exploration of it by talking with other parents. In “The Trouble With Diversity”, the focus is on how we see being rich as a different race. It talks about how we should see rich people as the same as us but at the same time comments on how they are different. In “Whatever Happened to Upward Mobility”, it comments on the difficult of moving from a low socioeconomic class to a higher one. Some difficulties are attributed to computers being better at jobs than humans and elites making it impossible for regular people to climb the socioeconomic ladder.
The Mobility essay is mostly focused on a cause/effect format with evaluation scattered in. This format is effective because it looks at how people are being pushed away from their jobs and pushed out of areas where they could make more money. It lists many examples and evaluates how each of them have an effect on people trying to gain more in the socioeconomic standpoint.
This essay showed me how strong examples are when they are used very well. With the evaluation of the examples, it was very plain to see the reasons each of them should be causes. For my own essay, I hope to be able to utilize my examples as strongly as this essay. Even though I do not have as many examples, I still hope to make it so that they are able to support my thesis.
1) In the essay, “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect” the author talks about how little girls of early ages are becoming self-conscious of their bodies.
In “The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Equality” talks about relating diversity by the amount of money someone has/makes and the color of their skin.
In “What Ever Happened to Upward Mobility”, it is talking about that it is difficult to move up the economic ladder, similarly to a glass ceiling. The jobs available would be low economic jobs and high economic jobs; lacking the middle economic jobs.
2) In the Mobility essay, it takes more upon a cause and effect argument by arguing that the events of depleting jobs it is making the gap between the low class and upper class widen.
3) What I can steal from the Disney essay and the Diversity essay is the way they incorporated their sources. It was smooth transitioning and didn’t give me a cringe saying “here comes a random quote out of no where” it was all nicely transitioned that allowed me to follow their thoughts throughout the essays.
– In the essay “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect” the author compiles a series of arguments explaining how young girls are trying to become women at an early age, and she compares it to the show Toddlers and Tiaras.
-In the essay “The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Equality”, Benn Michaels demonstrates people who are wealthy are their own race because of the obvious difference between them and the poor. It uses examples by comparing being wealthy to someone’s skin color.
-Lastly, in ““What Ever Happened to Upward Mobility”: it talks about in today’s society, citizens are more concerned about their future economic deposition than their current state. As long as there is ladder of mobility, people will always strive to be better.
“Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect”, Stephanie Hanes uses the ethos effect by establishing her credibility with her audience. She does this by demonstrating how she owns a blog that many parents follow.
-When I write my next essay, I will steal the effective way Hanes uses ethos to establish credibility. I haven’t used that technique before so it will be interesting to try it.
The article “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect” starts off talking about social behaviors of teenage girls in regards to sexuality. Then, the article presents about how social sexualization negatively affect woman. Lastly, it gives solutions to problem by informing girls. This article emphasizes as causal argument of woman because it portraits, “The causes is media. Now the effect is girls. So solution is education.”
The article, “The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Equality” compares lots of things: culture, race, and money. But, mostly identity. the article starts off by talking about The novel Great Gatsby of how money played apart in identity. Later than author transgress to racism how it is more about cultural stand than color of skin. One of the example is university. Then, he comes back to issue with economic equality.
Reading this article, I found it interesting that it focused on the definition of identity.
The article, “What Ever Happened to Upward Mobility?” first defines American Dream, evaluates the American Dream relating modern society and shows the cause and effect of American downgrade of economy. But the main point of this article is about inequality of American dream. I would say this article has even distribution of definition, evaluative, and causal arguments.
But out of these three articles, I would like like to choose style of “The Trouble with Diversity” It seems interesting and creative to get claims across the reader.