After reading the article “It’s Ms. America to You”, I believe the intended audience is middle-aged women. Because the article was printed in Newsweek, the article also appealed to men in a couple of ways, especially by making the point that the feminists “didn’t burn their bras”, which shows the men that they aren’t “crazy” feminists. However, I believe the main idea of the article was to remind women of the efforts that went into attaining the freedoms that we now have today. The author listed many liberties that the New York Radical Women fought for, and these liberties also happened to be things that many women today take for granted. I also believe that the author tries to play with the reader’s emotions. She is very suggestive in the sense of how she sarcastically urges women to stop altering their physical beauty.
I feel as though I have a pretty good understanding of Kinneavy and his “basic purposes for construction” and “basic aims of discourse”; however, I have a tough time putting a piece of media in just one category. Not every piece of media is going to fall clearly into one category because many or even most media is not as “basic” as we would like to think. I think that Kinneavy’s use of the word “basic” is rather deceiving. “It’s Ms. America to You” falls into two different categories. The audience is re-informed of some historical events and these events are summarized, which specifies the type of referential reality this piece is: Informative. The informative nature of the article helps the author reach her other aim of persuasion. It would be almost impossible to persuade someone to think or act differently if they did not have knowledge of negative aspects of how they think or act at the present time. Throughout the article, the author is describing different achievements of women’s activist groups. Then, she seems as though she is pleading with the reader. All of the efforts to have women not be viewed as sex objects or judged on the basis of their beauty could be destroyed, but not by men. It is the women who have plastic surgery to enhance their physical appearance or fight against Roe v. Wade, she says. She has tried to persuade the reader not to undo all of the women’s rights groups’ efforts.
“It’s Ms. America to You” achieves its aims through a couple different outlets and I think the author did a good job of informing her intended audience of her ideas while still appealing to other readers.
4 comments:
I feel that the portion of the article where she writes of the "disturbingly contentious" issues was not really an effort to change behavior. Rather it was more of a reminder that there is still issues to be worked out. Just before she launches into the issues that are still "disturbingly contentious", she mentions some of the accomplishments of the woman's movement. Almost saying that she is happy with what has been done, but yet there is more work to do.
Not really trying to persuade, but instead injecting her own opinion. Which makes this article more expressive than persuasive.
I agree with the point about the expressive nature of the article, but I am also a little confused. Aren't most articles expressive in that the author has a an opinion they want to express and then find it necessary to rely on other modes of rhetoric to make it appealing or persuasive. I think it relies on coupling this opinion with references to the acomplishments of the woman's movement (history\).
I also was drawn to the comment that she made about women altering their physical appearance to feel better about themselves. However, I'm not sure I quite agree on the fact that women are contributing the most to these outrageous standards of beauty that are placed on us. I guess I just don't see how all the guilt is placed on the women rather than society as a whole. What exactly makes women feel that they have to alter their appearance to be beautiful in the eyes of our society? And if Kantrowitz was trying to tell women that they were at fault for feeling this way, then I wonder why this article was published in Newsweek and not in a women's magazine? I'm not saying I don't agree that Kantrowitz was trying to tell women that they shouldn't do this to themselves, because I do see where you are coming from. However, I feel like Kantrowitz wasn't just placing the blame on all women.
I agree that she is placing some of the responsibility on the women, and how they perceive themselves. Although women are influenced by the media and society, they are in control of their own bodies, what they wear, and what they choose to do. I feel that the author is trying to make this clear. Maybe she is not saying that botox and plastic surgery are bad, as long as women are women are in control of what they want to do for themselves, but this is doubtful, since she does state that women are "injecting poision into their foreheads". Regardless, women have mad progress, but still have a ways to go.
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