1.27.2005
not for the faint of heart
Hey, folks. It's the middle of the night, and I'm supposed to be writing an essay about the objectification of women in advertisements. I had a lot of trouble with my first draft because I wasn't really convinced that this is a rampant problem these days. I had to go through fifteen magazines to find three examples. Of course, I don't really subscribe to magazines, so my resources consisted mostly of some old copies of Scientific American that I bought because I'm a sucker for articles on black holes, but I digress. I eventually found some guitar magazines with some pictures of girls posing with amps.
Here are a couple of excerpts from my first draft. Oh, and it might not be safe for the kids.
.................................................
The page is white except for the towering stack of amplifiers in the middle with script above it reading, "When Size Matters." It’s as if the advertisers are smiling proudly to themselves, leaning close to your ear, pointing to the print with their fat fingers and whispering, “Get it? We’re talking about the thing… in your pants.”
---
It’s hard to sell something to a brain. A brain can make decisions, it can make reasonable evaluations of worth. A penis, on the other hand, is like a dog. Wave a piece of meat around, and a dog will come running. In fact, it doesn’t matter what you wave around, you could give garbage to a dog and he’ll chew it up regardless. This is exactly what the advertisers are banking on.
---
Lure in the dogs with a little cheesecake, then hit ‘em with the merchandise. The flaw in this logic should already be evident to anyone who’s ever owned a dog. If you’ve ever tried to hide a pill in a dog’s food, you know that they will always finish every last morsel, but still manage to leave the pill behind. They say sex sells, but it really only ever sells itself.
---
This page’s sole purpose is to awaken inside of me primal urges. It is engineered to make me want to leap onto my desk right now and beat my chest and be one with nature. I will take her as my mate, and we will live in the jungle and abandon language, civilization, and the law of man. It is cruel reality that keeps me in my seat, however. It is the reality that I live in, and there is no jungle here. It is the reality that tomorrow I will have to shave, put on pressed slacks and a shirt with a collar so I can sit behind a desk and make money for the man. It is this sad realization that brings my eye to something else on the page – a guitar! It’s smooth and shiny, and it has the same curves as the previous object of my desire. My enthusiasm for the woman is transferred to the instrument, which is infinitely more attainable. The advertisers used the woman as a tool to lure me in, but this time I actually became interested in the product they were selling. Was it really the sex that sold it?
.................................................
I would post the whole essay, but those are really the only interesting parts. You can see, though, that it was completely absurd and inappropriate as an assignment for any sort of class, which is really my favorite kind of essay to write. Here are the comments my teacher wrote:
"Too Colloquial"
"ENGLISH CLASS!"
"Excessive, sarcastic tone is counterproductive"
...and then there was the little thing about completely neglecting to write an intro and conclusion. I'm breaking the mold! God!
Seriously, though, when you give me an assignment in which I'm expected to regurgitate some mindless pre-approved crap, I see it as a license to take the ball and run in the opposite direction. Or, in this case, throw the ball into the bleachers and spin around in mad circles while making "beep beep" noises.
The problem here arises from the fact that the assignment was to write an opinion paper from a perspective that is not of my gender. I could have easily written about how women are treated as objects and women in the media create unreal standards blah blah blah. Instead, I took the time to think about what these ads actually mean to me. How do they affect me? What angle are the advertisers using to try and get through to my wallet? What repercussions does the objectification of women have beyond what we've all heard a billion times before? God forbid I should actually take this opportunity to try and birth a fresh opinion.
Despite my best attempts, though, I wrote a bad essay. There are aspects of it that I'm somewhat proud of, but on the whole, it's bad. It's not because there's no proper intro or conclusion, though, and there certainly was plenty of thought put into it. The problem with this essay is that I had to form an opinion about something towards which I am completely apathetic, and no amount of re-writing by this author can fix that. My only option now is to cut up this draft for bait and hope to catch something my english teacher will swallow.
-Dave
...
links:
September 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
May 2007
June 2007
October 2007
Here are a couple of excerpts from my first draft. Oh, and it might not be safe for the kids.
.................................................
The page is white except for the towering stack of amplifiers in the middle with script above it reading, "When Size Matters." It’s as if the advertisers are smiling proudly to themselves, leaning close to your ear, pointing to the print with their fat fingers and whispering, “Get it? We’re talking about the thing… in your pants.”
---
It’s hard to sell something to a brain. A brain can make decisions, it can make reasonable evaluations of worth. A penis, on the other hand, is like a dog. Wave a piece of meat around, and a dog will come running. In fact, it doesn’t matter what you wave around, you could give garbage to a dog and he’ll chew it up regardless. This is exactly what the advertisers are banking on.
---
Lure in the dogs with a little cheesecake, then hit ‘em with the merchandise. The flaw in this logic should already be evident to anyone who’s ever owned a dog. If you’ve ever tried to hide a pill in a dog’s food, you know that they will always finish every last morsel, but still manage to leave the pill behind. They say sex sells, but it really only ever sells itself.
---
This page’s sole purpose is to awaken inside of me primal urges. It is engineered to make me want to leap onto my desk right now and beat my chest and be one with nature. I will take her as my mate, and we will live in the jungle and abandon language, civilization, and the law of man. It is cruel reality that keeps me in my seat, however. It is the reality that I live in, and there is no jungle here. It is the reality that tomorrow I will have to shave, put on pressed slacks and a shirt with a collar so I can sit behind a desk and make money for the man. It is this sad realization that brings my eye to something else on the page – a guitar! It’s smooth and shiny, and it has the same curves as the previous object of my desire. My enthusiasm for the woman is transferred to the instrument, which is infinitely more attainable. The advertisers used the woman as a tool to lure me in, but this time I actually became interested in the product they were selling. Was it really the sex that sold it?
.................................................
I would post the whole essay, but those are really the only interesting parts. You can see, though, that it was completely absurd and inappropriate as an assignment for any sort of class, which is really my favorite kind of essay to write. Here are the comments my teacher wrote:
"Too Colloquial"
"ENGLISH CLASS!"
"Excessive, sarcastic tone is counterproductive"
...and then there was the little thing about completely neglecting to write an intro and conclusion. I'm breaking the mold! God!
Seriously, though, when you give me an assignment in which I'm expected to regurgitate some mindless pre-approved crap, I see it as a license to take the ball and run in the opposite direction. Or, in this case, throw the ball into the bleachers and spin around in mad circles while making "beep beep" noises.
The problem here arises from the fact that the assignment was to write an opinion paper from a perspective that is not of my gender. I could have easily written about how women are treated as objects and women in the media create unreal standards blah blah blah. Instead, I took the time to think about what these ads actually mean to me. How do they affect me? What angle are the advertisers using to try and get through to my wallet? What repercussions does the objectification of women have beyond what we've all heard a billion times before? God forbid I should actually take this opportunity to try and birth a fresh opinion.
Despite my best attempts, though, I wrote a bad essay. There are aspects of it that I'm somewhat proud of, but on the whole, it's bad. It's not because there's no proper intro or conclusion, though, and there certainly was plenty of thought put into it. The problem with this essay is that I had to form an opinion about something towards which I am completely apathetic, and no amount of re-writing by this author can fix that. My only option now is to cut up this draft for bait and hope to catch something my english teacher will swallow.
-Dave
...
links:
- Henry Bekkering can jump 40 vertical inches - It's like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon... only with basketball (via)
- Dear Brian, please buy this digital trumpet (via)
