Maya Rhodes
Maharaj
Writing 10 Journal #7
March 13, 2012
If You are What Say You are
Last week, our readings and class discussions were centered on the concept of
advertisement, and how it seems to set out to deceive consumers intentionally. In class, on
Tuesday, we started off by talking a little bit about Steinem’s “Sex, Lies, and Advertising”, using
it as a basis for the in class activity that followed. We were split into groups and assigned
advertisements from the book. We were instructed to analyze everything in the advertisement
(the colors, the meaning behind the advertisement, the words, etc.), as well as answer questions
about the article given in the textbook. We then shared our findings with the class, and had some
discussion about the advertisements. We didn’t go over “Causal Arguments” in that class period,
but I think that going over some of the articles from Everything’s An Argument (in general)
during class time would benefit a fair number of my peers. On Thursday, we finished up the rest
of the advertisements, since we didn’t get to finish them on Tuesday, and then moved on to
grammar/semicolon and comma workshop. My peers expressed disappointment when we were
just given worksheets to do, and turn in on a later date. It seems that some of them were hoping
that this class session would be devoted to an actual workshop, where we would be given
instruction on how to use semicolons and commas, and then given the worksheets to complete
after the lecture. Instead we relied on each other, and waited for our names to be called for the
individual meetings. During this time we were also asked to work together on our thesis
statements for our proposal, even if that meant just picking a topic, but no one in my group was
very successful.
The articles that were assigned were Steinem’s “Sex, Lies, and Advertising”, as well as
the opening for Signs of Life’s “Video Dreams” and “Casual Arguments” from Everythings An
Argument. Steinem’s “Sex, Lies, and Advertising” was an article centered around the media’s
tendency to deceive consumers, or distract them from the truths of everyday life. Her main focus
was on a popular women’s magazine that she’s written for, and how the advertisements in the
magazine did more to distract readers from the articles in the magazine rather than relate to them.
There was much debate on whether advertising helps or hurts the magazines, and whether
magazines should have advertisements in the first place. “Video Dreams” was a great opening
statement for the next chapter in Signs of Life, giving us an guideline for the entire chapter. It
started by defining some key terms, then describing what a visual image is, and what it does for
viewers of these images. This chapter also covered some aspects of commercial television, as
well as the purpose of most television programs that are popular in the US right now. Finally,
Everything’s an Argument’s “Casual Arguments” served as a guideline for how to create Causal
arguments, and what defines an argument of Casual rather than formal.
This week was preparation for essay #3, and laid out a good base for a proposal based on
advertising. Steinem’s article pointed out some issues that viewers, as well as magazine
publishers have with certain advertisements, which would help anyone who may be interested in
writing their proposal on advertisements in magazines. “Video Dreams” would serve as a great
guideline for an argument built around deception in visual media, or the unrealistic view of
society that today’s television shows provide for viewers. Finally, “Casual Arguments” gives us
an idea on how to build such arguments in a way that wouldn’t overwhelm our readers with
academic overtones.