Feminism and Women’s Self Image an Example by

Feminism and Women’s Self Image Womens looks have primarily been influenced by media and the images it projects. From early adolescence, a girl begins placing her value on what is the norm according to peers, television, movies, magazines and billboards. Since its inception, the feminist movement has attempted to counter the negative, false images imprinted upon girls self images. Need essay sample on "Feminism and Womens Self Image" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed Students Frequently Tell EssayLab professionals: Who wants to write essay for me? Professional writers propose: Don't Waste Your Time Buy An Essay For College Websites That Hire Writers Essay Paper Writing Service Essay Writing Service The standards of beauty that the media portrays are unrealistic and set young girls up for a negative self image. When a young girl, then later a woman, never feels as if she is good enough, based on media influences, she is left feeling less-than and inferior. As a woman ages she becomes defined as even less desirable. The media rarely portrays a woman over 30 as beautiful, vibrant, sexy or desirable. The ingrained message women (and men) receive is that mature women are not attractive or sexy. This continual bombardment of unachievable standards sets women up for lifetimes of poor self-image. This image, usually contrived from seeing models as idols, is at the root of the problem. The Barnard/Columbia Women's Handbook says, The range of actual body types in the past was no different than today. What has changed is what has been set up as the ideal. Studies have shown that while 25 years ago the average model weighed 8% less than the average American woman, today's model weighs 23% below the national average. The exclusion of so many women from representation is a denial of the wide range of bodies and appearances. Instead of marveling at the assortment of body shapes, we continually compare ourselves with each other. We begin to objectify our own and other women's bodies. So women have ingrained a sense of competition with other women. They also feel innately inferior to the standard. Women have these feelings more strongly than men. In the article, Mirror, Mirror the author explains, Why are women so much more self-critical than men? Because women are judged on their appearance more than men, and standards of female beauty are considerably higher and more inflexible. Women are continually bombarded with images of the 'ideal' face and figure - what Naomi Woolf calls 'The Official Body'. Constant exposure to idealized images of female beauty on TV, magazines and billboards makes exceptional good looks seem normal and anything short of perfection seem abnormal and ugly. It has been estimated that young women now see more images of outstandingly beautiful women in one day than our mothers saw throughout their entire adolescence. Since its inception, feminism has attempted to correct this faulty image. According to www.usinfo.state.gov, feminism is defined as The view, articulated in the 19th century, that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities. More recently, a social and political movement that took hold in the United States in the late 1960s, soon spreading globally. Feminism tries to make the media take responsibility for its influence and the images it projects. In a talk given by feminist journalist Rose Simone, she said, A good journalist is aware of the fact that his or her reality is not the only reality. A good journalist should try to reflect the diversity that is out there . . . and the ability to do that involves being able to see and understand that just because you have not experienced something, such as racism, or just because you would personally not perceive the same thing as another person, that doesn't make the other person's set of experiences less real or less worthy of reporting. Other ways feminism attempts to overcome negative beauty/body images are by education and instilling a sense of responsibility. In The Good Body, author Eve Ensler says, The Good Body began with me and my particular obsession with my imperfect stomach. I have charted this self-hatred, recorded it, tried to follow it back to its source. Here, unlike the women in The Vagina Monologues, I am my own victim, my own perpetrator. Of course, the tools of my self victimization have been made readily available. The pattern of the perfect body has been programmed into me since birth. But whatever the cultural influences and pressures, my preoccupation with my flab, my constant dieting, exercising, worrying, is self-imposed. I pick up the magazines. I buy into the ideal. I believe that blond, flat girls have the secret. Although feminism has made great strides since the 1960s, there is still a long way to go in enhancing womens self image. As long as women compare themselves to false images of perfection portrayed by the media, they will be haunted with low self worth and a need to reach an unattainable goal. Sources: Public Face/Private Suffering: the female body (Chapter 3, Reshaping the female body: the dilemma of cosmetic surgery) by Kathy Davis Beauty Secrets (Chapter 3, Dress as Success) The Barnard/Columbia Women's Handbook 1992 (Chapter 3) The Good Body by Eve Ensler

The Cooperative Principle in Conversation

The Cooperative Principle in Conversation In conversation analysis, the cooperative principle is the assumption that participants in a conversation normally attempt to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. The concept of the cooperative principle was introduced by philosopher H. Paul Grice in his article Logic and Conversation (Syntax and Semantics, 1975). In that article, Grice argued that talk exchanges arent merely a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction.   Examples and Observations We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected (ceteris paribus) to observe, namely: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. One might label this the Cooperative Principle.  (Paul Grice, Logic and Conversation, 1975. Reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University  Press, 1989)[T]he  sum and substance of the Cooperative  Principle might be put this way: Do whatever is necessary to achieve the purpose of your talk; dont do anything that will frustrate that purpose. (Aloysius Martinich,  Communication and Reference.  Walter de Gruyter, 1984) Grice's Conversational Maxims [Paul] Grice fleshed out the cooperative principle in four conversational maxims, which are commandments that people tacitly follow (or should follow) to further the conversation efficiently: Quantity: Say no less than the conversation requires.Say no more than the conversation requires. Quality: Dont say what you believe to be false.Dont say things for which you lack evidence. Manner: Dont be obscure.Dont be ambiguous.Be brief.Be orderly. Relevance: Be relevant. People undoubtedly can be tight-lipped, long-winded, mendacious, cavalier, obscure, ambiguous, verbose, rambling, or off-topic. But on closer examination they are far less so than they could be, given the possibilities. . . . Because human hearers can count on some degree of adherence to the maxims, they can read between the lines, weed out unintended ambiguities, and connect the dots when they listen and read. (Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought. Viking, 2007) Cooperation vs. Agreeableness We need to make a distinction between communicatively cooperative and socially cooperative . . ..  The Cooperative Principle is  not about being positive and socially smooth, or agreeable. It is a presumption that when people speak, they intend and expect that they will communicate by doing so, and that the hearer will help at making this happen. When two people quarrel or have a disagreement, the Cooperative Principle still holds, even though the speakers may not be doing anything positive or cooperative. . . . Even if individuals are aggressive, self-serving, egotistic, and so on, and not quite focusing on the other participants of the interaction, they cant have spoken at all to someone else without expecting that something would come out of it, that there would be some result, and that the other person/s was/were engaged with them. That is what the Cooperative Principle is all about, and it certainly does have to continue to be considered as the main driving force in communic ation. (Istvan Kecskes,  Intercultural Pragmatics. Oxford University Press,  2014) Jack Reacher's Telephone Conversation The operator answered  and I asked for Shoemaker  and I got transferred, maybe elsewhere in the building, or the country, or the world, and after a bunch of clicks  and hisses and some long minutes of dead air Shoemaker came on the line and said Yes? This is Jack Reacher, I said. Where are you? Dont you have all kinds of automatic machines to tell you that? Yes, he said. Youre in Seattle, on a pay phone  down by the fish market. But we prefer it when people volunteer the information themselves. We find that makes the subsequent conversation go better. Because theyre already cooperating. Theyre invested. In what? The conversation. Are we having a conversation? Not really. (Lee Child, Personal.  Delacorte Press, 2014) The Lighter Side of the Cooperative Principle Sheldon Cooper: Ive been giving the matter some thought, and I think Id be willing to be a house pet to a race of superintelligent aliens.​ Leonard Hofstadter: Interesting.​ Sheldon Cooper: Ask me why?​ Leonard Hofstadter: Do I have to?​ Sheldon Cooper: Of course. Thats how you move a conversation forward. (Jim Parsons and  Johnny Galecki, The Financial Permeability. The Big Bang Theory, 2009)