Mora 1

Brandon Mora
Professor Zack De Piero
Writing 2
06/05/15
WP2 Mens Fashion
Why is it that men do not go into mens fashion? Is it that theres not a lot of money to be
made in that occupation? Is it genetically inherent that men are not as artsy and creative as
women? There are many answers to these questions, however no answer is more valid than the
others. In order to define those questions one has to look into different aspects of this idea and
see which prove to be most valid. Genres are defined as any topic that can be supported by a
series of conventions in a piece of writing. The moves or conventions that are seen throughout a
piece of writing can help to support a person argument as well as help their point be consistent
throughout their paper. Martin Heil and Jansen-Osmann Petras article Sex differences in mental
rotation with polygons of different complexity is dense and uses complex graphs and
terminology in order prove men are big-picture thinkers and women see ideas piece by piece.
Michele Ramsey and Santiago Gladyss article The Conflation of Male Homosexuality and
Femininity in "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" is easier to read due to low use of jargon and
views the idea that men are constructed to not be feminine or else they are seen to be
homosexual. Ramsey has communication credentials and Gladys has writing credentials, which
is why their jargon is simpler to understand the neurologists jargon. Douglas Crets's article
HOW MEN'S FASHION MARKETING GETS IT ALL WRONG is easy to follow as it was
written for a popular magazine called Fast Company. Heil and Petras article was dense and hard

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to follow because of the jargon and the formulas while the article that Ramsey and Gladyss
created as well as the magazine that Cretss made was far superior as it appealed to a mass
audience and helped answer the question of why men do not go into the mens fashion field.
The reason why some articles prevail are due to them being easier to understand than
other genres that contain complex words and ideas. The genre for the neurological journal most
resembles a research paper. The conventions that make the journal a research paper are: the
abstract, the hypothesis, the graphs and diagrams, how the research was conducted, the methods,
and the final results that transpired in the end of the experiment. The feminist piece is probably
under the genre of a critique on modern society because the piece is describing that men are
taking the form metrosexual because they do not want to seem as if they are homosexual. Also
the authors are concise with their ideas and use some popular culture references of the Fab Five
and Jack from the popular sitcom Will and Grace. The uniting feature of the two is the works
cited section that is in the bottom of each of the pieces. Finally, the magazine article would fall
under the question and answer genre because of its conventions. This explains the reason why it
is easier to follow The article contains a main title that is bolded with a slight unbolded section
after it describing its components as a whole. Following that, there are subheadings that are
bolded and are questions. Under the questions there are answers which are not bolded but vary in
size depending on the questions depth. The end of the article has a picture of the author Douglas
Crets. Differences among the genres of each of the pieces helps solidify their ideas in different
manners from one another.
Moreover, in the neurological article there were confusing parts for the average person
due to the fact that it was written in a form only understandable to neurologists. As seen in

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Rachel Engelzingers analysis, One would not be familiar with this term if educated in a field
other than [Jennings] proves that using field specific words can hurt broadening your audience.
The article that Heil and Petras composed was medically driven and featured a lot of
terminology that was hard to follow. An example of this is holistic which was used to describe
a mans method of thinking. Without careful reading and analyzing it would not be known that
holistic means looking at the main points of something rather than viewing the individual
components. When they used piecemeal to describe a womans method of thinking it was not
defined in the piece, but after analyzation of the word a person can see that the word means
looking at individual components of what makes up an item (Heil). The jargon of this research
based article was difficult to understand because this was a neurological journal and it used
words such as modified hemispheric lateralization account and angular disparity which is not
commonly used in the day to day talking that one does with their friends. The use of this jargon
in their research limited their audience as many readers who are not in the neurological field
would not get the concept of the article.
Contrary to the neurological article, the magazine and the feminist scholarly journal
appealed to their audience because of simplicity in not only words but in ideas. Since the two
utilized everyday concepts that we see such as advertisements and television shows, this assisted
in gaining the mass audience. The scholarly journal did a great job of not using jargon filled
words but rather used a popular culture reference when they referenced the popular hit show
Bravos Queer Eye (Ramsey). This show is quite favored by many people as it is comedic and
has a happy ending. This greatly helped the article appeal to a mass audience as the show was
well regarded and liked when it first aired. The terminology that was most difficult to understand

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was metrosexual. However, in current popular culture that word is now easily defined as that
has become part of our culture; men are starting to become more free and liberated and do not
feel as constrained by society to be a super masculine man. Similar to that, the magazine was
written to appeal to the mass public as well. There were no words that were difficult to
understand, but rather just like the article they used popular culture references to advertisements.
The advertisements that were mentioned were: Doves men body and care body wash, Old Spice,
Abercrombie and Fitch, and Dockers (Crets). The two articles sufficed for a majority of the ideas
of mens fashion and why it is that men do not usually go into that field. Even though these two
articles are similar, the main difference between all of the articles has to be the audience that was
intended to read each of them.
The audience for each of the articles are different they were intended for different groups
of people. The audience for the neurological research journal had to be people in the neurological
field because there was heavy use of jargon that is unknown to those who are not in that field.
Also, there was use of graphs and a hypothesis in order to thoroughly figure out what the piece
was about. Contradicting that was the Male Homosexuality and Femininity scholarly journal
that was intended for a wider audience. It would most likely be for college readers who are
interested in feminist studies or are looking for an interesting read. This journal does not use
heavily discipline-oriented words as the neurological article does. Words such as cognitive
learning, Spatial ability, and Angular disparity evoke ideas that are difficult to understand.
Lastly, the magazine article is intended for anyone as it is worded simply and there are no
difficult points to understand in the piece. The points are pretty much straight-forward and they

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are broken up to be easily read. Each of the articles are intended for different audiences as they
are written for different reasons and prove different ideas.
Similarly each one of the articles has their one unique and different moves. Moves are
any tactics that the author uses frequently in their articles. Mike Bunn in his article How to Read
Like a Writer defines moves as The choices the author made and the techniques the author
uses which relates to how each individual author wrote their paper. For one, the neurological
paper has informational moves as there are a lot of statistics and facts to back up their points.
Also the heavy use of jargon is a move in order to solidify their ideas and make it valid with the
right terminology. The authors also used abbreviations in order so they would be able to write
more about their topic and not repeat the same words too much. Contradicting that was the
feminist piece. That piece was written formally while also containing quotations marks which
were not used to signify conversations, but rather important words. The authors piece revolved
around the show the Queer Eye and the portrayal of the Fab Five. The magazines moves are a
series of thorough answers to questions. In that article there are plenty of hyphens to unite words
that do not usually concise together. The sentence structures vary in size from one word to
twenty words in order to draw the readers attention. The moves that each piece uses is unique as
each writer has their own way of writing.
Finally, no one piece is necessarily better in informing than the other. The neurological
piece is science based, so it is more for a perspective neurological audience. While the feminist
piece is for those who want to change ideals of current society. The magazine as well is to inform
men on how society is changing and why men choose the styles they do. However, in regard to
the overall factor of each piece, the feminist piece and the magazine article were the easiest to

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follow and understand because it was written with popular culture references and was
contemporary to present times.

Works Cited

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Boyd, Janet. How to Read Like a Writer. Starting Lines. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara:
Alternate Digital Printing, 2015. 44-58. Print.
Crets, Douglas. "HOW MEN'S FASHION MARKETING GETS IT ALL WRONG." Fast
Company. New York City: Fast, 2011. Print.
Engelskirger, Rachel. The Vietnam War and Protests in the United States. Starting Lines. Santa
Barbara: UCSB, 2014. 176-178. Print
Heil, Martin, and Petra Jansen-Osmann. "Sex Differences In Mental Rotation With Polygons Of
Different Complexity: Do Men Utilize Holistic Processes Whereas Women Prefer
Piecemeal Ones?." Quarterly Journal Of Experimental Psychology 61.5
(2008): 683-689.

Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 May 2015.

Ramsey, E. Michele, and Gladys Santiago. "The Conflation Of Male Homosexuality And
Femininity In Queer Eye For The Straight Guy." Feminist Media Studies 4.3
(2004):

353-355. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 May 2015.