Solomon 1

Paige Solomon

Professor Batty

English 101

29 May 2018

Ethnographic Essay Reflection

When reviewing my feedback for this essay I saw that I really needed to change the word

choice around how I described the residents of Beverly Hills to a way that did not sound

judgmental. That being said, I still thought it was important to discuss cosmetic surgery because

I believe it is a giant industry within the community of Beverly Hills. The first change I made

was changing the sentence “women that were old enough to be grandmothers…” to “women who

appear to be in their later years...”. I also added an observation I made about younger people to

prove my point that the culture of cosmetic surgery is prevalent with younger women as well. I

also changed the sentence “…most had overly enlarged lips and breasts that looked almost

comical on their small frames,” to “…most women I saw had overly enlarged lips and breasts

that looked unrealistic on their small frames,”. I realize now by using the phrase “almost

comical” it could be perceived as a judgment or a negative opinion. I had also used the term

“grandmother” in my conclusion and changed it to “older women”. I also changed the word

“gaudy” in the third paragraph to “extravagant” in order to get my point across without making

judgments or using words with negative connotations. Looking back through my essay I can now

see how some of the words I used were negative and although that was never my intention, it

ended up occurring. As well as these changes to the essay I also reformatted the Works Cited to

MLA and added a header to each page.