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12/6/2020

Concurrent English 1010

Rhetorical Analysis

Although Alice Gregory's analysis of the average LDS women in her article titled, "Why

So Many of Your Favorite Beauty Personalities Are Mormon" published in ​Allure​ in 2017, may

be offensive to some, Gregory's usage of quotes and data from relevant sources proves an

effective strategy to convince people of her views. Perhaps in response to the MeToo movement

highly relevant to the time of publication or stemming from general feminist views of the time,

the author’s rhetoric clearly appeals to the progresive women of this age. Gregory outlines the

culture that common Mormon women participate in and the contradiction between fundamental

Mormon doctrine, and the present-day practices of Mormon women using persuasive strategies

directed at her beauty product-loving female readers such as Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

From chats with Mormon fashion bloggers and women's emotional health

psychotherapists to quotes from LDS documents, Gregory unravels the complexities of women

in the Mormon faith through a wide range of perspectives using the strategy most commonly

known as Logos. “It’s a culture with very strong ideas about humility, modesty, and...double-D

boobs” says Julie de Azevedo Hanks, a Salt Lake City–based psychotherapist specializing in

Mormon women’s emotional health and relationships when talking with Gregory about the

culture of plastic surgery in Utah. Gregory uses Julie de Azevedo Hanks’ experience as a

psychotherapist in Utah to evoke emotional reactions from her viewers because of their trust in

the legitimacy of her claims. In addition to real life people and experiences, Gregory uses official

Statistics about the state of Utah to provide further legitimacy to her ideas and opinions. For
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example, Gregory claims, “​The state’s statistics — 88 percent white, 57 percent Mormon,(...)

paint a picture of exactly who is most likely to get plastic surgery: a white woman with

disposable income and a few pregnancies behind her, living among people like herself”(Gregory

14). This quotation clearly outline’s Gregory’s attempts and success at using statistics, a strategy

known as logos, to fulfill the motivation of the article: to convince.

In addition to Gregory’s usage of Logos to gain the believability she desires, she

effectively uses Pathos to obtain emotional responses from her readers through carefully

calculated wording and phrasing. To explain the ​culture that common Mormon women practice

and the contradiction between fundamental Mormon doctrine and the present-day practices of

Mormon women, Gregory uses the example of Witney Carson​, ​a dancer, model, and fashion

blogger. After a conversation about Carson’s strong beliefs in the significance of inner-beauty

and self-worth, Gregory audaciously remarks, “​To watch her toned legs kick up and platinum

hair fluff about as she shimmies across the stage is to be momentarily converted”(Gregory 7). In

this example, Gregory has clearly carefully shaped this sentence to provide the readers with

feelings of perhaps humor and enjoyment, perhaps feelings of offense and mistrust, or more

likely feelings of revelation and agreement. This example is a perfect representation of Gregory’s

ability to take someone or something, in this case Witney Carson, and manipulate the intentions

of the example to get a point across therefore successfully impacting the readers. This

manipulation is the essence of Pathos.

To establish credibility for her work, otherwise known as Ethos, Gregory sheds light on

her own experience in Provo, Utah, the LDS capital of the world. When describing her

experience, Gregory states, “I drove an hour south from my hotel in Salt Lake City to Provo,

home of BYU.(...) Downtown was quiet but relatively bustling, with young people, mostly in
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couples, strolling down the sidewalks of the extra-wide streets”(Gregory 16). Disregarding

Gregory’s opinions and motives for writing this article, she successfully provided her readers

with the credibility necessary to getting her point across. Having the experience of going to Utah

and surrounding herself with the very people she is claiming to understand, contributes

believability and further assurance to the readers, successfully accomplishing Ethos.

As a whole, Alice Gregory’s article based on mormon women and the discrepancy

between their doctrine and actions​ incorporates Logos, Pathos, and Ethos to efficaciously

persuade it’s readers. By using real-life conversations with Mormon women, precise statistics,

and personal experience, Gregory’s rhetoric provides clear, concise, and convincing methods to

gain the agreement of her female, glamor-obsessed readers.