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Alexandra Rodriguez

Loren Higbee

English 1301-114

2 November 2021

Rhetorical Analysis of a Beauty Peer-Reviewed Essay

During the past few years, both male and female individuals have been pursuing their

love for beauty whether it be by watching lots of makeup videos on YouTube to try to better their

artistry skills, or by going above and beyond by competing in beauty competitions. In this case,

many women have changed their appearances because of society’s standards of what beauty

really means and what is considered to be beautiful. In the article, Women, makeup, and

authenticity: Negotiating embodiment and discourses of beauty, the author, Maryann McCabe,

uses rhetorical appeals such as pathos, ethos, and logos to really emphasize the important

information she is trying to give to the reader about how women nowadays feel.

The author of the article, McCabe, mentioned about research done by The New York

Times, “Every day is class picture day for women.” (Weiner, 2015). By having this as the very

first sentence in the introduction, she is using pathos to try and get the reader to feel sadness by

expressing how women today constantly feel pressured because society has made a massive

impact on the beauty standard towards women. Based on today’s society, the author implies that

women feel as though they must constantly look their best no matter what emotional state they

are in. In disgust, McCabe mentions if one goes out without wearing any kind of makeup, they

will continually get stopped and get asked, “Are you sick?” Because of this, women all over the

world have developed a sense of pressure to look their best, even when they are only going out

for a few minutes. The author continues to incorporate pathos into her article by mentioning
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“...the beauty industry in today’s society has done more harm than good.” In modern society

today, it is very common to see women get plastic surgery done to their bodies to make it seem

as though they worked really hard for their body by posting pictures of it on social media at the

gym, promoting weight loss pills or teas, which is all ultimately false advertisement. This affects

the self-esteem of women who truly have been working hard at the gym to get their bodies to

look like the models they constantly see on social media, however, never being able to fully

achieve that goal. It is something that is very unrealistic because they are essentially promoting

something they were able to achieve at the gym, while all of it being a lie.

Additionally, to make the point, the author uses logos to state facts on the percentage of

women who feel insecure about their bodies. McCabe regretfully states that only at the age of

thirteen, “53% of American girls are unhappy with their bodies”. As these young girls get older,

the increase of insecurity and lack of confidence spikes, resulting in them suffering from

depression. The author continues by saying how every year, the number of teens who experience

this kind of insecurity and lack of self-confidence increases because of how popular social media

is getting and how many girls are being gifted a phone at a very young age, resulting in them

making a social media account and believing their bodies are not good enough because of the

models they see on the internet. McCabe resumes by saying that almost half of all female teens

have had a negative experience with the internet, particularly the website, Instagram. A site used

by many to post the best pictures one possibly can in order to get the most likes as possible. By

stating all this information, the author gains credibility because although having “the perfect

body” is what today’s society deems to be beautiful, it is also now a trend to spread body

positivity because of how many girls suffer from their physical appearance.
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To add on, the author uses ethos to continue to build her credibility in her article. Because

the author is a woman, she can tell her story of how this has also impacted her in several ways,

leading to the continuation of how what she is saying could be true. Not only does this make her

audience believe in what she is saying, but it also helps them feel as though they can relate to

her. Without even reading the article, women can solely read the title of the paper and see it was

published by a female and will instantly gain credibility, along with what was being said in the

article. McCabe continues to try and persuade her audience by mentioning how all the females in

her family have felt the same way either one time in their life or another. Constantly having to

prove to others that inner beauty is what really matters, and the makeup is just for show.

Additionally, she included other sources of older teenage women who have also stated how

difficult it was for them to grow up around the social media times and constantly comparing

themselves to the models on the internet, wishing that was them. The neglect that certain women

have felt throughout their lives is something that McCabe is able to add to the article to once

again prove her point which is how the beauty standard today has escalated tremendously.

In fact, the language that the author uses was well written because the point of her article

was to inform the public how much society has changed and impacted the lives of many

individuals, but especially the lives of women. By continuing to add credibility to what she is

saying, the author mentions how in the 1900s, the beauty standards were not always like how

they are now. They were much more settled and not as harsh as they are nowadays. She

continues by saying as time went on, social media started to become more and more popular and

the desire to be the most beautiful and the one with the most likes became unbearable. Having a

talk with one’s daughters is something that is important to McCabe because she knows how

troubling times like these could severely impact the minds of young girls; saying that inner
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beauty is much more important than outer beauty. She also states how authenticity is something

that plays a key role in a woman's everyday life. Feeling like one is living with no authenticity

can cause more problems when meeting new people in the future. Regretfully, McCabe mentions

that social media is where the start of all the body image issues, and lack of self-confidence

happened.

Overall, the author used a combination of all three rhetorical appeals and a certain

language to try and gain credibility to get her audience to know and feel exactly what she is

talking about. The overall effectiveness was well written because it got the audience to feel sorry

for women and everything they must go through, despite the new “trend” of body positivity. She

was also able to persuade the audience into feeling sorry for women all around the world based

on her article and all the statistics she incorporated. McCabe continued to use multiple sources

from other women to further build her credibility and get the audience or reader to gain her trust.

All in all, using ethos, logos, and pathos was a smart choice that the author made in order to gain

full credibility in what she was trying to portray, which is the problem of beauty in today’s

modern society.
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Work Cited

McCabe, Maryann, et al. “Women, Makeup, and Authenticity: Negotiating Embodiment and

Discourses of Beauty.” Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 20, no. 4, 2017, pp. 656-677.,

https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540517736558.
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Alexandra Rodriguez

English 1301

Loren Higbee

12 November 2021

Reflection Essay #3

Throughout the writing process of creating essay three, there were a few obstacles I

encountered along the way. A few of those included having writer’s block, not knowing what

more to add to my paper, and not exceeding the word count required. Although these may seem

unpleasant, I was still able to complete my essay to the best of my abilities and believe I

presented a well-written paper and exceeded on the topic of this essay.

As one continues to practice on the structure of a paper and how to correctly state the

topic required, it begins to almost come naturally when one writes more and more essays.

Something I learned in Essay 1 that I was able to incorporate into Essay 3 was the feedback

given to me about sticking to the prompt of the paper and not including my personal opinions

because it is not what the prompt is asking us to write about. Continuing, something I learned in

Essay 2 that I embraced in Essay 3 is to really make my essay sound more professional and not

as casual.

Because one practice more and more, they tend to leave out the negatives that they had in

their previous papers to try and make the new one better. In my case, something I learned from

Essay 1, however, did not use, or was not applicable in Essay 3 was the word count. Essay 1 was

much easier to finish because of how short it was supposed to be. Sadly, that wasn’t the case

with this most recent essay. Additionally, something I learned in Essay 2 that was not applicable

towards Essay 3 was how to compare three distinct communities. This was not applicable for
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Essay 3 because we had to solely focus on whether the author did a good job in explaining their

article correctly, or not.

While doing any activity in any class, there are always a few things that can be applied

through other courses whether it be in one way or another. For Essay 3, something that would be

applied to other courses is how well you need to properly write an essay because other class

courses are required at least three essay writings throughout the course of the semester.

With that being said, something that I learned with Essay 3 that would not be applicable

to other courses would be the topic of a written text and how to not make it a research paper. For

example, I must do two essays for my Anatomy and Physiology class and those require it to be a

research paper.

I believe there is always room for improvement, in this case, the analysis of a peer-

reviewed article would help me improve my writing by knowing how to properly give

information without “stealing” the information from the source and being able to correctly cite

the sources. This will be able to help me with writing tasks in the future because I will not

struggle as much, which will make the writing process much quicker.

While writing a paper, it is always a good idea to get second opinions about your essay

before turning it in. A writing strength that my peers told me I had was being able to choose a

topic that was interesting enough to get their attention and being able to write it in a way that was

easily understandable, without having them to re-read it several times to understand, unlike

several other articles. However, a writing weakness I had, in the beginning, was writing in a way

that made it seem as though I was siding with the author of the article, which was not what the

writing prompt was about. In a way, these strengths and weaknesses are similar to when I wrote

Essay 1 and 2 because of the topics I had chosen to write about.

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Once you receive back comments from a reader, usually, the author tends to put that

advice to use to try to make their next paper better, in this case, I believe the comments will be

that I continued to improve on my writing skills and hopefully have gotten a higher grade than

my previous essay because of how much I worked on it.

With all homework assignments or essays, there will always be some challenging and

not-so-challenging aspects of it. For Essay 3, in my opinion, the most challenging thing about it

was trying to get to the word count and create good content without adding filler information.

The least challenging thing about it was choosing a topic I liked and was really familiar with.

I believe my identity as a writer has changed. I believe I have truly gotten better as a

writer than when I first started at the beginning of the semester. Throughout the process, there

were many trials and errors, however, I was able to overcome them and make it through to create

a paper I was really happy about.