progress.... slowly is better than standing still

So the progress is coming, but slowly. I have decided that I am going to do my paper on body image and how it leads to plastic surgery and other body modifications. I think the way I am going to approach it is tlaking about body image in the media and how it affects young girls, (or women in general) and then talk about plastic surgery as an option, and if it should be allowed/ legal/ easy to get done/ able to get done when under 18 even with parental consent. I will have to do more research to be able to decide which of these I will focus on.

I think the main reason that I want to do this topic, besides the fact that I will be able to gather a lot of research, is that I am a girl of the age that the media is targeting. (shocking I know) The media and advertising prey on the insucurities of teenage girls to sell their products or to get them to watch their shows. The paper will not have apathy if I talk about this because it affects me.

reasonable proposals lead to reasonable answers

The first proposal argument at the end of chapter 15, about hosts at this restaurant getting paid better with tips is a good argument in my opinion. Laurel, the author, used to be a host at one of these restaurants and knows what it feels like to be an under appreciated and under paid hostess. She is able to gain her credibility because she used to be one, and she also has worked at other restaurants. Her proposal of having the servers pay 1% of their tips, is a good one, and would work because it works in other restaurants. It must work because others do it.
Her proposal is “doable” because it does not hurt the sever any, and it helps the hosts. When the hosts are happy, they are more likely to do a better job and the turnover rate would be lower. Having a lower turnover rate will make them more competitive with surrounding restaurants, which would ultimately make them more money. It’s a good argument because how can the company turn an idea down if it will make them more money without any cost to them?

ohh the choices... what to do?

So, I am really having a hard time thinking of things I am truly interested in. I thought it would be easy to think up a problem, but all the things I come up with would have to have huge research projects on how to fix the problems. And I don't just mean that I would have to do a lot of research, I mean I would basically have to so some random chemistry or something to solve these problems. Therefore, knowing these were impossible problems for an English assignment, I decided to think on a smaller scale. The topics I came up with were:

The deterioration of the public school system
choice of school

Teen pregnancy rates
sex education

High school dropout rates
public vs private

body image in the media
self mutation
plastic surgery

Now, you can see that these are not small problems... think about what my other topic were. haha

i don't understand ∴ i hate

Ellis’s story does offer a credible way to overcome this problem of racism and the misunderstanding of other races. Ellis’s story is credible because it is his own story that is being told. These are his words that he is speaking about his life, and the truth about his life. The fact that the ‘solution’ he is proposing is actually what happens to him, makes it credible. He is also truthful about what has happened to him. He talks about what it was like when he was a Klansmen and his progression into not only his coexistence with blacks, but his friendships he has man with many black people. By showing his progression and knowing his background it shows us that it did work at least once which makes it more credible that just an idea.
This idea did work at least once for C.P. Ellis, but the reason Ellis changed was not easy. He was a militant Klansmen and he was asked to represent them as a group. He had to be able to realize that he was being used so that the government would stay in control and neither the Klan nor the black people would be in charge. He was asked to work with a black woman. He didn’t like the idea, but he knew that by working with her he might be able to get his ideas into the school board. He said he didn’t look at her as a person, and didn’t know her until he realized that they had similar problems, ideas, and lives. He realized that they weren’t so different.
Unless someone goes through this process its doubtful that people would realize they had similarities with someone that they hate. They would have to be put into a similar situation as Ellis to realize these similarities. This would be hard to do on a large scale because of the fact that people are not the same and this one way will not work for everyone.

mainstreamness and normalness

Yoshino says that “the mainstream is a myth” because no one is normal. He is saying that because there isn’t really a ‘normal’ person, there is no mainstream. His reasoning is that it is not normal to be normal.
I think that his reasoning is very persuasive even though its not a ton of reasons backing up this idea, I think that it is true that if someone is truly ‘normal’ that people view that as not normal, but people must cover to seem normal. This does mean that being mainstream is a myth. You can’t be mainstream because no one is normal. Being mainstream means being in the majority. The majority is not just of one thing. The people have to be the same in every way. This cannot happen, therefore there is no majority and then there can’t be a mainstream.

a true friendship is sacred

Linda finally gets her freedom because her “owners” the Dodges are in need of money and her great friend and employer decides to buy her freedom for her. Linda tells her that she does not want her freedom bought. That was just being like sold to a new owner. It was still slavery even if the master was a kind woman and friend. Mrs. Bruce decides to buy her anyway because she wants Linda to be a free woman, and do whatever she wants without having to look over her shoulder all of the time and wonder if any of the people around her were Mr. Dodge getting ready to capture her or her children.
Linda isn’t sure that she wants her freedom bought, but she says that after it is done she feels a huge weight being lifted off her shoulders. She now doesn’t have that constant worry of someone coming to capture her or her children. She was free. Mrs. Bruce says to her that she had no intentions of actually owning her; she wanted Linda to be truly free. For this, Linda is the most grateful she has ever been and she says that the word ‘friend’ is overused, but when she uses it to speak about Mrs. Bruce, it is sacred.

the right thing is never the easy thing

“I replied, ‘ I will never go there. In a few months I shall be a mother.’ He stood without a work. I thought I should be happy in my triumph over him. But now that the truth was out, and my relatives would hear of it, I felt wretched. Humble as were their circumstances, they had pride in my good character. Now, how could I look them in the face? My self-respect was gone! I had resolved that I would be virtuous, though I was a slave. I has said, ‘Let the storm beat! I will brave it till I die.’ And now, how humiliated I felt!”

This passage uses the honesty of Jacobs that we have been talking about. This honesty does actually establish her credibility.
She does this by telling you why she decides to let herself get pregnant by Mr. Sands, and then the excitement and the good feeling of revenge she thought she would have when she told him. Then she talks about how she had always vowed to be virtuous and now she had betrayed herself by deciding to do this for her freedom. She now knows that her family will find out and now they will be disappointed in her because she was always a good person with good character and now she was having a baby with a random man from town. You can feel her humility because you know that she did something for a good reason but because of what she had to do she is now going to be looked down upon. You can really understand her struggle between what and what not to do.

Swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is truth and not fiction because the author, Harriet Jacobs wants it to be a completely truthful story. This is important because that means that she is not adding to the story to make people feel sorry for her or to make people believe that slavery was bad. She just wanted people to know what it was truly like being a slave. She says in her introduction that she doesn’t want to tell anything that isn’t true because she wants people to know the truth. She doesn’t want people to know the fairytale version of the story, she wants them to know the real story.
The editor doesn’t clean it up in terms of language or content because she understands the point of Jacobs story, she knows its about exposing the truth and by changing the story in anyway either by the content or even by the way that it is told, the story is no longer the truth. The editor talks in her introduction that she knows that Jacobs is not writing this just so that people feel sorry for her and other slaves, she says that she is writing it just so that the truth is out there for anyone who wants to listen.
Jacobs talks about how she changed the names in the story not to keep her identity secret but to keep the people around her safe. She cares about her family and wants them to be safe even if she is not. She puts others before herself which also shows how the book is the truth rather than a figment of her imagination,