"Beauty Cult"

Jessica Valenti states in her chapter that women suffer to look beautiful. She states that we wear high heels even though they hurt us just because they make our legs look better. She basically continues to explain how women hate themselves because of their appearance. We also tend to point out things that we don't like about ourselves. What she is saying, is that us women pay more attention to how we look rather than who we are as a person. Not to mention everything that is shown through out society. Society tells women that they are only beautiful if you look a certain way, and even though its stupid and pointless, we choose to pay attention to it. I think that everyone needs to look at the personalities of the people around us rather than their appearance and judging off of looks alone.

Incorporating Vocies

In the books that we have read in the class, and the short stories, the authors incorporated other people's voices. They did this by stating who it is from and what the quotes are. The authors also used studies to show. They would take facts from studies and give them credit to where credit is due. They also would give the sites or information on where they found the information that was incorporated into the paper.

Research question

Use this space to explore more of your own claim. How did you arrive at your research question? What is it that interests you? What do you wish to explore and why? Spend this space developing your argument.

I chose the question about the redefinition of rape.  The thing that interests me about this issue is that there are plenty of people that have been raped and they didn't know what to do. Also some of them might not have known what is classified as rape so they might not have realized that they were until it was too late. In my paper, i plan on showing what different state laws are regarding rape and what is being proposed. I also will show what this new law implys. By that i mean i will show what will be classified as rape, how it is changed, and what people (rapists) can get away with and not have any kind of consequence. I wish to explore what the states will think of it and i also would like to put what people other than myself think of this new rape law if it passes.

Ethos, Pathos, & Logos

I decided to choose to write about Jason Michael Carroll's song "Alyssa Lies". This song is about child abuse.  Carroll tells a story about how is daughter meets a new girl at school named Alyssa and his daughter is worried about her friend. In the song, the chorus goes like this: “Because Alyssa lies to the classroom, Alyssa lies every day at school, Alyssa lies to the teachers as she tries to cover every bruise". This is showing that Alyssa is lying about being abused by her parents. This also shows that she covers everything up and keeps to herself. When someone is told about a child being abused, they automatically start to feel sorry for the child and show anger toward the person causing the abuse.

 In the song toward the end of it, it says “My little girl asked me why everybody looked so sad the lump in my throat grew bigger with every question that she asked. Until I felt the tears run down my face and I told her that Alyssa wouldn't be at school today 'Cause she doesn't lie in the classroom she doesn't lie anymore at school Alyssa lies with Jesus because there's nothin' anyone would do.” This is saying that the little girl was killed by being abused and obviously he felt guilty because he didn’t do anything. Normally, anyone would feel bad because they didn’t act on it when they were told about it. So this song obviously shows a lot of emotion which is also known as pathos.

writerly biography

My name is Sierra Shryock, I am a 19-yr old college freshman at Missouri Western State University in Saint Joseph, Missouri. I was born and raised in Saint Joseph. My major here at Western is Biology with concentration of Health Science. With this major I plan on becoming a medical pathologist and they do autopsies on people to figure out how they died.  Ever since I can remember, I have always been interested in writing. I started writing short stories and poems in the seventh grade. At first, it just started out as assignments, but when I could choose the topic, I fell in love with it. My first writing had to be about a significant event. For this paper, I chose to write about my cousin’s death. This was significant because my cousin was like a brother to me. After this paper, we were able to write about anything. I started writing horror stories. I have been writing them ever since. I like to write because it’s a way to escape reality and whatever you want to have happen will.

                My strengths as a writer are that I add detail. I add a lot of detail to my papers, I try to describe the event that is happening to where the audience that is reading it, almost has a movie playing in their head. I tend to be very graphic with my details and by graphic I mean gory graphic with blood and everything. My weaknesses in my writings are citations and the fact that I tend to get off of the topic. I sometimes will be writing a story and something will pop into my head and I will put it in the paper or story and I will stay on that topic and just kind of leaving the audience hanging. When I am doing citations, I have problems with trying to figure out where to put all the information to where the paper makes sense. Other than these two problems, I love writing and I do it often.

When I do write a story that I made up or a paper that is due in class I tend to write it without any kind of pre-write whatsoever and I do this very quickly. Since I add a lot of detail to my papers, they tend to be long. I have written a story just because and it is 15 pages long and it’s still not even half way done. I tend to think of the most random things and that’s what my papers are about. I have written “Route 666” which yes the title is from a movie but it has nothing to do with the movie. It is titled that just because a killing happens on that street. I have wrote a story called “Man By Day, Tiger By Night.” The title is self explanatory and it’s about a man that turns into a killer tiger. Another one that I have written is called “Stink” this is about a killer ferret attracted to farts. The most random things will sometimes make the best stories.

On the other hand, reading is also sort of one of my strong points. I say sort of because it depends on the text that I am reading. If it is a novel or something I find interesting (e.g. Twilight Saga, Nicholas Sparks’s books, etc.) then I will read the story pretty quickly and I will be able to comprehend things quickly as well. However, if it is something that I find boring and dull (e.g. textbooks, some articles, etc.) I will have problems reading the text and comprehending it. The reasoning behind these things is because I will have to go back and read it more than twice to understand what the reading is about. I also test better on paper rather than computer. I know this because I took a reading class and every time I took the test online, I kept scoring lower, but when I had the hard copy of the test right in front of me, I got a much better and higher score.