Bulimia

Cited: Orbach, Susie. “Losing Bodies.” Social Research 78.2 (2001): 387-394. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Sept. 2012. Scholarly Journals are a useful and reliable source of information that can be used for research, insight, and even to be persuaded on a topic. I chose an article that informs its audience about the influence of media and culture on global women. This journal titled “Losing Bodies” by Susie Orbach is a very informative piece that uses all the techniques in a rhetorical appeal: logos, pathos and ethos. She wants her audience to realize that the local traditions are being lost through the use of media and instead being replaced by uniformity and conformity. In Susie Orbach’s 2011 article, she confronts the issue of global women being conformed of their body traditions and how standardization is replacing diversity, as identical bodies become the norm of belonging and identity. Orbach strongly states her feeling on the issue of women conformity of the global world; starting at the title, “Losing Bodies,” she grabs a reader’s attention. The title stands for many points throughout her paper, but mainly expresses her point that global women are changing their bodies to look more like the western women. She starts the article by making the reader think about how the media influences almost everything that we do. She writes topics for us to think about like, “ Think of the food we eat now and how it is prepared and presented to 25 years ago” and “ Think of going into a restaurant and there being an A-list movie star t the next table. She or he becomes compelling…” (Orbach, 387). By doing this she is having the reader think about how our lives have changes by the media and therefore draws the readers attention in to her main focus of how the media is affecting global women’s traditions and cultures. Women are losing bodies of a certain culture to a more main stream, ideal look. She states, “ Like women in so many locations in the world, they felt excited and interested. They perceived the way they were to be radically out of date and in need of upgrade. The site of modernity for them became the reconstruction of their bodies (Orbach, 389). She goes on to give examples of how women of many cultures are reconstructing their bodies to look more like a western woman. When giving the examples she uses rhetorical appeals to strongly deliver her point and persuade the reader. She uses pathos when she describes how extreme women are changing their bodies just to feel like they fit in. She makes the reader think and connect with what the women are doing. She writes that women in Shanghai want to be taller like the western women; the women there therefore find it fashionable to break the thigh and extend the leg by ten centimeters. In the same paragraph she also states that, “In South Korea, 50 percent of teenage girls have the double eyelid slit operation to westernize the look of the eyelid” (Orbach, 389). Giving all these horrific facts and examples all in a row makes the reader connect with the article and connect with their emotions. The use of pathos and ethos together is a strong way to persuade the reader. That’s why Orbach uses the medical facts of the procedures along with the emotional way of listing the facts. From the beginning of the article she presents her writing in a formal, informational yet persuading tone. This grabs the reader but also makes the reader get hooked in the article strongly believing everything the writer is saying. Therefore, she is using the rhetorical appeal of ethos; she makes the reader believe she is a credible and reliable writer by the tone of her writing. She includes many facts in her article to further her point. She writes of how Fiji began broadcasting an American show in 1995, Friends, and by 1998, “11.9 Fijian adolescent girls were over the toilet bowl with bulimia, where previously none existed” (Orbach, 388). Stating facts like this uses all the rhetorical appeals. She sets up a reliable tone uses ethos. She does not just say that they are bulimic she describes what they are doing and also says they are young girls; this is uses pathos to persuade the reader with their emotions. Logos is used when she states facts and reason to persuade the reader. Susie Orbach begins her last paragraph by saying, “We are losing bodies as we are losing mother tongues” (Orbach, 394). This one sentence sums up her entire article and gives the reader something to think about. She wants to persuade the reader to change what media is doing to other cultures and traditions and put a stop to it. “Losing Bodies” is an article that attempts to persuade and inform her readers that the media is influencing and changing the global cultures and traditions.