Essay 4 Options for 150 points. Options. 1,400 words and is due no later than start of class on May 10
(Added a new option)
One. Based on Adam Gopnik's essay "The Caging of America," support, refute, or complicate the assertion that mass incarceration is "The New Jim Crow." You can refer to the Netflix documentary 13th, about the New Jim Crow in the aftermath of slavery. Is there enough evidence to support the claim that mass incarceration is a continuation of Jim Crow and therefore is aptly called The New Jim Crow?
Two. Defend, refute, or complicate Conor Friedersdorf’s assertion in “A Social-Media Mistake Is No Reason to be Fired” that too often digital mobs pervert our ability to distinguish a social media mistake from a job-termination-worthy behavior.
Three. Develop an argumentative or cause and effect thesis of your choice that addresses one of the essays we’ve read on online shaming and digital mobs.
Four. Addressing Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly’s “The Unsafety Net,” develop an argumentative or cause and effect thesis of your choice about misogynistic trolls and social media.
Five. Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've Left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." And the following YouTube Video:
Six. Comparing “Faces in the Mirror” and “Markets and Morals,” develop an argumentative or cause and effect thesis about how the relationship between the commodification of everything, including celebrity, results in dehumanization.
Seven. In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Eight. In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”
Schedule to 5-10-17
4-19 Essay 3 Due. "Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik.
4-24 "The Flip Side of Internet Fame" (90) and "Evolution of Shaming." Also see "Social Media Mistake Is No Reason to be Fired."
4-26 Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've Left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." Also see "The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Woman."
5-1 "Faces in the Mirror" 31 and "Markets and Morals" 40
5-3 "Our Baby, Her Womb"418
5-8 "Unspeakable Conversations" 96
5-10 Essay 4 Due
Essay 3 for 150 points. Options: 1,400 words typed options and 3 sources is due no later than the start of class on April 19.
One. Refute, support, or complicate Asma’s assertion that green guilt is not only a relative to religious guilt but speaks to our drive to sacrifice self-indulgence for the drive of altruistic self-preservation and social reciprocity. See Elizabeth Anderson’s online essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
Two. Develop a thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates the assertion Debra J. Dickerson, who wrote the “The Great White Way,” would find Michael Eric Dyson's essay "Understanding Black Patriotism" a complement to Dickerson's ideas about race, power, and hierarchy.
Three. Support, refute, or complicate Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is more of a social fantasy than a reflection of objective reality.
Four. Show how the Jordan Peele movie Get Out builds on Debra J. Dickerson's argument that race in America is a cruel invention designed to create a hierarchy of power, one that can be seen in all its horror in post-Obama America. For sources, see NYT review , The Guardian review, and the Variety review.
Five. Develop a thesis that analyzes the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us” (very popular with students).
Six. Support, refute, or complicate Nicholas Kristof’s assertion that slashing food stamps is morally indefensible.
Seven. Addressing at least one essay we've covered in class (“The Wages of Sin” and “Eat Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem), support, refute, or complicate the argument that overeating, anorexia, and other eating disorders are not the result of a disease but are habits of individual circumstance and economics.
Eight. Support, refute, or complicate the argument that feminist-political explanations for anorexia, as evident in Caroline Knapp's essay, are a ruse that hide the disease's real causes.
Study Questions (About Francine Prose's essay "The Wages of Sin," her analysis of attitudes toward gluttony)
One. What is the Nanny State?
In paragraphs 1 and 2 we read that people are dumbed-down troglodytes who are so helpless to fend themselves it is necessary for the government to be a Big Nanny that cares for the infantile, incontinent appetites of the people by imposing stringent laws and regulations.
Do we need the Nanny State to control the incontinent eating habits of the average American? What's the endgame of such control?
In dystopian nightmare Nanny State, nurses would knock on your door at 2 AM and demand 200 push-ups or else your health insurance would be doubled.
You might get tickets for "exposed cellulite violations" at the beach.
In reality, we are not so dumb as we are surrounded by a consumer culture committed to stimulating our appetites, and we find ourselves maladapted to all the calories we consume.
Two. Why Is Being Fat a Sin?
Being fat suggests concupiscence, a spiritual disease in which one, absent God's love, seeks to fill one's vacuum with foolish tokens, delicacies, and sensuous experiences. These desires are never fulfilled, and one finds that one's desires constantly outstrip one's capacity to satisfy them.
Being fat is self-destructive. It leads to diabetes, incontinence, and premature death. Therefore, one is violating the body's Holy Temple with fried peanut butter and mashed banana sandwiches washed down with pitchers of cold beer.
Being fat is a sign of having no discipline but rather the squalid development of a rotund toddler. Failure to grow beyond this stage points to a lack of moral fortitude.
Being fat makes one an imposition on others. Sitting next to a fat person on a bus, a train, or an airplane is a drag. Some airlines charge obese people for two tickets since their girth commands at least two seats' worth of cabin space.
Being fat is aesthetically offensive. There are nude beaches where for tourism sake the police escort fat people off the beach. "Only svelte, beautiful bodies allowed. It's tourism season, big boy."
Being fat is a sign of stupidity. Smart people figure out a plan to deal with this thing called overeating. Obviously, the glutton is still confused, or wants to remain confused, and this willed ignorance is also a sin.
Are We Dumb or Just Vulnerable?
We are not so dumb as we are vulnerable. For example, watching food on TV triggers our appetites.
Chemists work on flavors and textures that stimulate our appetites. Their research is secret. Journalists are not allowed in the lab.
However, consumer culture, which stimulates our appetites, also markets the perfectly sculpted body and wants to sell us products that will get us that body as well.
Thus consumer culture gives us mixed messages, screws up our head, and then shames us for being overweight.
Worse than dumb, many see fat as evidence of a sinful nature: avarice, greed, envy, concupiscence, sloth, laziness, etc.
Three. What does it mean to be paternalistic?
We are speaking of when someone takes on a parental role in a derogatory sense in that the “parent” is assuming control over others. This word often has a negative meaning, for it often suggests someone being presumptuous enough to be an authority over another. “You are fat and you need me to help you become a healthy, productive member of society.”
This is the same mentality of treating citizens like dumb children that we see John Taylor Gatto's essay "Against School."
Some argue though that letting Americans feed "themselves silly" isn't working. The health costs from America's gluttony are staggering. Obesity costs Americans up to $210 billion a year.
Four. There’s a lot of talk about the so-called obesity burden in which tax payers have to absorb half the medical costs incurred by obesity-related ailments. Is that fair?
Answers will vary.
Five. What is the Fat Tax dilemma?
If taxing fat people and putting a “fat tax” on “fatty” items were to be effective, people would live longer and old age increase would put a NEW tax burden on tax payer.
Smokers and obese people lose about ten years of their lives.
But there is a sense of moral outrage and a need to punish "fat sinner" by taxing them.
Six. What curbs fat more, a heavy stigma or the Nanny State?
Neither. Prose suggests that a stigma, a sense of shame, is more powerful than any government regulations. The fear of being an outcast is greater than financial punishments.
But in fact shame usually has the opposite effect: People go down a rabbit hole of shame and depression, which makes them want to "disappear," ironically by eating into a state of fatness. This creates a vicious cycle.
Even the fear of death rarely works.
Seven. What is gluttony?
Gluttony is the sin of overeating as a form of self-indulgence. Most Americans overeat; therefore, most of us are gluttons. If all or most of us are gluttons, perhaps there is less stigma to being a glutton.
Or more realistically, there are different levels of the glutton.
A Stage 1 Glutton is 20 pounds overweight. He gets a pass.
A Stage 2 Glutton is 40 pounds overweight. He is about to lose his pass.
A Stage 3 Glutton is 50 or more pounds overweight. He lives in Shame Hell, either alone or with other Stage 3 Gluttons.
When we speak of gluttony, we make fat a moral issue: Gluttony shows a disrespect for the body and an excessive pandering to one’s ego.
Eight. How do we see latent hostility against obese people?
We claim to be compassionate towards the obese but in reality we are not when obesity inconveniences us. Airplane seats, for example, are a source of strife because the obese are taking more than their share of space.
Perhaps most significant is fat discrimination in the workplace. Employers know the cost of obesity at work.
Another form of hostility is the connection, real or not, of obesity and poverty. We call this guilt through association.
Nine. Is obesity as simple as saying it’s a moral issue or a sin?
Perhaps that’s an oversimplification: Attributing complex problem to simple cause: to blame obesity on sin or indulgence or ego is absurd. Obesity may be partly these things, but they don’t tell the whole story.
When we use a disease model of obesity, we interject, wrongly or not, a moral component because there is an implication that only through rigorous moral scrutiny and inventory can an eating addict find freedom from overeating, and overeating, it is assumed, is the primary cause of obesity. In fact, overeating may not be the primary cause. The causes can be complex and many:
The 15 Causes of Obesity:
- There is an abundance of convenient, cheap, calorie-rich food everywhere we go.
- We move less than we did generations ago. Do we chase the animals we eat? No.
- Mindless eating; not even knowing the quantity of what we consume every day, much of it done while talking, watching TV, or surfing the Internet, all forms of Mindless Eating. See book of same title by Brian Wansink.
- Poverty; there is a relationship between poverty and obesity. This is due to a lack of education combined with reliance on cheap fast food.
- Parents. Children eat what their parents eat. If the parents eat a “fat lifestyle,” so will their children.
- Friends. We eat and look similar to our friends. We often call this “social eating.”
- Eating processed foods instead of real foods and not knowing the difference. Please see In Defense of Eating: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. In short, only shop at the far left and right of supermarkets; avoid the middle; or shop at the Farmer’s Market.
- Super-sized portions are marketed as a “good deal.” See the film Super Size Me and read the book Fast Food Nation by Erich Schlosser
- Boredom; stay at home with nothing to do and you’ll overeat
- Emotional eating; eating to feel “love” or “self-esteem” or because you feel lonely.
- Lack of sleep. The more tired you are, the more you feed your blood sugar to compensate.
- Education; knowing how to enjoy good healthy food should be very practical but too few people know how to prepare food for themselves that they both crave and that is good for them.
- Learned helplessness: You convince yourself that you are too ignorant to make your own food and become dependent on fast food and junk.
- Dieting; it leads to weight gain, splurging, neuroses, and messes up the metabolism, which rebels and goes on “shut down.”
- Fast food is marketed to children in an aggressive way; see Fast Food Nation.
Essay Option for Obesity and Eating Disorders
Addressing at least two essays we've covered in class, support, refute, or complicate the argument that overeating, anorexia, and other eating disorders are not the result of a disease but are habits of individual circumstance and economics. In other words, should we use the "disease" (I am a sinner) model or the habit model?
Source for Your Essay
"I Was Hooked on Meth for 11 Years: If You Know and Love an Addict, This Article Is for You"
"How Obesity Became a Disease" in The Atlantic
How AA and 12-Step Programs Erect Barriers While Attempting to Relieve Suffering
"Is Addiction Really a Disease?"
Two people I admire, Alec Baldwin and Marc Maron, are addicts who relied on AA to exorcise their addiction demons. They needed to got on their knees and cry helplessness to their Spiritual Power to come clean.
But some people don't do well with AA models:
They hate the meetings.
They hate the jargon.
They hate the constant sharing.
They hate the drama.
They don't do well with a treatment that declares them intractably helpless and diseased.
They do better with behavior modification, restructuring their environment, and the re-training of their habits
Perhaps we shouldn't rely on One Size Fits All treatments.
Outline for Eating Disorder Essay:
Paragraphs One and Two: Show how Prose's essay, about the shaming of fat people, and Knapp's essay, about a woman who internalizes shame, point to the problem of compulsive overeating and compulsive self-starving and the conflicting explanations for these compulsions. 150 words each for 300 subtotal.
Paragraph Three: Show how eating disorders can be addressed by a disease or behavior modification model. Briefly explain what how model works. 150 words. 450 subtotal.
Paragraph Four, Your Thesis: Write an argumentative thesis that sides with one model or both as a way of treating eating disorders. Make sure your thesis has four mapping components that outline your essay's body paragraphs. 150 words. 600 total.
Paragraphs Five Through Eight: Body paragraphs support your thesis mapping components. 150 each for 600 and 1,200 subtotal.
Paragraph Nine: Write your opponents' most compelling counterargument and your rebuttal to the counterargument. 200 words. 1,400 subtotal.
Paragraph 10: Conclusion: Rewrite your thesis with more emotion than your original thesis. 100 words. 1,500 total.
Sample Thesis In Support of Disease Model
While AA's disease model doesn't work for everyone, many addicts, including overeaters and anorexics, are in urgent need to follow the 12-Step Disease plan to save their lives when we consider the failure of free will, the failure of behavior modification to address root causes of addiction, the patient's repeated show of helplessness to her disease, and the disease model addresses biological causes of addiction that cannot be changed by behavior modification.
Sample Thesis in Support of Behavior Modification Model
The evidence shows that we should replace the disease model of addiction with behavior modification. For one, a lot of addictive behavior is not biological, but habit. Second, calling oneself an "addict" is self-stigmatizing and this self-loathing leads to other behavior problems. Third, the disease model makes people see themselves as helpless and thus encourages a lifelong dependency and, yes, addiction to addiction meetings. Four, behavior modification allows the patient to address specific behavior rather than get bogged down in "recovery talk."
Sample Response to Francine Prose's Essay (Calling Obesity a "Sin" Is a Form of the Disease Model)
Pulpit thumpers decry that religion is dead in America and that a revival must sweep the nation soon lest we suffer the fiery annihilation of Sodom and Gomorra. These doomsday prophets are wrong. Religion is alive and well. As Francine Prose renders in her acute and trenchant essay “The Wages of Sin,” the Supercilious Fat Police and their calorie-counting acolytes who look upon fat people as a breed of bloated sinners have co-opted religious language and metaphor to divide society into two sides: The reedy svelte souls bound for heaven and the repugnant obese souls bound for hell. To reinforce this polarization, the Fat Police, and even self-loathing fat people themselves, assert big government micromanagement of “fat behavior,” so that there are fat taxes imposed on lovers of movie popcorn, colossal burritos, super-sized buckets of ice cream and soda, and other foods that pose a threat to one’s salvation. The Fat Police and their disciples have also proselytized the gospel that moral depravity and “immoral self-indulgence” are at the root of obesity, so that it is clear that fat people are not helpless victims of the environment or genetic hard-wiring but the result of their own damnable sloth, gluttony, and avarice.
Another category that insures fat people suffer the stamp of stigmatization is society’s collective resentment that corpulent fleshy souls are guilty of hogging or usurping other people’s personal space. What kind of wickedness allows the fat person to assert his gargantuan belly into our area when he squeezes next to us on a train, a bus, or an airplane? His rude and selfish sin is so malignant that he and his obese brothers and sisters should pay for not one but two airline or bus tickets to accommodate their elephantine rumps.
Finally, if fat people can be saved at all, they must resort to a Higher Power: Their countless tons of unwanted flab can only be shed if they throw themselves upon the Alter of God’s Mercy and embrace a variety of spiritual rehabilitations—Twelve Step Programs, revivalist gospel tracts, and other motivational tools rooted in the language of God, the devil, sin, and divine providence. If the obese refuse to access the divine tools that are set before them, surely they deserve to be thrown into the fiery hell that awaits these gluttonous, recalcitrant sinners.
How to Set Up a Counterargument in Your Rebuttal Section (The Templates)
Some of my critics will dismiss my claim that . . . but they are in error when we look closely at . . .
Some readers will object to my argument that . . . However, their disagreement is misguided when we consider that . . .
Some opponents will be hostile to my claim that . . . However, their hostility is unfounded when we examine . . .
Thesis with Concession
While Author X is guilty of several weaknesses as described by her opponents, her argument holds up to close examination in the areas of _________________, ______________, _____________, and ______________.
Even though author X shows weakness in her argument, such as __________ and ____________, she is nevertheless convincing because . . .
While author X makes many compelling points, her overall argument collapses under the weight of __________, ___________, ___________, and ______________.
“Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem” by Caroline Knapp
One. Why is starvation an addiction for Caroline Knapp and perhaps for others?
There are two kinds of people in this world, the laid-back and the high-strung.
The latter have what is called generalized anxiety disorder.
Everything we do is a source of anxiety.
A corn nut lodged in the back seat of our car can cause us insomnia.
Our Methods for Allaying Anxiety Can Become the Addiction
When we're always anxious, we seek calm and safety. Too often these retreats into calm and safety become addictions.
Knapp retreats from life--the anxieties she faces in her life--and withdraws into a sense of calm. She feels safe, but she is not living. When we retreat from life to alleviate anxiety, we are engaging in over protection, and as such we choose death over life.
I’m thinking of the woman whose husband left her two days before their planned wedding, and she became a ghost of herself in the aftermath. She became bitter and “undateable.” She become a zombie, a hollow husk, a cipher. She is too afraid to feel and to embrace her full humanity.
Knapp escapes from life with her strict food routine. Her rigid routine makes her feel safe from wanton, self-destructive behavior. Of course, she’s blind from the fact that the rigid routine is a form of self-destruction.
Two. What is the “silent protest” of starvation?
Her starvation becomes a “silent protest” against ridiculous feminine ideals that are forced upon women. Starving both aspired to the ideal and “mocks” it. Kate Moss the waif replaces the Marilyn Monroe the voluptuous one.
Therefore, starvation alleviates the discomfort of “inhabiting the female body.” A real female body has curves and appetites. An anorexic female body has vanished. There is no body, there are no appetites, and there is no personality. The person has vanished.
Three. How is starvation about self-rejection and avoiding judgment?
Starvation is an attempt to invert the food obsession as a positive symbol of nurturing and care-taking; in its place, starvation is about self-rejection and “self-inflicted cruelty.”
Starvation becomes a way of avoiding self-recriminations: “I’m such a hog” for having eaten that chocolate cake. I don’t deserve love. I don't even deserve to live.
I should be sent to my room without supper. God, I hate myself. My only hope for feeling good about myself, therefore, is to starve myself.
We can conclude then that starvation has become a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the Devil, in which women trade eating satisfaction so that they can enjoy self-esteem.
Mastering and controlling one’s appetites becomes a way of feeling empowered. This empowerment becomes a form of compensation for feelings of loneliness, self-doubt, and consuming dread and desperation.
Four. How is starvation a feminist issue, according to Caroline Knapp?
Starvation becomes a way of surrendering to the “backlash” against the rise of feminine power. Women have more earning power and are more successful in college than men.
Starvation is an attempt to withdraw from the overwhelming choices that are part of a woman’s new freedom.
Starvation is a reaction to an unnatural hatred of fat.
I would complicate Knapp’s assertion, however. I would say that starvation, also known as anorexia, is a problem about race and social class. Most anorexics are middle to upper class white women.
The Barbie aesthetic is part of being a member of that catty clique in a lot of upper class white social circles.
I concede that some of the above may be true, but I'm reluctant to see feminism and politics as the main driving forces of anorexia. I tend to agree with those who attribute the disease to anxiety and depression as Carrie Arnold, a former sufferer of anorexia, explains in this excerpt from her book Decoding Anorexia.
McMahon’s Summary on “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem” by Caroline Knapp
Whether they are bingeing or purging, irrational eaters are in a most damnable condition--the state of having no self-control and being helpless and fearful in the face of overwhelming appetites. These inflamed irrational passions are so devastating that binge eaters must tiptoe through life fearing that at any moment they will fall into the abyss of their avarice.
Most irrational eaters, especially the women described by Knapp, suffer shame for several reasons, including a sense of anxiety over the disparity of their new freedoms but limited power; their internalized "theme of vigilance and self-restraint" that often backfires and is counterbalanced by compulsive appetites that eradicate all the "gains" rendered from the meticulous adherence to eating rules; the state of hunger that "becomes divorced from the body" and becomes "loaded with alternative meanings" that have to do with unfulfilled emotional longings; and their knowledge that violating the slender female aesthetic will cause them to be held in tacit contempt by both men and women alike.
This sense of shame and self-loathing becomes exacerbated when obesity is looked at through a religious prism which would have us condemn over-eaters as gluttons, sinners indulging their appetites, reprobates putting their desires before God, miscreants violating our space with their grotesque corpulence.
Scapegoated by society for putting an undue strain on medical costs, despised for taking up our space, an unloved for not inciting the kind of desire that we associate with Kate-Moss slenderness, fat people represent the possibility of human failure and rejection that we fear in ourselves. Thus many of us, overreacting to our fears, develop a myriad of eating disorders so chronic that once ensnared in these irrational eating habits, it is nearly impossible for many of us to free ourselves from them and lead relatively normal lives.
In Knapp's essay, what does she say is being internalized?
Obsession with unrealistic images of beauty that result in obsession with self-control
Obsessive link between being thin, or not, with one's identity
Obsessive link between being thin, or not, with one's self-worth
"Is Anorexia a Cultural Disease?" refutes Caroline Knapp's point about culture being the culprit of anorexia. Carrie Arnold posits that biology or genetics is the cause, so this would be an essay for supporting the disease model.
Essay Option for Caroline Knapp:
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that feminist-political explanations for anorexia, as evident in Caroline Knapp's essay, are a ruse that hide the disease's real causes.
Suggested Outline for the Above Essay Prompt
In paragraph 1, summarize Knapp's major points. 150 words.
In paragraph 2, summarize Carrie Arnold's contrary points. 150 words.
In paragraph 3, your thesis, take sides with Knapp or Arnold and give 4 reasons (mapping components). 150 words. 450 subtotal.
Paragraphs 4-7 will support your mapping components. 150 each for 600. 1,050 subtotal.
Paragraph 8 will be your first counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. 150 words. 1,200 subtotal.
Paragraph 9 will be your second counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. 150 words. 1,350 subtotal
Paragraph 10 will be your conclusion, an emotionally powerful restatement of your thesis. 150 words. 1,500 total.
Brainstorm for Prewriting
Both essays address the way we are a culture obsessed with food.
We tend to binge with food and we tend to purge with food.
We are two extreme regardless if we are bingeing or purging.
We have internalized shame in regards to eating.
We have internalized rules in order to conform to a quasi religious order of what makes us “bad” or “good.”
We internalize these eating rules from the food police and in essence create our own food religion and the result of this religion is a form of control.
This form of control is deceptive. Some of us, like Caroline Knapp and others, can be so obsessed with control that we’re controlled by the need to control.
Obsession with control leads to out of control behavior.
Bingeing leads to purging and purging leads to bingeing. Or in other words, self-denial leads to self-indulgence and self-indulgence leads to self-denial. For example, after a Christmas-New Year’s binge, many start the New Year with a New Year’s resolution of denials.
A lot of internalized food rules, it seems, disproportionately affect Anglo middle and upper class people, so that we might say eating disorders are largely a “first world problem” of the privileged class.
However, being fat is a stigma that affects people of all classes, especially in the workplace.
Being fat is being “a monster,” a drain on society, “Los Otros,” the Other. A fat person is demonized as taking up space and costing us billions in sick costs at work and in hospitals.
Dieters use “religious language,” we read in Prose’s essay (183). “That chocolate cake was sinfully delicious.”
Dieters adopt 12 Step programs and embrace a Higher Power to free themselves from their bondage to eating.
Knapp says we must be austere to austere rules to have a skinny body.
Knapp warns that when we mess with our natural hunger, we go a little crazy or more than just a little: “The more you meddle with a hunger, the more taboo and confusing it will become. Feed the body too little and then too much, feed it erratically, launch that maddening cycle of deprivation and overcompensation, and the sensation of physical hunger itself becomes divorced from the body, food loaded with alternative means: symbol of longing, symbol of constraint, form of torture, form of reward, source of anxiety, source of success, measure of self-worth” (193).
Develop a thesis that compares or contrasts (or both) the social pathologies that inform the type of eating disorders and neuroses described in “The Wages of Sin” and “Add Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem.”
Thesis Attempts
Both Prose and Knapp capture the analogy of strict food rules with unhealthy, diseased religious compulsion, which is comprised of ____________, ___________, _____________, and _____________.
Another Attempt
While the food police would label us as helpless eaters and Knapp would consign some sort of disease to anorexia, in truth most eating disorders are not so much a "disease" as they are the products of economics, family influences, and habits.
Another Attempt
To demonize or stigmatize people with eating disorders as being ignorant, sinful, or diseased is a dangerous exercise that obscures the root causes of eating disorders, which are born from economic deprivation, family influence, and bad habits.
Another Attempt
While Knapp makes some convincing points about unrealistic body images of women causing some women to develop eating disorders, the real cause of women starving themselves doesn't appear to be political or "patriarchal" ("it's a man's world") but more rooted in behaviors analogous to drug addiction evidenced by ___________________, ___________________, _____________________, and _____________________.
"The Challenge of Treating Adults with Anorexia"
Grammar: Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
McMahon Grammar Exercises: Pronoun Errors
Pronoun Errors
Vague Pronoun Reference
Possible reference to more than one word
Transmitting radio signals by satellite is a way of overcoming the problem of scarce airwaves and limiting how they are used.
In the original sentence, they could refer to the signals or to the airwaves.
Reference implied but not stated
The company prohibited smoking, which many employees resented.
What does which refer to? The editing clarifies what employees resented.
A pronoun should refer clearly to the word or words it replaces (called the antecedent) elsewhere in the sentence or in a previous sentence. If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.
Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
Incorrect pronoun case
Determine whether the pronoun is being used as a subject, or an object, or a possessive in the sentence, and select the pronoun form to match.
Incorrect:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between he and President Kennedy.
Correct:
Castro's communist principles inevitably led to an ideological conflict between him and President Kennedy.
Incorrect:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than them to judicial reinterpretation.
Correct:
Because strict constructionists recommend fidelity to the Constitution as written, no one objects more than they [do] to judicial reinterpretation.
Confusing subject with object
Please give the chocolate to Randy and (I, me).
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates of food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills and one has to ask if there need to be improvements in this regard. Therefore, a person taking a critical thinking class should be prepared when they are asked to identify logical fallacies and other elements of critical thinking.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Parallelism
Thesis Statements Need Parallelism
Parallelism’s importance is most apparent when looking at mapping components in a thesis. We want those components to be written in parallel form whether we’re referring to a list of phrases or clauses.
Faulty Parallelism Example
Marijuana should be legalized because it’s safer than alcohol and many pharmaceutical drugs, its medicinal properties; it’s a fool’s errand to wage a war against it, and keeping it illegal increases criminal activity.
Above we have a mix of clauses and phrases. We should correct it by changing all the mapping components to clauses.
Corrected
Marijuana should be legalized because it’s safer than alcohol and many pharmaceutical drugs; it has medicinal properties; it is too common to waste money in a feeble attempt to eradicate it, and in illegal form it results in too much criminal activity.
Faulty
"You're Ugly, Too" and "Greenleaf" feature characters whose pride is born as a coping mechanism to the intense pain of loss and loneliness. However, the coping mechanism of pride becomes maladaptive when we consider pride builds a wall of solipsism, fortifies a prison of learned helplessness, and the lie of self-sufficiency.
Corrected
"You're Ugly, Too" and "Greenleaf" feature characters whose pride is born as a coping mechanism to the intense pain of loss and loneliness. However, the coping mechanism of pride becomes maladaptive when we consider pride builds a wall of solipsism, fortifies a prison of learned helplessness, and spawns the lie of self-sufficiency.
Faulty
The deluded fantasies of the married man in "The Other Woman" speak to men's unrealistic expectations of marriage evidenced by men's desire to embrace the forbidden Eros of Angelina Jolie, the squeaky clean innocence of Jennifer Aniston, and he wants a trophy wife.
Corrected
The deluded fantasies of the married man in "The Other Woman" speak to men's unrealistic expectations of marriage evidenced by men's desire to embrace the forbidden Eros of Angelina Jolie, the squeaky clean innocence of Jennifer Aniston, and the upper class status of the judge's daughter.
Faulty
The Man-Child, embodied by Francis Weed in "The Country Husband," is characterized by his propensity for indulging his lust and anti-social aggression at the expense of societal and family responsibility, his fixation on his youth as his central identity, and he likes to party.
Corrected
The Man-Child, embodied by Francis Weed in "The Country Husband," is characterized by his propensity for indulging his lust and anti-social aggression at the expense of societal and family responsibility, his fixation on his youth as his central identity, and his inclination for intractable self-pity.
We use parallelism in all types of writing.
Faulty
The instructor sometimes indulges in bloviating, pontificating, and likes to self-aggrandize.
We see above two gerunds followed by an infinitive, which is a faulty mix.
Corrected
The instructor sometimes indulges in bloviating, pontificating, and self-aggrandizing.
Using parallelism after a colon
Faulty
Kettlebell exercises work on the major muscle groups: thighs, gluteus, back, and make the shoulder muscles bigger.
Corrected
Kettlebell exercises work on the major muscle groups: thighs, gluteus, back, and shoulders.
Primer on Prepositional Phrases
Grammar Exercise: Parallelism
Correct the faulty parallelism by rewriting the sentences below.
One. Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do; they have giant mood swings, and all-night tantrums.
Two. You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony; they feature fatty, over-salted foods and high sugar content. (they lard their food with high sugar content)
Three. I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absence of loud “gym” music, and I’m able to concentrate more.
Four. To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and writing an intellectually rigorous thesis. (write, not writing)
Five. The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the sheer abundance of rules you have to follow, and to integrate your research into your essay.
The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that you have to constantly stay updated on the changing rules, you have to memorize the sheer abundance of citation rules, and you have to learn to integrate research sources into your writing.
Six. You should avoid watching “reality shows” on TV because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism; they distract you from your own problems, and their brain-dumbing effects.
Seven. I’m still fat even though I’ve tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and fasting every other day.
Eight. To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and developing a thesis that elevates the reader’s consciousness to a higher level.
Nine. Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and the importance of a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Ten. My children never react to my calm commands or when I beg them to do things.
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