In the End, I Have Spoken my Piece

Over time, I have noticed that my style of writing has changed but, not too drastically. I find myself normally writing in a very witty or even sarcastic way. I feel that by writing this way, it brings some type of humor and enjoy ability to my writing for the audience and even myself. Like many of my online posts, I try to write about things that I feel the audience would find amusing and quite funny themselves but, when I tried doing a more serious piece for my Reflective Essay, many people did not “get it,” as I did not hope for..I found that I did not not have as many troubles with my essays that were funny, only because I was stating the obvious.

For many comedians or even somebody who is just a “funny” person, the thing that makes them funny is the fact that they take very everyday, obvious, events or things and simply state what they see. Then to make things just a little better, these people normally go off on little “ tangents.” Its this type of bluntness and “little fits,” that makes the humor. I for one, am a huge fan of doing this. In my piece “A Click of a Button or a Journey through the Seven Levels of Hell?!” I used the elements of stating the obvious combined with a type of controlled tangent. I simple stated what it was like to go shopping online Vs. Shopping at a store in the flesh.

“Normally when you want to go shopping it starts out fun, but always has the pit falls of the whole consumer driven attitude...There is almost always traffic, fighting for parking, dodging pedestrians with there carts, and five children following behind, or the people that have to re-park and adjust 80 times. The next level of Hell is, trying to not become one of these so called “pedestrians,” and making it completely intact inside the store; this also goes for finding a cart and making sure it works without squeaking, pulling to one side, or any other hang ups. Now we come to Purgatory, were the actual shopping takes place; you can either find exactly what you want in a split second, or you can spend endless hours looking for what you want and when you find “it,” its either not your size, broken, or too much to afford (unless you take out a small loan.)”

Like I stated before, I love to use this type of writing. After reading great authors and poets who use this type of satire I became quite fond of it and decided to use it myself. Yet I find that when I want to express my ideas in a more serious way, people don’t respond to it quite as well.

I love to read lots of different pieces of older literature and love learning about art, so when it came down to my reflective essay I chose to do a piece primarily based on the “humanities.” In my piece,"Life as Humanities has taught it to be," I wrote about my encounters with John Locke, Descartes, Plato, the art of dissection and ancient Chinese calligraphy: all things with I feel really mean something to me.
“When it comes to art, I am always learning new ways of painting, drawing, or even sculpting, but its things like these I can’t just read about in a book and automatically know how to do them; I have to experience them. “

Yet, when it came down to the peer reviews in class, many people seemed to not fully understand, or have no prior knowledge of these things thus, I didn’t get the high praise I expected. It was almost like they were bored? When it did finally come down to the grade of my paper, I earned quite high marks but, still I wanted the audience to like it more and I felt that even though I like to write more seriously, people don’t always appreciate it.

Through out this semester, I have learned a lot about the type of writer that I am. I am the type of writer that wants to make the audience laugh and really feel like they have a connection to the piece when they read it. There for, I write about more than obvious things that often come out very blunt and tend to have little tangents on the topic, here and there. It’s these types of pieces that get the ‘high reviews.’ As for my more serious style, I find myself writing much more passionately and about things that I really care about. I found that when I write like this, my peers won’t always like it more or for that matter really appreciate the elements in the writing but, that’s not there fault. They simply like other things, and that’s okay. So, in the end I found that as a writer, I put a lot of myself and my emotions in my pieces, and that in the end I feel very secure about each and every one because, in the end I’ve spoken my peace.

She Works "Hard" for the Money..

The magazine cover that I chose to analyze was from Vibe. The cover clearly shows woman as being sex objects, made for men’s entertainment, and unable to really be noticed unless they are naked or close enough. On almost every cover that the magazine puts out, there is always a woman standing in a provocative position, cast in a seductive lighting.
While the magazine itself is directed towards a more "hip-hop crowd,’’ it also applies a lot to African Americans. As such, many hip-hops, R&B, and other entertainers grace the covers. For example, Ashanti, Janet Jackson, and other sexy woman show off.

Like the pictures above, it just goes to show how woman are now;

"..Bitches and hoes, in the hip hop culture… (A Letter to hip-hop)"
All the woman above are in hip hop and very successful, yet why are they portrayed in such a degrading way? The only way to answer this question would have to be as simple as saying,

"Sex sells"

While they have money the only reason they do is because they are good looking and draw a large crowd. Still why do they pose so sexy if they have money and people already think they are sexy? They do it because it sells themselves more, as well as the magazine. If the woman above were clothed in business suits or maybe baggy clothes that men were in the hip hop culture people wouldn’t be opted to buy the magazine. There for, we can assume that the majority of people that buy this magazine are men.

Men are always looking for beautiful woman; its human nature to idolize beauty. The book clearly talks about the cultures of the world and how beauty and sex are a huge part of every different one. As for Americans, we love to combine the two but, add a lot more sex. The easiest way to describe this would be to go back, and look at the positions that the woman are in on the magazine covers.

All of the women on the covers are in very provocative and very suggesting positions. The first one takes on more of a fetish side; almost dominatrix like. The woman is posing in a tight leather suite and has her Dari air clearly being pushed forward. The third is Janet Jackson holding her bare breast, wearing only a ley and a small pair of bikini bottoms. This cover screams sex, and that that’s the only reason why she’s posing. The second I saved for last because I felt that it was the most suggestive and degrading. The woman is clearly "under-dressed," and in a typical position associated with sex. Its seems that no matter how rich they are they still choose sex as their weapon, along with the photographers and the CEO’s of the Vibe Magazine company.