Week 3 Reading Response

Anne Lamont's essay, "Shitty First Drafts", was very helpful with easing the fears of needing the first draft to be perfect. Knowing that everyone has drafts that are not good in the beginning of a project is great, because it lets us know that everyone is human. People assume that best selling authors can just sit down at their computer and type out a Top Seller's List book like they had just brushed their teeth, and that's all there was to it. Everyone has trouble in the beginning, and Lamont's essay is simply written for easy reading and understanding.

Week 2 Response

Regarding the article, Advertising Sets Double Standard for the Male Gender, written by William Sea, he seems to say that advertising stereotypes the male gender. A Milwaukee's Best Light beer commercial has men doing things that most people would look at as feminine actions, and when the men do them, a giant beer can squashes them for not doing "manly" things. As he quotes from the commercial, "men should act like men", but how do men really act? He argues that if the commercial was switched to a woman who was squashed with a detergent bottle every time she did a "manly" thing, that would create havoc with the feminists. Women want to not be shown as nothing but sex objects who take care of the man, but the commercials highlighting men are portraying them as idiots who only know how to be tough and try to fix things. Women today don't want to be dominated by the man, but advertising shows that the man only knows how to dominate. If women don't want to be portrayed a certain way, but continue to portray men the way they do, then men will just retaliate with nothing changing. It seems that each gender looks at the other the way the commercials portray them, but they will become tired of being portrayed in that manner. The author doesn't really give any support to his claims in the article. They are just kind of his opinion. The way they make since is that everyone can relate in some way to what he is describing, from what they have seen throughout their years, without needing documented facts.