Introduction
The success of any article and scientific work also depends on the written skills of the author. If the text is captivating from the first paragraph, the audience continues to read. The most challenging thing is to encourage the readers to finish the article to the end. The persuasiveness of the text influence whether the reader receives the message or performs the necessary action. This paper analyzes the text of an article written in 2002 by Susan Bordo, an American professor, and philosopher, whose works are marked by several prestigious awards. She devoted much of her time to cultural studies, particularly “body studies.” The article “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” reveals the problem of spreading eating disorders among various countries due to the standards imposed by the dominant Western culture. In her work, Susan Bordo managed to build an engaging text that helps to acknowledge and understand the problem and calls for specific thoughts and actions.
Main body
In today’s information society, there is an acute problem of information management as a critical resource. Information comes to people every minute from all kinds of sources, and they are not always able to filter it. Gradually, such information changes consciousness and specific patterns of behavior. These changes often negatively affect a person’s life, for example, perception of oneself and understanding of beauty. For this reason, the problem requires considerable attention to be addressed.
The analyzed text can be divided into its structural elements, which will help understand its features better. There is no usual introduction, which briefly tells about the topic that will be further addressed in the paper. Instead, the author immediately begins with a “hook,” forcing readers to understand the problem that she wants to address independently. Readers see the example of a young girl, who strives for the appearance standards of celebrities from films. In their imagination, they create a particular image of her – most often a white girl from a high-income family. However, Bordo destroys it, giving the heroine of the story the name and appearance of the African-American girl suffering from anorexia. Thus, the audience is aware that it is susceptible to certain stereotypes, as well as that the standards of one culture already destroying the health of parts of the population have spread globally. I liked this feature of the article, and it made me read further.
After that, Bordo, with examples from Fiji and Nigeria, confirms the readers’ guess and her own statement that the issue of eating disorders spreads in various countries over the world. These real-life examples provide arguments and evidence that the dominance of Western culture affects human consciousness. Even those peoples that have historically developed entirely different standards of beauty, like voluptuous female bodies, find that more and more girls are trying to change themselves to other patterns. This makes readers feel sorrow and other emotions in response to the fact of how receptive people are to someone else’s, more powerful opinion. In my opinion, the appeal to feelings and emotions is reasonable because this way of influencing a person is stronger, more effective than methods of rational influence. Moreover, within the whole text, the author uses a simplification method that allows her to convey the main message in a short and brighter form.
The following structural elements of the test are theoretical explanations of the reasons for the spread of the problem. Here, bright words and expressions as “images,” “powerful,” “offer a fantasy,” “bodies are measured” are also used to attract readers’ attention (Bordo, 2002, p. 370). After that, the author uses another method – gives a personal example of how she noticed the influence of Western standards on the consciousness of Asian girls. In the same paragraph, on the memories of people of different ages, readers feel the contrast of past beauty standards of a particular culture and newly imposed patterns. The last exciting structural element of the text is the conclusion in the form of a call to action. It is a part of the publication, which motivates the reader to a specific step. It acts as the final chord of the entire text, completing it.
I believe that Bordo’s article’s unique feature is the impactful text, which engages the reader from the first lines and calls to action at the end. Such a text is distinguished by a reasoned presenting of and usefulness for the reader. I find that all thoughts of the author in the article are communicated so that readers hear and understand them. Moreover, in my opinion, this text is impactful thanks to the characteristics described in the paper.
Conclusion
To draw attention to a significant problem, Bordo not only describes the situation and its various aspects but tells the story. Storytelling is the best way to convey information to a person so that he or she can feel and remember it. Bordo could combine methods and strategies in her work, which allowed her not only to inform readers about the facts in a simplified, popularizing form. Moreover, I believe she managed to build a dialogue with the audience, provoking them to think and act. That is, her article is designed to have a convincing and inspiring effect on readers to solve the problem of eating disorders that spreads because of the dominance of Western mass media.
Reference
Bordo, S. (2002). The globalization of eating disorders. In G. Muller (Ed.), The McGraw Hill reader: Issues across the disciplines (8thed., pp. 367-372). McGraw-Hill Education.