Blair and Beauty and Other Stuff

During our class discussion last week about Blair's view on Taste, I started wondering what exactly is beauty since it was said that Taste can be equated to beauty. To me, physical beauty is something that is hard to define, however, our media tries very hard to depict what is beautiful. They make lists of the sexiest celebrities and even lists of the un-sexiest almost like they are trying to define the extremes for others. Personally, I view pop culture’s view of beauty to be expensive, hard to reach, and self-serving. There is such pressure on men and women to appear beautiful that they are willing to partake in extreme solutions like surgery or diets. Whatever happened to internal beauty? Whatever happened to messages about feeling good about yourself or that it is okay to not have the nose of some celebrity. Why do we allow ourselves to get so wrapped up in what others think? Who knows, I sure don’t.

Well, I suppose I digressed from discussing the topic from rhetorical theory. So on that same page, I want to announce that if anyone is looking for a Graduate Assistantship, mine will be free next semester. I am currently the GA in University Communications, but I am going back to Kansas City for numerous reasons. If you want more information on the GA position, contact me at andrea512@missouristate.edu.

Response on Astell

After the class discussion on Mary Astell, it made me wonder about rhetoricians in today’s society. She advocated that to be a good rhetorician, a person had to be unbiased, had to reduce their passions about a topic, had to make concise arguments, and had to be a good Christian. What I am supposing in her sense that “good” meant morally good. For in today’s society, I am not sure viewers of pop culture hold people up to those standards. An example of this is political speeches. Many times politicians are obscure and diverge from the particular question that was asked of them, but members of society see this as part of the norm. And, if they sound “pretty” while answering the questions, they are seen as eloquent and good speakers.

Another thing I thought was interesting was how she believed that to be a good rhetorician someone had to be Christian. While I am a Christian, I believe her viewpoint was biased on the grounds that there are many people who are successful at speaking but aren’t of the Christian faith. Granted she lived during the 15^th-16^th centuries, but in today’s world we see that there were non-Christian leaders who moved groups and nations towards betterment by their rhetoric abilities. Personally, I prefer the ancients’ look that to be a good rhetorician (in the moral sense) is to be a good person since it is more inclusive.