Final Exam
The piece of writing I have submitted is about the Axe commercial entitled “The Axe Effect-Women-Billions.” A major issue in society today is media and how it is used to manipulate people’s minds into buying different items. This commercial in particular is selling body spray by using sexual appeal to men, all the while degrading women.
In my essay, you will find that I start out introducing the typical woman’s idea of a dream man. I then proceed to explain that a deal breaker is definitely if the man has a displeasing scent. This then leads to the summary of the commercial and then analyzing it. After the analysis, you are then able to see my thesis and argument of this particular Axe commercial negatively affecting women and reinforcing social stereotypes of beauty. Throughout my argument, I use different types of rhetorical strategies. I appeal to the reader’s sense of logic by using statistics of women with eating disorders. I also establish my credibility when in the conclusion I talk about how even though Axe commercials are degrading, they are still effective. The example I use is of shopping for body spray or cologne with my boyfriend.
I started out knowing that I wanted to make an argument against a commercial that uses sex to sell their product because I find it very unnecessary and degrading, especially to women. Once I started thinking about different companies that use sexual appeal to sell their products, I initially thought of clothing stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister. However, I have never seen a commercial for either of those stores. I then remembered watching an Axe commercial on YouTube when I was in high school. It was supposed to be a spoof off of the Orbit gum commercial and had a woman with a British accent cleaning all different types of balls from various sports. She said something along the lines of, “If you have dirty balls, clean them up with Axe.” This seemed like it was using sex to sell their product to an extent, so I started searching for other Axe commercials when I stumbled
upon the one I wrote about. When watching it, I was appalled by the way the camera focused on the women’s breasts and knew exactly what my main claim would be: This particular Axe commercial is degrading to women by using their bodies to sell a product.
The way I structured my essay was very intent. I painted a picture for the reader of an ideal man and the commercial which were very general concepts. I then became more specific as I started analyzing and finally making my argument. At first, I had trouble with the way I organized my paragraphs as they were not very affective. I originally had my analysis and argument combined which ended up confusing the reader since I was not staying on topic with each claim I made. My conclusion was also poorly written because I threw in a sentence about the commercial being affective. This, at first, seemed to be contradicting my argument, but I then explained that however degrading this particular commercial is, it was still affective in getting men to buy the product advertised.
In my essay, you will find that I start out introducing the typical woman’s idea of a dream man. I then proceed to explain that a deal breaker is definitely if the man has a displeasing scent. This then leads to the summary of the commercial and then analyzing it. After the analysis, you are then able to see my thesis and argument of this particular Axe commercial negatively affecting women and reinforcing social stereotypes of beauty. Throughout my argument, I use different types of rhetorical strategies. I appeal to the reader’s sense of logic by using statistics of women with eating disorders. I also establish my credibility when in the conclusion I talk about how even though Axe commercials are degrading, they are still effective. The example I use is of shopping for body spray or cologne with my boyfriend.
I started out knowing that I wanted to make an argument against a commercial that uses sex to sell their product because I find it very unnecessary and degrading, especially to women. Once I started thinking about different companies that use sexual appeal to sell their products, I initially thought of clothing stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister. However, I have never seen a commercial for either of those stores. I then remembered watching an Axe commercial on YouTube when I was in high school. It was supposed to be a spoof off of the Orbit gum commercial and had a woman with a British accent cleaning all different types of balls from various sports. She said something along the lines of, “If you have dirty balls, clean them up with Axe.” This seemed like it was using sex to sell their product to an extent, so I started searching for other Axe commercials when I stumbled
upon the one I wrote about. When watching it, I was appalled by the way the camera focused on the women’s breasts and knew exactly what my main claim would be: This particular Axe commercial is degrading to women by using their bodies to sell a product.
The way I structured my essay was very intent. I painted a picture for the reader of an ideal man and the commercial which were very general concepts. I then became more specific as I started analyzing and finally making my argument. At first, I had trouble with the way I organized my paragraphs as they were not very affective. I originally had my analysis and argument combined which ended up confusing the reader since I was not staying on topic with each claim I made. My conclusion was also poorly written because I threw in a sentence about the commercial being affective. This, at first, seemed to be contradicting my argument, but I then explained that however degrading this particular commercial is, it was still affective in getting men to buy the product advertised.