Hillsberry 1
Reagan Hillsberry
ENGL 4363
Johnson
September 10th, 2018
Rhetorical Analysis Draft
In the text “Marketing to “Tweens” Objectifies Women,” by Jeremy Markel, there are
many rhetorical strategies used to help sway the reader to agree with him. Markel uses aspects
from the Rogerian, Toulmin, and Aristotelian styles of argument to make his point that the
beauty industry is marketing products to young girls and that it is not good for their self image.
Through these styles of argument, the author is able to connect to the reader in different ways to
get his point across.
The text I am using came from the “Elements of Argument” textbook from my Advanced
Comp for Teachers class. The author of the textbook is Annette T. Rottenberg. I know that this
text is sufficient to use since it came from a college textbook for writing. The main topic in the
essay is how the beauty industry uses young girls to gain revenue and in doing so, making these
young girls think they need certain beauty products and lingerie to be beautiful. He is trying to
exploit the beauty industry and stores such as Victoria’s Secret, American Eagle, and Justice
because of the way the market to such young girls. He explains that these stores are using young
girls to make money, but are ignoring the fact that they are damaging the mind’s of these girls in
the process. Markel thinks that it is not good to market to such young aged girls and that it is
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harmful. At the age of 7 there is no reason to need lingerie and makeup. The purpose of the essay
is to inform people about this and hopefully help parents of teenage girls.
Markel uses the Rogerian style of argument by giving reasons as to why he thinks
marketing trends are objectifying young women and the dangers of this. In paragraph 3 he states,
“These marketing trends target younger and younger girls and women; they manipulate them by
standardizing certain behaviors and styles of dress, impress upon them the idea that being sexy is
necessary, engender an arbitrary and unrealistic idea of what being “sexy” is, and distort their
self-concepts” (Markel). Markel does a good job of stating his argument in this text and
describes the opposing side objectively so that he is able to find middle ground with the readers.
