Argument used in class

On Thursday's class, my group chose to use the argument that I brought in. The argument was in the form of a magazine article about a rise and fall of a supermodel, Gerren Taylor, who started modeling when she was only twelve years old.

The article is written in Ethos. The article's credibility comes from quotes from the teen model, Gerren Taylor, now eighteen, who describes her personal experience being a model alongside who were much older than her in retrospect. The goal argument of the article is to convince readers that having a young girl model alongside a 21-year-olds, is a mistake.

The article provides photos, one is of Taylor during a runway show when she is only thirteen, but she clearly looks much older than that in the photograph, and then on the same pages, there is Taylor in a picture where she is eighteen, but she actually looks younger in the picture where she is eighteen than she does in the picture when she is only thirteen. Here the author argues that it is unethical to have such a young girl look that way at only thirteen.

Further into the article, Taylor tells how at age fourteen, six feet tall and a size four, she was criticized by the modeling industry for being, "too fat" and because of this, she could no longer get modeling jobs. In the photograph that the article provides, it is as if the photo argues, "look, obviously this girl is not fat," which furthermore argues how corrupt the modeling world is toward young girls.

At the end of the article, Taylor tells how she no longer does modeling but instead, her 6-ft., size-4 frame has helped her become "an asset to her school volleyball team." Arguing that modeling was not everything to her, and that just because "someone" told her that she was "not right for modeling anymore," did not mean that it was the end of the world and she still is doing great things with her life. This article also argues that young girls should not listen to negative influences about their appearances from someone who has experienced being apart one of the most cut-throat industries on appearances possible.