Critical Introduction

Hello readers and welcome to our blog! We are a group of English 101 Scholars students who are interested in the rhetorical values on the subject of feminism in the music culture of the 1960s and today’s era. As five freshmen scholar students, we were interested in the idea of how music can influence a grand audience, especially for young adults like us. Because our group contained a majority of females, we wanted to familiarize more about the equality of women as young students like ourselves are more exposed to the social world at an age where men are still seen as superior and dominant over women.

We have done extensive amounts of research on two texts, Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” (1963) and Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)” (2011). We thought these texts played an important role in promoting feminism throughout an audience that may have not been exposed to this idea prior to listening to these songs. In the 60s, the second wave feminism movement was prevalent and led way to gender equality, focusing mainly on sexuality, the workplace, and reproductive rights. Gore, at the time, a seventeen-year old artist, released this song to advocate for equality in relationships and prove that it is unacceptable for men to control women as if they are objects. Beyonce’s piece emphasized that girls are capable of just as much, if not more, than men are, even though society views them as inferior. These two texts portrayed women’s individuality and empowerment by referencing individuality from men and female self-actualization.

We arranged our blog with Kairos and Major Argument first to give our readers a quick introduction to our blog while explaining the purpose of these two texts. We followed along to comparing the two audiences. Even though the songs were in two different time periods, they both have similar age groups they were targeting. By identifying the specific audience, we were able to further analyze their message. We did so by writing about ethos, logos, and pathos. Since we had previously talked about their argument, we analyzed whether their points were logical or not. We expanded to the appeals of logos by identifying specific ways in which these writers delivered their message. After their message was delivered, we had to identify whether or not these writers were credible. We did so by looking at the audience’s response to the songs. We analyzed the audience’s emotions and saw how each individual writer had their own effective ways in delivering their message.

As time progresses, feminism should be a large issue to be focused on, especially at a time where male supremacy is at a high. Even though the strength of women is slowly increasing, such as more women in positions of high authority or the creation of the Women’s March, the largest single day protest of the US, much more has to be done in order for women to truly be in equilibrium to the power of men. If men continue to control and represent a group of people, women will become underrepresented and ineffective when determining their own wants and needs. At a time where men are still sexist towards women, with cat-calling, derogatory names and sexual harassment, establishing a community, and better yet, a nation, where men and women are equal in all aspects of life can greatly improve gender discrimination issues. Women’s equality was an important topic in the 60s, and we have come a long way since then, but we hope that our blog will inspire our readers to support women’s rights and promote equality.