Thursday, October 25, 2012

Critique 1 : "It is still beauty before brains"

The article "It is still beauty before brains" by Choi Suat Ling highlights the author's disappointment in the way women are still being judged by their looks and not their competency.

Firstly, we can identify an obvious bias towards women when the author mentioned “Women are wired differently and are thus better than men in many respects. (So, why do we need men again?)” If we take it in a different perspective, men are also being judged by their appearances too. This shows that the author lacked breadth in the matter.

Moreover, the abundance of examples which are not elaborated clearly contributed to the ambiguity faced by the audience. The author did not provide clear and reliable sources from which she cited her statistics or evidences. For instance, she mentioned that “78 per cent of respondents agrees that being attractive helped them to get better in their jobs”, but did not mention the name and date of the woman’s magazine in which the statistics were taken from.

Concisely, the author was successful in presenting her point of view in the matter. However, I do find that the author lost focus on the central idea as the paragraphs progresses. The sources require further elaborations and the jargons need to be defined clearly to avoid misconceptions. 

9 comments:

  1. yes, i do agree with you that the author is biased towards women and she showed her hatred towards men by mentioning "why do we need men again?". Her evidences are also not clear as she never mention the title, year published and page number for all her examples. Her examples about the athletes can be pretty manipulative as it cannot be assured that what the athletes mentioned are the truth. but, the author was successful in presenting her view that women are judged based on their appearance but I think that she should provide more evidences and not to be biased.

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  3. Vinodhinii, I don't think the author displayed anger towards men. Her statement "why do we need men again?" implies that women do not need men's support or guidance because nowadays, womankind are able to stand on their own foot.They are able to excel on their endeavours and make a name for themselves. The author has given a few examples relating to how Malaysian women has thrived in various fields of their expertise. Chok Suat Ling is condemning men for their prejudice towards a lady's appearance however. She did give a few examples as what you have mentioned above Vino and yes, the credibility of her examples a poor. They are not backed up with solid evidences and her references maybe have been tempered with.

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  4. I would have to agree with you on this. The author did lose her focus as she progressed with her writing. Her main title "It is still beauty before brains" indicates that people are now being judged on their physical appearance and not on their aptitudes. Therefore, I expected the author to elaborate more on how "beauty" actually shadows off one's intelligence and wisdom. Next, the article could have been more coherent if the author had been neutral in her writing. She seemed to be putting all the blame on the males, which I think is irrelevant as men are actually being judged on their appearance as well. Plus, the article would be a much solid material if the author had explained on her ideas and it would appear less ambiguous if she had stated the sources of her evidences.

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  5. I do agree with you that the examples and evidence provided by the author is indeed not sufficient to prove that her statement is right. Although the amount of examples provided are quite a lot, they are quite superficial and are not explained in depth. This gives a feel that the article is the opinion of the author herself only.

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  6. From my stand of point, the author indeed lacks clear cut explanation of her examples. This resulted in a phenomenon where the readers are baffled and may even perceive badly on what she had mentioned about women being judged by men. I believe vino may have thought that she was directing her hatred towards men by saying "Why do we need men again?". However, if we perceive it in another way, she actually meant to add in some humour and sarcasm in order to deliver the message in a stronger tone.

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