Rhetorical Analysis Of Our Barbies Ourselves By Prager

Rhetorical Analysis: Our Barbies, Ourselves

“If Barbie was designed by a man, suddenly a lot of things made sense to me,” says Emily Prager in her essay “Our Barbies, Ourselves” (Prager 354). Prager’s purpose for writing this essay is to explain the history of Barbie and how the doll itself has influenced and continue to influence our society today. Prager is appealing to the average girl, to those who can relate to the way she felt growing up with Barbie seen as the ideal woman. Emily Prager uses a constant shift between a formal and informal tone to effectively communicate her ideas that we view women today based upon the unrealistic expectations set forth by Barbie. By adopting this strategy she avoids making readers feel attacked and therefore

Rather than employing humor to showcase her argument, Prager uses questions, scholarly diction and appears to be much more serious about the topic at hand. This shift to a formal tone presents her ideas in a way that is less personal. In paragraph seven Prager asks questions such as “Why, I wondered, was Barbie designed with such obvious sexual equipment and Ken not?” and presents ideas like “if the issue of the toy company was obscenity and its possible damage to children, I still object” (Prager 355). This strategy makes the audience feel less like they are reading about someone’s personal feelings and more about actual issues in our world today. Readers are coaxed to think about her words in terms of our society instead of how they personally view the subject. If a reader felt as if they were being criticized it may have led them to see the rest of the essay in a different light. They might have chosen to not think about the ideas behind Prager’s words and blocked out the true purpose of her essay. By rotating between informality and formality, Emily Prager, as she describes, avoids “stepping on anyones toes” (Prager 354).

Prager is continuously conscious of the way she is presenting her ideas and the tone in which she argues her ideas. She knows when to employ which tone and how to use them to her advantage to manipulate the audience. By influencing the reader’s feelings and thought processes to successfully