I was told I needed to include effects to my thesis because I was very vague. Looking through my essay so far, I realized how vague I was and that maybe I didn’t know exactly what the effects to my paradigm shift were. After researching and editing my intro, I would like your advice on the effects I have now included and will elaborate on in my essay.
Sex sells. This provocative statement may be claimed as false by the public, but can only be seen as true due to the major success companies have made including sex in their advertisements; especially sex involving women. Companies and the advertisement industry, over the past couple hundred years, have used the sexuality of women to sell their products. Whether it be for inanimate objects such as cars and clothes or food products such as brand name sodas, companies find ways to add a feminine sex appeal. Although this process of advertisement has been around since the 1800s, the style and presentation of sex and sexuality drastically increased around 1970 as the fragrance industry took the first step in sexualizing women to sell their products.* From there, the trend has spread radically. Girls and women are constantly degraded with images of women with “perfect” bodies who wear little clothing, are positioned in sexual stances, and perform very sexual actions. Imagine what girls feel when they see this growing up. The increase of sexual exposure of women in advertisements and the media has caused many cultural changes and affects girls growing up in dangerous ways. The images have shaped the different styles of what is considered beautiful over the years and have constantly changed the way society views and treats women, by supporting the oppression of women. They have also supported the increased lack of self-confidence girl have in this day, showing an increase in disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.
Your intro is definitely improving, especially because you made it more specific. I think other strategies to make it less vague would be to explain what you mean by girls growing up in “dangerous ways” and to give a brief introduction of which industries in particular the trend has spread to. A few other miscellaneous suggestions would be to replace “increased lack of self-confidence” with “decrease in self-confidence”, and to use another phrase besides “companies and the advertising industry” (you could even just use “the advertising industry”). Overall though, you have very good ideas and your essay is improving a lot!
I can definitely see an improvement in your intro paragraph! Briefly touching upon the cultural changes that your shift causes, as well as actually explaining how girls grow up in dangerous ways due to increased sexual exposure of women in ads really strengthens your argument and thesis in my opinion. Although you have covered the “how” part of your thesis, I still think you could elaborate on the “why” part, or in other words why is this topic important for us to learn about? How does it concern the audience? If you can elaborate on those questions a little more in your intro, I think you’ll have a stronger and more compelling argument.
Much better! I would think about combining the last two sentences to make one concise thesis that contains all of your major points. Overall though I think you have a more narrow and clearer focus for your essay with this revised thesis. On a side note, you might also consider getting rid of the sentence “Imagine what girls feel like when they see this growing up”. It feels a little informal for the essay, and I think maybe a quote from an expert about how this over-sexualization effects girls or just removing the sentence altogether would help it flow a little better.