An elevator pitch that intrigued me on Tuesday was Alexi’s proposal to analyze the saying, “Girl Boss.” As a girl myself, hearing her proposal resonated with personal experiences with this saying, both “positive and negative,” as described in her pitch.
Aside from the structure and arrangement of details within her pitch, a large factor that played into having her ideas resonate with me was her presence in the room. While we are going forward to use our pitch ideas to write a rhetorical analysis, her speaking skills were attention grabbing from the beginning through the end.
Another factor that had me drawn into her pitch was the level of detail and style that she put into her words. She did not just stand in front of the audience and state what the phrase “Girl Boss” is and why is should be analyzed, but rather gave context into the definition with examples of powerful women in our surrounding society to gain importance of the topic and how the words are used. Through these examples it was clear how she would use commonplaces to direct the meaning of how the phrase developed into our society.
Although Alexi started out her pitch with positive cues to the notion of being a “Girl Boss,” by the end of the pitch the saying went from a deserved status to a ploy of degrading the female gender. With her reference to social media causing the notion to be lost, through people creating irony out of wanting to be “like a girl.” This concept shocked me because at the start I never would have expected her to take this root, even though I know it is reality. While I have hope for the phrase, through Alexi’s pitch I agree it is only appropriate to analyze how society alters a changing times notion into a joke of past history and gender roles. This concept holds true to a lot of ways that society’s civic engagement is shaped (i.e. politics being majority male oriented).
All in all, Alexi’s analysis of the term “Girl Boss” is well developed in my perspective, and situated around the idea that an analysis of interpretation and irony needs to be used to bring awareness to the ploy to power structure that is occurring. On way that I would expand the analysis would be to find a specific example or situation where the term is used (i.e. poster, commercial, etc.) to relate the entire analysis to as the artifact.
I was also impressed by Alexi’s pitch. She had such a well developed idea and plan for analysis. Her pitch definitely stuck out as it was not only unique but she tackled a commonplace. I also agree that she should support her analysis with more specific artifact.
I liked how your reaction to Alexi’s speech focused on how the saying was used against itself. This is interesting because it goes to show how no matter what you do and say, there will always be pushback from people. I think the current climate in today’s politics make it increasingly difficult for people to stand strong and not collapse under opposition.