Assignment Sheet
Synthesis Essay
Outline
Purpose
Your purpose in this essay is, on a given issue, to offer a persuasive and original perspective that synthesizes and builds upon the perspectives of two texts (a written text and a visual text) that treat the same topic with differing viewpoints. By putting to work all of the rhetorical and stylistic knowledge you’ve amassed this semester, you will solidify those skills and get ready to take on a new role in your life as a college student: The role of someone who responds to research and opinion in your field. This paper, as the capstone to ENC 1101, will demonstrate your ability to critically analyze complex texts, both individually and in relation to each other, as well as express your own newly informed opinion in relation to the texts.
Audience
You will be writing this paper for an audience of your peers and instructor while keeping in mind that the essay at hand requires you to join in a conversation in which two existing opinions converge to inform your own. Bear in mind that the sources you choose to work with will place different demands on the way you reach your audience. You will turn diverging opinions into a conversation, analyze the rhetorical strategies of those opinions, and then join that exchange with your own take on the subject. The summation of those three opinions is then delivered to your audience.
Project Outcomes
At the end of the unit, you will be able to:
Interact with a group of texts, explore alternative perspectives, and present a new perspective of their own;
Summarize multiple complex texts indicating understanding of the authors’ arguments and rhetorical strategies;
Develop a focused thesis that indicates their analysis and synthesis of assigned readings to arrive at their own perspective;
Use textual evidence effectively to support claims;
Cite sources appropriately using MLA or other assigned style manual;
Use syntax, punctuation, and spelling effectively in service of rhetorical purpose.
Description
You have read an article and watched a video that offer different perspectives on a single topic. These are the texts and topic you will be using in this essay ( Lindstedt / Lizzo). The length for this paper is 1000 to 1200 words. You will write it double spaced in 12 point Times New Roman or similar font. You will have a Works Cited page which will not count towards the word count. As always with this course, follow the MLA guide for every formatting choice in your paper.
Article for this Assignment.
“Real Talk: Self-Love Doesn’t Mean Loving Everything About Yourself.â€
byrdie.com/self-love-eczema-essay
written by Kate Lindstedt Author’s Instagram • Kate Lindstedt is a writer with more than five years’ experience in
copywriting and branding. Byrdie’s Editorial Guidelines Kate Lindstedt
For most women I know, stepping into a salon to get their toes done isn’t a confidence- shattering experience. Pedicures are supposed to feel good and bring comfort—some soothing “me†time that consists of dipping your feet in hot water, sinking into the comfort of a massage chair, and flipping through trashy magazines.
In my case, the reality is a little different. I fantasize about being the hot girl casually enjoying a spa day, or the fancy career woman getting gel nails and tapping away on her iPhone. Instead, I’m filled with anxiety from the minute I enter the room. I’m the awkward girl avoiding eye contact with my pedicurist, silently pleading Please don’t look too closely at my toes.
During a recent visit to a nail salon in Mexico, the nail technician removed my old polish then proceeded to stare at my bare feet with thinly veiled disgust. She ran to grab her phone and passed it to me. On the screen, there was a Google-translated message: “Sorry, you need to pick a different color because you have a bad fungus.â€
I nodded my head, too embarrassed to ask why certain polish colors—ahem, fuchsia— weren’t okay for my toes while others were. I left the salon before my nails had fully dried, with smeared maroon polish in my sandals and a better understanding of why my mom avoids professional pedicures altogether.
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Loneliness
I often wonder whether fixating on my skin is a self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness. It can be tempting to believe that problems in my love life are as unfixable as my skin and feet—or even a result of them.
When I express these fears to friends, family, or therapists, they tend to opt for clichés. You know, that I need to love myself before anyone else can love me in return. That “we’re all beautiful in our own way†or that “insecurities about flaws are more off-putting than the flaws themselves.†The truth is, those kinds of platitudes rarely offer real comfort, and there are many problems with them.
Regardless of the good intentions, those statements only remind me that my physical flaws are the elephant in the room. No one really knows how to talk about aspects of our appearance that are slightly gross, objectively speaking, so we rarely acknowledge that they are. Our conventional beauty standards are constantly evolving, but the very notion of conventional beauty itself is constant.
Not all parts of my appearance fit into that framework, and I wish we would stop pretending otherwise. In other words, I’d feel better if you just told me my toes are ugly. Because the reality is that not every part of everyone needs to be beautiful, and insisting we’re all goddesses only helps create a world in which flaws aren’t welcome.
Image and Self Love
Earlier this year, I had a conversation with a close friend about image and insecurities that I frequently think of. I had recently been dumped and found myself wondering, once again, if my appearance was to blame.
“Sometimes I worry that I’m not hot enough to ever find love,†I confessed. “I mean, could you be cuter? Yes,†she said. “But you’re plenty cute.â€
Her response initially caught me off guard, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt comforted. I think what I found so refreshing about it, apart from the blunt honesty, was her nonchalant tone. I wasn’t a supermodel or the hottest friend in my friend group, and it didn’t need to be a big deal. When my friend spoke openly instead of tiptoeing around, not being conventionally hot suddenly mattered much less.
Beyond that, there’s a fundamental issue in the imperative to love every part of yourself because others won’t love you back until you do. When we repeat those sentiments, the end goal of self-love is to make yourself more desirable to someone else, to win them over. It makes me wonder who exactly I’m loving myself for. Probably some guy on Tinder with serious boundary issues.
In our “Yass queen!†world of #nomakeup selfies and body positivity, where we often pretend we were all cut from the same cosmetic cloth, self-love and unwavering comfort in one’s skin have become new standards to embrace and adhere to. Admitting that you don’t love what you see in the mirror isn’t attractive; it can be a taboo on par with bodily functions. We act as if strong women never feel shame, embarrassment, or anything other than total self-acceptance—perhaps because acknowledging that they do would force us to rethink our one-dimensional BeyonceÌ-ized conception of strong women.
When we reinforce the idea that self-love must precede another’s love, we’re still playing into societal narratives of insecurities and confidence, not to mention a very simplified conception of what it even means to love yourself. We like to think of self-acceptance as an ugly duckling–to-swan journey with a tidy conclusion. Friendly reminder: Sometimes loving yourself is something you have to learn. For some of us, that learning process is lifelong work. And that’s okay. One good thing about having severe eczema and toe fungus—about having hated these parts of myself for so long—is that it’s given me the opportunity to better understand my relationship with what I see in the mirror. So here’s my take: Self-love doesn’t mean loving everything about yourself; it’s accepting yourself despite what you don’t love. It’s loving yourself despite the fact that doing so doesn’t guarantee the love of others. And it’s learning, in your own time and on your own terms, how to live in a body you wouldn’t necessarily choose.
Music Video for this assignment
Lizzo – Good As Hell.
