CHAPTER 10 You Are What You Eat
KATE MURPHY, “FIRST CAMERA, THEN FORK” In her essay, Kate Murphy examines the increasingly popular practice of photographing food. She mentions the many places where people can load photos of food up on social networking websites, and she offers several case studies of people who regularly photograph their food before eating it. Her article even discusses new technologies for taking food photos in restaurants. The article makes a strong argument, in engaging writing, for the way in which photographing food is actually a process of photographing life.
TAYLOR CLARK, “MEATLESS LIKE ME”
Taylor Clark explores some of the misconceptions about vegetarianism by sharing his personal experience in ways that are as informative as they are argumentative, often to humorous effect. In this article for Slate, Clark directly addresses issues of stereotype and overgeneralization in a direct and frank manner that almost reads like the transcript of a performance by a stand-up comedian. Clark’s tone and word choice, therefore, becomes this piece’s risk as well as its reward.
CHAPTER 12 Imagining the Ideal Body
SUSIE ORBACH, “FAT IS AN ADVERTISING ISSUE” The author of the provocative 1978 book Fat Is a Feminist Issue, Orbach got her chance to walk into the lion’s den of corporate America and help craft an advertising campaign that fits with her ideas on the issue of women’s bodies. In this article, Orbach discusses her involvement in Dove’s campaign, and she integrates a lot of research she has conducted on body issues facing women and girls. Orbach published this persuasive essay in Campaign magazine, and she includes a strong message about how images influence women by suggesting that each image of a “real” woman in the media can offset an image of Kate Moss or Nicole Ritchie.
SUSAN MCCLELLAND, “DISTORTED IMAGES: WESTERN CULTURES ARE EXPORTING THEIR DANGEROUS OBSESSION WITH THINNESS” Susan McClelland examines the effect that images from the West are having on other cultures, including communities in Africa and in the South Pacific. She suggests that all around the world the idea of beauty is being homogenized, and that the ideal is, in the words of one Canadian psychologist, thin and white.
CHAPTER 13 Playing Against Stereotypes
DAVE ZIRIN, “SAY IT AIN’T SO, BIG LEAGUES” Zirin offers an examination of the often-overlooked costs of Major League Baseball’s recruitment of foreign- born talent. He opens and closes with the illustrative example of Mario Encarnanción, in a way that honors his “lonely death” by reprinting the words of his friend Marcos Breton. The problem, Zirin argues, is that Major League Baseball promises a way out of poverty, but the promise never becomes a reality for 99.9% of children from the Dominican Republic who join the “baseball camps” with giant hopes. He closes with an appeal of moral responsibility both to baseball fans and MLB.
ROBERT LIPSYTE, “JOCKS VS. PUKES” This essay by sportswriter Robert Lipsyte explains what “Jock Culture” is and how it serves as a dangerous expression of masculinity in the United States, where “the rules of competitive sports” are applied to everything, and winning is the bottom line. Lipsyte argues that by leveraging the inherent, human feeling of belonging on a winning team, the identity politics of Jock Culture are a trap not only for the losers—the “Pukes”—but for the winners as well. “Winners,” Lipsyte writes, “become our examples of permissible behavior, even when that includes cheating, sexual crimes or dog torturing.… It’s not hard to connect the moral dots from the field house to the White House.” His essay offers an interesting facet to the conversation already offered by other readings in Chapter 12, wherein the price of winning comes with a cost that not only traditionally marginalized groups in athletics, such as women, racial minorities and the disabled, but with a profound cost also to those who seemingly might most benefit from the spoils of victory.
CHAPTER 14 Crisis and Resilience
DANIEL OKRENT, “THE PUBLIC EDITOR: NO PICTURE TELLS THE TRUTH—THE BEST DO BETTER THAN THAT” As the public editor, or ombudsman, of The New York Times, Daniel Okrent faces the public much in the way the president’s press secretary has to face the press corps. In this essay, Okrent discusses how the Times made the decision to publish a disturbing photograph of dead children, victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. He begins by describing an editorial meeting in which it was decided to use this photo. From there, his essay moves on to argue that photographs become iconic place markers for moments in history, and he points out that they are chosen for prominence by people—photo editors and their superiors. Okrent admits that photos are biased, by definition, in the sense that they can’t capture every aspect of reality. He offers several examples, from a photo of Brazil’s president to coverage of George Tenet’s testimony before Congress to Donald Rumsfeld’s photo op in Abu Ghraib. In the end, Okrent’s purpose in this essay is not to defend the Times’ use of the cover photo about the Tsunami but rather to raise a larger point about the function of photography in representing reality.
CHARLES PORTER, “TRAGEDY IN OKLAHOMA” AND JOE STRUPP, “THE PHOTO FELT AROUND THE WORLD” This selection consists of two pieces about two famous photographs taken in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. First, Charles Porter analyzes the photos. He tells the story of how he came to take the photos, explaining that he had been working in the neighborhood, and how they came to be sent over the AP wire. Since he was an amateur photographer, not a professional, he was utterly amazed that his photograph was printed in so many newspapers and had such a wide impact on people. Next, Joe Strupp reports on how editors at various newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Sacramento Bee, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Daily News, made their decisions to either put the photograph on the front page or to put it inside. Some made the decision not to run it at all