final draft

Peer Review of the Work by Cecilia Milbrandt

Reviewing the work by Cecilia Milbrandt on the novel and movie chosen which are The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and the movie Catwoman, they both portray strong women figures in realistic fiction who are sexualized in a demeaning manner. The author clearly makes a breakthrough of the intended analysis in the introduction by providing a clear overview of the issues to address. Furthermore, the introduction covers up the main themes explored in the two genres where the main idea is a concern about women empowerment in the society. The overarching idea is to determine how cultural representation of women in the two inter-related analyses has an impact on us in the current social settings. Despite the author feeling way out of the main writing style, I tend to feel that the composed research is clearly addressing the main objectives required from the study topic.

The author deviates from a single analysis of the works to an argument based analysis where they compare different works of researchers relevant to their own to identify the similar aspects to them. For instance, the author makes a reference to the work of Plato written very many years ago and relates it to the current world where women are represented are mere subjects to the men and how this affects people's lives. Prominently, men have been depicted as the superiors in the societies where even in Plato's writing, he only uses ‘he' in representing the superior humans in his works indicating the oppression towards the women. Throughout the analysis, the outstanding terms used include women, equality, inspiration, men, and gender roles. The terms effectively integrate the author's intended message to the readers who are able to easily understand the gender roles expressed in the two works.

As the philosophical era nears to the current generation, gender roles are becoming more dynamic since women are gaining prominence over men as compared to the ancient day. With this, we can clearly identify the crisis presented throughout these works which revolves mainly within the gender equalities in any given society. Besides, the materials used during the analysis are effectively enhancing the study ideas because they are clearly integrating with the topic of study. The transition from one paragraph to the next is clear where despite the wordy analysis given, the ideas of each paragraph can still be expressed in a less worded analysis and still keep the main idea. It can be achieved by only emphasizing on the topic sentence of each paragraph and avoid unnecessary use of words in order to reduce the word count for each. Overall, I feel that the source examples work together and there is no need of focusing on one of either realistic hand historical fiction, superheroes, or children's books because of they all inter-related and aid in a clear presentation of the main theme of the study.