Anker Susan. Real Essays with Readings with 2009 MLA Update

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READINGS

Chapter 48 • Deﬁ nition 807

“undeveloped” to “underdeveloped,” then to “less developed,” and ﬁ nally

to “developing” nations. People have continued to starve in those coun-

tries during the shift. Some realities do not obey the dictates of language.

4 Mine is one of them. Whatever you call me, I remain crippled. But I

don’t care what you call me, so long as it isn’t “differently abled,” which

strikes me as pure verbal garbage designed, by its ability to describe

anyone, to describe no one. I subscribe to George Orwell’s thesis that

“the slovenliness

of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish

thoughts.” And I refuse to participate in the degeneration of the lan-

guage to the extent that I deny that I have lost anything in the course

of this calamitous disease; I refuse to pretend that the only differences

between you and me are the various ordinary ones that distinguish any

one person from another. But call me “disabled” or “handicapped” if

you like. I have long since grown accustomed to them; and if they are

vague, at least they hint at the truth. Moreover, I use them myself.

Society is no readier to accept crippledness than to accept death, war, sex,

sweat, or wrinkles. I would never refer to another person as a cripple. It

is the word I use to name only myself.

5 I haven’t always been crippled, a fact for which I am soundly grate-

ful. To be whole of limb is, I know from experience, inﬁ nitely more

pleasant and useful than to be crippled; and if that knowledge leaves

one open to bitterness at my loss, the physical soundness I once enjoyed

(though I did not enjoy it half enough) is well worth the occasional stab

of regret. Though never any good at sports, I was a normally active

child and young adult. I climbed trees, played hopscotch, jumped rope,

skated, swam, rode my bicycle, sailed. I despised team sports, spend-

ing some of the wretchedest afternoons of my life, sweaty and humili-

ated, behind a ﬁ eld-hockey stick and under a basketball hoop. I tramped

alone for miles along the bridle paths that webbed the woods behind the

house I grew up in. I swayed through countless dim hours in the arms

of one man or another under the scattered shot of light from mirrored

balls, and gyrated through countless more as Tab Hunter and Johnny

Mathis gave way to the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival,

Cream. I walked down the aisle. I pushed baby carriages, changed tires

in the rain, marched for peace.

6 When I was twenty-eight I started to trip and drop things. What

at ﬁ rst seemed my natural clumsiness soon became too pronounced

to shrug off. I consulted a neurologist, who told me that I had a brain

tumor. A battery of tests, increasingly disagreeable, revealed no tumor.

About a year and a half later I developed a blurred spot in one eye. I

had, at last, the episodes “disseminated

in space and time” requisite

slovenliness: sloppiness

disseminated: spread over

PAUSE: Why does

Mairs dislike the

terms disabled,

handicapped, and

differently abled?

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808 Part Eight • Readings for Writers

for a diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. I have never been sorry for the doc-

tor’s initial misdiagnosis, however. For almost a week, until the negative

results of the tests were in, I thought that I was going to die right away.

Every day for the past nearly ten years, then, has been a kind of gift. I

accept all gifts.

7 Multiple sclerosis is a chronic

degenerative

disease of the cen-

tral nervous system, in which the myelin that sheathes the nerves is

somehow eaten away and scar tissue forms in its place, interrupting

the nerves’ signals. During its course, which is unpredictable and un-

controllable, one may lose vision, hearing, speech, the ability to walk,

control of bladder and/or bowels, strength in any or all extremities,

sensitivity to touch, vibration, and/or pain, potency, coordination of

movements — the list of possibilities is lengthy and, yes, horrifying. One

may also lose one’s sense of humor. That’s the easiest to lose and the

hardest to survive without. . . .

8 Like many women I know, I have always had an uneasy relationship

with my body. I was not a popular child, largely, I think now, because

I was peculiar: intelligent, intense, moody, shy, given to unexpected

actions and inexplicable notions and emotions. But as I entered adoles-

cence, I believed myself unpopular because I was homely: my breasts

too ﬂ at, my mouth too wide, my hips too narrow, my clothing never

quite right in ﬁ t or style. I was not, in fact, particularly ugly, old photo-

graphs inform me, though I was well off the ideal; but I carried this

sense of self-alienation with me into adulthood, where it regenerated in

response to the depredations of MS. Even with my brace I walk with

a limp so pronounced that, seeing myself on the videotape of a televi-

sion program on the disabled, I couldn’t believe that anything but an

inchworm could make progress humping along like that. My shoulders

droop and my pelvis thrusts forward as I try to balance myself upright,

throwing my frame into a bony S. As a result of contractures, one shoul-

der is higher than the other and I carry one arm bent in front of me,

the ﬁ ngers curled into a claw. My left arm and leg have wasted into

pipestems, and I try always to keep them covered. When I think about

how my body must look to others, especially to men, to whom I have

been trained to display myself, I feel ludicrous, even loathsome.

9 At my age, however, I don’t spend much time thinking about my

appearance. The burning egocentricity of adolescence, which assures

one that all the world is looking all the time, has passed, thank God,

and I’m generally too caught up in what I’m doing to step back, as I

chronic: marked by a long duration; always present

degenerative: having a worsening effect; causing deterioration

extremities: limbs of the body

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Chapter 48 • Deﬁ nition 809

used to, and watch myself as though upon a stage. I’m also too old to

believe in the accuracy of self-image. I know that I’m not a hideous

crone, that in fact, when I’m rested, well dressed, and well made up, I

look ﬁ ne. The self-loathing I feel is neither physically nor intellectually

substantial. What I hate is not me but a disease.

10 I am not a disease.

11 And a disease is not — at least not singlehandedly — going to de-

termine who I am, though at ﬁ rst it seemed to be going to. Adjusting

to a chronic incurable illness, I have moved through a process similar

to that outlined by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in On Death and Dying. The

major difference — and it is far more signiﬁ cant than most people recog-

nize — is that I can’t be sure of the outcome, as the terminally ill cancer

patient can. Research studies indicate that, with proper medical care, I

may achieve a “normal” life span. And in our society, with its vision of

death as the ultimate evil, worse even than decrepitude, the response to

such news is, “Oh well, at least you’re not going to die.” Are there worse

things than dying? I think that there may be.

12 I think of two women I know, both with MS, both enough older

than I to have served me as models. One took to her bed several years

ago and has been there ever since. Although she can sit in a high-backed

wheelchair, because she is incontinent she refuses to go out at all, even

though incontinence pants, which are readily available at any pharmacy,

could protect her from embarrassment. Instead, she stays at home and

insists that her husband, a small quiet man, a retired civil servant, stay

there with her except for a quick weekly foray

to the supermarket. The

other woman, whose illness was diagnosed when she was eighteen, a

nursing student engaged to a young doctor, ﬁ nished her training, mar-

ried her doctor, accompanied him to Germany when he was in the ser-

vice, bore three sons and a daughter, now grown and gone. When she

can, she travels with her husband; she plays bridge, embroiders, swims

regularly; she works, like me, as a symptomatic-patient instructor of

medical students in neurology. Guess which woman I hope to be.

foray: a trip, an outing

SUMMARIZE AND RESPOND

In your reading journal or elsewhere, summarize the main point of “On Being

a Cripple.” Then, go back and check off support for this main idea. Next,

write a brief summary (three to ﬁ ve sentences) of the reading. Finally, jot

down your initial response to the selection. What impression of Mairs do you

come away with? What did you learn from her description of her disease? If

you could write a note to Mairs, what would you say to her?

PAUSE: Why might

Mairs have chosen

to write this one-

sentence paragraph

(para. 10)?

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810 Part Eight • Readings for Writers

CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION

1. Which of the following would be the best alternative title for this essay?

a. “The Painfulness of a Disease”

b. “Surviving with Multiple Sclerosis”

c. “Learning to Laugh at My Disability”

d. “Coping with Others’ Attitudes toward Disability”

2. The main idea of this essay is that

a. multiple sclerosis is an incurable disease of the central nervous system

that can affect movement, vision, hearing, and speech.

b. many labels are used to describe disabled people, but most such

people prefer the term crippled.

c. one needs a strong sense of humor and a circle of supportive friends

to live with a disability.

d. being disabled presents many difﬁ culties and obstacles, but one can

learn to cope with these challenges.

3. Mairs makes the point that

a. she is grateful to have the memory of being able-bodied as a young

woman.

b. the greatest drawback to her disability is that it makes her feel

unattractive.

c. she feels doctors are not doing enough to discover a cure for multiple

sclerosis.

d. she believes everyone should use the word crippled rather than disabled

or handicapped.

4. If you are unfamiliar with the following words, use a dictionary to check

their meanings: splayed, chagrin (para. 1); wince, swagger (2); incapacity,

partakes, dictates (3); degeneration, calamitous (4); gyrated (5); neuro-

logist (6); inexplicable, regenerated, depredations, contractures, ludi-

crous, loathsome (8); crone (9); decrepitude (11); incontinent (12).

READ CRITICALLY

1. How effective do you ﬁ nd Mairs’s opening paragraph as an introduction

to the essay as a whole?

2. Why do you think Mairs devotes paragraphs 2–4 to discussing her use of

the word cripple to describe herself ? How do you respond to this section

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Chapter 48 • Deﬁ nition 811

of the essay? Mairs also objects to terms like differently abled, which do not

tell the full truth about a condition. Can you think of other such words?

Why do you think such words come into the language?

3. How would you evaluate “On Being a Cripple” as a deﬁ nition essay?

What have you learned from the essay that you did not know before?

4. Mairs writes at the end of paragraph 11, “Are there worse things than

dying? I think that there may be.” What does she mean? How do this

question and answer lead into the subject of paragraph 12?

5. What do you think of Mairs’s closing sentence? What image of Mairs does

it leave you with?

WRITE AN ESSAY

Write an essay deﬁ ning an important aspect of yourself. This deﬁ nition might

relate to a challenge you face in life, or it might focus on another facet of

your identity — your family heritage, your membership in a particular group,

a personality or physical trait that you believe sets you apart from many others

you know. Think about titling your essay “On Being ” and,

as Mairs does, relating experiences that help communicate your deﬁ nition to

readers.

Juliet B. Schor

Age Compression

Juliet B. Schor (b. 1955) is a professor of sociology at Boston College. Her

research and writings focus on work and leisure activities and their rela-

tion to family life. Her books include the best-selling The Overworked

American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (1993) and The Overspent

American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (1999).

In this essay, Schor describes a marketing trend in which products

designed for adults or teenagers are pitched to younger kids. It is an

excerpt from her most recent book, Born to Buy (2004), a study of the

commercial pressures placed on today’s children.

GUIDING QUESTION

What is Schor’s attitude toward age compression as a marketing

strategy?

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812 Part Eight • Readings for Writers

1 One of the hottest trends in youth marketing is age compression — the

practice of taking products and marketing messages originally designed

for older kids and targeting them to younger ones. Age compression

includes offering teen products and genres, pitching gratuitous violence

to the twelve-and-under crowd, cultivating brand preferences for items

that were previously unbranded among younger kids, and developing

creative alcohol and tobacco advertising that is not ofﬁ cially targeted to

them but is widely seen and greatly loved by children. “By eight or nine

they want ’N Sync,” explained one tweening expert to me, in the days

before that band was eclipsed by Justin Timberlake, Pink, and others.

2 Age compression is a sprawling trend. It can be seen in the import

of television programming speciﬁ cally designed for one-year-olds, which

occurred, ironically, with Public Broadcasting’s Teletubbies. It includes

the marketing of designer clothes to kindergartners and ﬁ rst graders. It’s

the deliberate targeting of R-rated movies to kids as young as age nine,

a practice the major movie studios were called on the carpet for by the

Clinton administration in 2000. It’s being driven by the recognition

that many children nationwide are watching MTV and other teen and

adult programming. One of my favorite MTV anecdotes comes from a

third-grade teacher in Weston, Massachusetts, who reported that she

started her social studies unit on Mexico by asking the class what they

knew about the country. Six or seven raised their hands and answered,

“That’s the place where MTV’s Spring Break takes place!” For those

who haven’t seen it, the program gloriﬁ es heavy partying, what it calls

“bootylicious girls,” erotic dancing, wet T-shirt contests, and binge

drinking.

3 A common argument within the marketing world is that age com-

pression is being caused by social trends that make contemporary chil-

dren far more sophisticated than their predecessors. These include the

increased responsibilities of kids in single-parent or divorced families,

higher levels of exposure to adult media, children’s facility

with new

technology, early puberty, and the fact that kids know more earlier. In

the 1980s, Hasbro sold its GI Joe action ﬁ gure to boys aged eleven to

fourteen. Now, Joe is rejected by eight-year-olds as too babyish. Twenty

years ago, Seventeen magazine targeted sixteen-year-olds; now it aims at

eleven and twelves. In a telling gesture, the toy industry has ofﬁ cially

lowered its upper age target from fourteen to ten.

4 Marketers have even coined an acronym to describe these develop-

ments. It’s KAGOY, which stands for Kids Are Getting Older Younger.

The social trends become part of the license for treating kids as if they

were adults. Indeed, some advertisers are even arguing that current

approaches are too protective of children. In a presentation at the 2001

PAUSE: Underline

each example of

age compression in

paragraph 2.

PAUSE: Do you

agree that the

social trends

described in para-

graph 3 are leading

to age compres-

sion? Can you think

of other trends

that are a factor?

facility: ability to use easily

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Chapter 48 • Deﬁ nition 813

annual Marketing to Kids Conference, executive Abigail Hirschhorn of

DDB New York argued that it’s time to stop talking down to kids and

start “talking up” to them and that too much advertising denies kids

what they really crave — the adult world. She argued for more “glamour,

fashion, style, irony, and popular music.”

5 Nowhere is age compression more evident than among the eight- to

twelve-year-old target. Originally a strategy for selling to ten- to thirteen-

year-olds, children as young as six are being targeted for tweening. And

what is that exactly? Tweens are “in-between” teens and children, and

tweening consists mainly of bringing teen products and entertainment

to ever-younger audiences. If you’re wondering why your daughter came

home from kindergarten one day singing the words to a Britney Spears

or Jennifer Lopez song, the answer is that she got tweened. Tween mar-

keting has become a major focus of the industry, with its own confer-

ences, research tools, databases, books, and specialty ﬁ rms. Part of why

tweening is so lucrative is that it involves bringing new, more expensive

products to this younger group. It’s working because tweens have grow-

ing purchasing power and inﬂ uence with parents. The more the tween

consumer world comes to resemble the teen world, with its comprehen-

sive branding strategies and intense levels of consumer immersion, the

more money there is to be made.

6 In some cases, it’s the advertisers pushing the trend with their clients.

But clients are also initiating the process. Mark Lapham (pseudonym),

president of a company that has focused almost exclusively on the teen

market, says, “We’re being asked all the time about it” by makers of

school supplies, apparel manufacturers, cosmetics companies. Lapham

explains how his clients are thinking: “Hey, we can actually sell a

cosmetic, not just bubble gum lip gloss . . . we can sell foundation

possibly . . . nail polish.”

7 Abigail Hirschhorn’s plea for industry change is well behind the times.

Children are being exposed to plenty of glamour, fashion, style, irony,

and popular music, that is, sex. Even the family-friendly Disney Channel

is full of sexually suggestive outﬁ ts and dancing. One Radio Disney em-

ployee explained to me that the company keeps a careful watch on lyrics

but is hands-off with the other stuff. A stroll down the 6X–12 aisles of

girls’ clothing will produce plenty of skimpy and revealing styles. People

in advertising are well aware of these developments. Emma Gilding of

Ogilvy & Mather recounted an experience she had during an in-home

videotaping. The little girl was doing a Britney Spears imitation, with

ﬂ irting and sexual grinding. Asked by Gilding what she wanted to be

when she grew up, the three-year-old answered: “A sexy shirt girl.” As

researcher Mary Prescott (pseudonym) explained to me in the summer

of 2001, “We’re coming out of a trend now. Girl power turned into sex

pseudonym: an assumed name, here to protect the identity of the speaker

PAUSE: What is

tweening, and how

has it changed?

PAUSE: Based on

the second sen-

tence, what do you

predict paragraph 7

will be about?

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814 Part Eight • Readings for Writers

power. A very sexy, dirty, dark thing. Parents were starting to panic.”

While Prescott felt that a reversal toward “puritanism” had already

begun, other observers aren’t so sure. Not long after Prescott’s predic-

tion, Abercrombie & Fitch came under ﬁ re for selling thong underwear

with sexually suggestive phrases to seven- to fourteen-year-olds. And

child development expert Diane Levin alerted parents to the introduc-

tion of World Wrestling Entertainment action ﬁ gures recommended for

age four and above, which include a male character with lipstick on his

crotch, another male ﬁ gure holding the severed head of a woman, and a

female character with enormous breasts and a minimal simulated black

leather outﬁ t and whip. Four-year-olds are also targeted with toys tied

to movies that carry PG-13 ratings.

8 Some industry insiders have begun to caution that tweening has gone

too far. At the 2002 KidPower conference, Paul Kurnit spoke out pub-

licly about companies “selling ‘tude’ to pre-teens and ushering in ado-

lescence a bit sooner than otherwise.” Privately, even more critical views

were expressed to me. Mark Lapham revealed that he ﬁ nds this “kind

of an amazing thing . . . this is where personally my guilt comes out, like

gosh, it’s not really appropriate sometimes.” But, he continues, “that’s

where society’s going, what do you do?” Prescott, who is more deeply

immersed in the world of tweening, confessed that “I am doing the most

horrible thing in the world. We are targeting kids too young with too

many inappropriate things. . . . It’s not worth the almighty buck.”

SUMMARIZE AND RESPOND

In your reading journal or elsewhere, summarize the main point of “Age

Compression.” Then, go back and check off support for this main idea. Next,

write a brief summary (three to ﬁ ve sentences) of the reading. Finally, jot

down your initial response to the selection. Before reading this essay, had you

already noticed instances of age compression in advertising and the entertain-

ment media? Do you share Schor’s concerns over such practices? Do you

agree or disagree that age compression is simply a reﬂ ection of the times we

live in? Why or why not?

CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION

1. Which of the following would be the best alternative title for this essay?

a. “Growing Up with the Media”

b. “Sex and Violence for Kids”

c. “Capturing the Tween Consumer”

d. “Are Kids Getting Older Younger?”

PAUSE: Do you

believe that these

members of the

industry really

feel guilty? Why

or why not?

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Chapter 48 • Deﬁ nition 815

2. The main idea of this essay is that

a. today more and more children are being treated as if they were

adults.

b. many marketers today focus on attracting young children to increas-

ingly mature products.

c. age compression is the result of contemporary children having more

responsibilities than did children in the past.

d. some marketers are beginning to feel guilty about targeting inappro-

priate products to young children.

3. Schor suggests that one reason for age compression is

a. children today have increased exposure to teenage and adult media.

b. marketers now have more respect for children than they did in the

past.

c. parents take too little responsibility for monitoring the shopping hab-

its of their children.

d. contemporary children believe that most toys are just too babyish to

play with.

4. If you are unfamiliar with the following words, use a dictionary to check

their meanings: genres, gratuitous (para. 1); predecessors (3); irony (4);

puritanism (7).

READ CRITICALLY

1. What would you describe as Schor’s purpose in this essay? Who might her

intended audience be?

2. On the basis of this essay, what would you say drives marketers to target

younger children as they do?

3. Why do you suppose two of Schor’s sources, Mark Lapham and Mary

Prescott, agreed to be quoted only if their real names weren’t used?

4. Evaluate Schor’s use of examples in the essay. What do they tell us about

age compression in marketing?

5. One researcher quoted in the essay suggests that “a reversal toward

‘puritanism’” has begun (para. 7). In looking at marketing toward children

today, do you see any evidence of such a reversal?

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816 Part Eight • Readings for Writers

WRITE AN ESSAY

Write an essay in which you focus on the kinds of products and entertainment

media that are targeted toward consumers ages thirteen to seventeen. You

may wish to refer to television commercials, print ads in magazines, in-school

advertising, advertising on Internet sites, ﬁ lm trailers, and the like, as well as

to particular products. Do you ﬁ nd any evidence of age compression in mar-

keting to this older group of consumers?

Deﬁ nition: Linked Readings

STEREOTYPES

Each of the following readings focuses on stereotypes.

Nancy Mairs, “On Being a Cripple” (this chapter, p. 805)

Scott Russell Sanders, “The Men We Carry in Our Minds” (Chapter

47, p. 788)

Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue” (Chapter 47, p. 796)

Brent Staples, “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space”

(Chapter 50, p. 834)

Read the selections, and draw from at least one in addition to “On Being a

Cripple” to write an essay titled “Stereotypes: Are They Wrong?” You can

refer to your own experience, but make sure to use material from the essays

as well.

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