"The Sticky Embrace of Beauty" by Anne Frances Wysocki

Pre-Reading Exercise
     The first thing that came to mind was not really an advertisement but the Kroger reusable bags for breast cancer awareness. Christina brought this to my attention. It features a (pink of course) Rosie the Riveter, but she has been made over to be quite young looking and prettified- not a woman you would think would be up in a bomber factory. I can't find the exact image but it is reminiscent of this:

Instead of something like this:

 I'm not opposed to alternative versions of femininity being represented, but it took something that I love to see (women's health awareness, a feminist icon) and tainted it for me.

Summary
     In her text "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty," Anne Frances Wysocki argues that old notions of beauty and aesthetics are inadequate for teaching students how to critically approach visual compositions and differentiate between form and content. Wysocki bases her argument around a Peek ad which brings her simultaneously pleasure and anger when viewing it. She argues that ads that objectify people like the Peek ad bring these contradictory emotions because they are abstractions--unparticular/general; Ultimately she advocates for teaching students about visual composition as a rhetorical tool.

Synthesis
     Wysocki's piece recalls many different authors. Her final statement about visual composition as a rhetorical tool is reminiscent of both Kantz's rhetorical situation and Dawkin's idea of using another composition element (punctuation) as rhetorical. But because Wysocki's piece deals mostly with visual images/graphic design, her article is most similar to Baron, Bernhardt, Berger, and especially McCloud. She argues that beauty and aesthetics are complicated with the advent of new media and new technology, which relates to Baron. I think the four "design principles" she mentions from Robin Williams (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity) relates back to Bernhardt in emphasizing the importance of paying attention to how your audience will read and view your work (and where their eyes are likely to go first) (80). It relates to Berger because it addresses specifically the objectification of women's bodies and the idea that women are "surveyed" and to be looked at. The most obvious connections to me were with McCloud:  his vocabulary icons, symbols, etc.) to analyze visual texts, the idea of icons as abstractions, and the "simplification through amplification" concept:"In the telling of Arnheim and Bang, it is an almost character-less self, looking out from a body whose actions are constrained only by gravity. This is a body without culture, race, class, gender, or age....the body exists nowhere in abstraction, the body whose seeing--and understanding of what is seen--is now understood to be as constructed as any other cultural practice" (85). Whereas McCloud praises the ability of comics to bring about feelings of universality because of their abstract nature, Wysocki argues that these things are dangerous for how we view images/beauty/aesthetics.

QD
2. Wysocki definitely plays with her texts. She is very aware with what she is arguing. Unlike how I felt with Bernhardt, I thought she practiced what she preached. She not only had images, but there were separations, headings, bolded text, highlighted text, charts, etc. It was certainly a high-visual text rather than a low-visual text. It almost made it so the long, unbroken text sections were a struggle to get through precisely because she was otherwise playing with the design of the text. Perhaps that was intentional: she made visually interesting what she wanted the reader to pay particular attention to.

3. I am interested in reading the book, but I'm not sure how much influence the image of the woman has on that. I'm very intrigued by Kinsey and would be interested in what the book is about anyway even if it was not accompanied by a scantily clad woman. But I do agree with Wysocki on where the eyes are drawn to and why. It was a very interesting explanation. I'm not familiar with art and form theory so I had no idea so much science/planning went into it (other than having a focal point).

AE
2. I definitely buy the old saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I can never figure out "the rules" for what is aesthetically pleasing/attractive. I do not think that something has to be universally pleasing to be beautiful, because I don't think such an instance is possible and nothing is inherently beautiful. Because of how beauty ideals change, I do think that beauty/aesthetics are subject to social construction/forces.

Thoughts
   I really enjoyed this piece even though I admit I struggled through reading it (both in understanding and because of the topic/length). I of course worry all the time about assigning long, difficult texts to my students and how I will try to make them understand something I'm sure I don't accurately understand myself. But I think this piece is ripe with connections to other texts, so that is something we can latch onto. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I'll relate it to Project 2, which I want them to be thinking about with all the readings we do.