The Body of the Beholder By Michele Ingrassia

The Body of the Beholder Tyra Banks Queen Latifah

The Body of the Beholder Kate Moss Claudia Shiffer

Building vocabulary A. Loss of appetite, especially as a result of disease B. An eating disorder common among young women of normal or nearly normal weight that is characterized by uncontrolled binge eating followed by guilt To preoccupy the mind excessively

Understanding the writer’s ideas 1. Adolescent girls generally dissect their physical flaws so that many are uncomfortable when gym class forces them to wear revealing clothes. 2. Seventy percent of African-American girls were satisfied with their bodies and 90 percent of white girls were dissatisfied.

Understanding the writer’s ideas 3. Black girls saw their mothers getting more beautiful with age, whereas white girls felt their mothers were only beautiful in their youth. 4. Whereas white teens saw Kate Moss’s measurements as perfection, black teens thought beauty was having the right attitude as well as full hips and thick thighs.

Understanding the writer’s ideas 5. White twenty-something TV actresses in hit shows like Friends are reed thin, whereas black shows depict women looking “sizable.” 6. Two hundred years of cultural differences. The white middle-class dream of “making it” as being able to make yourself over. But in the black community, there is the reality of not making it easily.

Understanding the writer’s ideas 7. They are seen as healthy and fertile. This may be attributable in part to decades of preaching black is beautiful. 8. White girls diet more and have higher rates of eating disorders than black girls. 9. An editor of a black women’s magazine feels that black girls should be careful to balance weight gain and healthy eating.

Understanding the writer’s techniques 1. In par. 2, the idea of how black and white girls view their bodies makes it clear that the entire essay will shift between comparing the two groups. And it does! 2. Students should note that the writer constantly switches between the two groups in an all A/all B paragraph style.

Understanding the writer’s techniques 3. By ordering the statistics in terms of comparison. 4. Very little is made of men until par. 8. But that is the only reference. This essay seems targeted for women. 5. The writer uses a question as transition to shift the essay’s focus to a new direction.

Understanding the writer’s techniques 6. Every paragraph has a topic sentence (TS), including par. 4. A question can imply a TS. 7. The last sentence of the conclusion actually brings the two subjects together in this way: “Maybe that’s where Queen Latifah meets Kate Moss.” The final point is asking black and white teenage girls not to got an extreme of heavy or thin.

Reference Medical dictionary: med Eating disorder: The Facts of Eating Disorders and Self; eatingdisorders Anorexia: Anorexia nervosa: from anguish to elation