My initial thoughts about the short story “Girl” was that a mother was trying to teach her daughter how to find her way in the world. It feels like they are in the 50s when women we are expected to stay at home and take care of the family through chores while the man would provide through finances. The mother is constantly teaching her daughter how to take care of a man by using the young girl’s father as an example. She has her daughter iron her father’s clothes and shows her how to properly wash them.

I feel the mother is trying her best to teach her daughter all she will need to know. During that time period, women could stay at home for the majority of their day without needing extensive education in the various fields. I think her mother wanted her to find a man that could support a family, and being able to do chores was the common way to obtain such a man. In today’s world, we would be offended by the amount of work we are expected to do when we can also provide for our families financially. As time has progressed woman have become significant pieces of society and use their education to further the human development through various aspects. It is quite interesting to see how far we have come as people in general and that through time most ignorant practices are left in the past. Eventually, we may come to see a future with equal rights and benefits.

In activity 2.13 we see a young woman laying down naked with makeup on her face in a advertisement to sell vehicles. The advertisement has the text “you know you are not the first” in small text on the image, and in the corner we see the BMW brand with the text “BMW Premium Used Cars”. The image is heavily sexual and likely has the male as a target audience.

When we read the lines “You know you are not the first” along with the picture we can assume that it implies she has had sex before. The reason we can assume this is because the woman is pictured to be naked with a flirtatious smile. She is wearing makeup with her hair curled with no visual signs of clothing. But when we realize that the advertisement is actually for used cars we confirm our suspicions. It is implied that a used car would have been driven by another man, and when we see “you know you are not the first” along with a young woman in a seductive pose we can assume another man has been with her as well.

The second advertisement depicts a young man standing outside a shiny vehicle with a grin on his face. We then read the text “You would be amazed what you can learn(and save) in two years”. Then toward the bottom of the advertisement we see a comparison between two universities. The advertisement reads “Two years at West Hills Campus is $600, while two years at UC school is $28,000. Why not spend $27,400 on something else?”. The image merely displays a young man with a new car, and the target audience appears to be college students. The goal of the advertisement is to encourage enrollment at the West Hills Campus.

The advertisement for West Hills Campus uses a font technique that implies the information is a secret when displaying the line “and save” by making the text smaller, slanted, and underneath the line as if the hide it. Because it is irregular compared to the other font format it stands out much more.

In conclusion, these two advertisements were meant to convey that you can save money. The West Hills Campus wants you to believe that the money saved from attending there campus can be used on personal desires like the car shown in the example. While the BMW advertisement shows you a woman that is used but still in good condition, as they want to represent there used vehicles. I find that the West Hills Campus had a very nice tactic when it comes to advertising with the use of the fonts, text, and the car to give you an idea of what the extra money can be spent on. The BMW advertisement took a risky approach with there advertisement because they decided to objectify women which could offend some of there customers. The mistake that BMW made is assuming all customers would be male and would enjoy the content. But the West Hills Campus went a more neutral approach that would appeal to both genders. In that respect the West Hills Campus has a much better advertisement that will garner more customers through its complex use of information.

For the first writing prompt, I will be writing about Activity 2.7 “The Point when science becomes Publicity”.

1. By reading a headnote or doing a search on Google we can learn about the authors’ history, work experience, other works of art, and etc. This will help us identify the common style of art the author uses.
2. Through skimming the text we can learn the overall theme of the story, and identify the important characters. I often use this method when reading a new piece to gather quick notes with a short time frame.
3. When Science becomes publicity we can assume it is exaggerated. They use this tactic to encourage people to purchase / discontinue use of a product with absurd information. So they can scare you into the palms of their hands.
4. Originally the title made me think that it was a good thing and that it could eventually catch the eyes of the readers. But unfortunately, they have taken things too far and thus it does not feel credible to me anymore.