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Courtney Twing
Dr. Reid
English 102
2/2/2015
Free Choice 4
The first essay I chose, The Picture for Men: Superhero or Slacker by Sameer
Pandya, begins with an anecdote from the show Friday Night Lights. The short story is about
a man who sells stolen car parts, but turns himself in to prevent his brother from being
blamed. The narrative introduces the first main point of the article: male dominated jobs are
becoming scarce, and the ones that are out there are becoming far less lucrative. Pandya
seems to suggest that we no longer live in an industrial society where women are inferior to
men; in truth, he seems to maintain that women have it better than men based on skillsets
predominantly found in women. What is the cause of this massive shift in the workplace?
Pandya includes traditional forms of masculinity (para 7). He states that boys and young
men really only have three influences, and two of these come from media. Influences include
superheroes that are increasingly portrayed as violent, sexist, and entitled, slackers that are
funny but do nothing with their time, and their fathers who learned how to be men from their
own father, thus maintaining a certain cycle of traditional masculinity (para 16). Pandya
implores the reader to break this chain by exposing boys to varying sources of positive
influence, and teach boys to shift from classic examples of what it means to be a man. The
article claims that modern jobs are intelligence, communication, and focus-based, so it makes
sense that boys should be taught to adjust to this new way of operating.
The second article is The Shocking Radicalism of Brave by Amanda Marcotte.
Marcotte initiates the topic by stating that the movie Brave did not meet her expectations.
She, as well as most other feminist viewers, believed the film would be about single-

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handedly conquer(ing) the monarchy, the patriarchy, and the myth that there are no attractive
flat-heeled shoes (para 1). The author was surprised to find that instead of a girls-againstboys format, Brave is the story of a mother and daughter learning how to compromise in spite
of having differentiated opinions on survival in their medieval world (para 1). Yet, Marcotte
is disappointed that Merida does not offer much in the way of fixing the gender bias problem.
Nonetheless Brave is highly profound because it brings up (and denounces) the topics of
arranged marriage, male dominance, and unwillingness of men to listen to women in a
childrens movie. The author states that in Meridas world, it would be a bit ridiculous to buy
into the fantasy of a single individual changing everything with a grand gesture of
empowerment (para 6). She is; however, content to discover Pixar has accurately enacted a
true feminist ideal: women can do more when they work together despite having differences.
We have previously read The Shocking Radicalism of Brave for the purposes of this
class. Still, I thought that the general idea for both articles I chose were remarkably similar,
and felt as though I should choose it for synthesis with The Picture for Men: Superhero or
Slacker. The first article by Pandya is essentially about selecting sound role models for boys
and young men. The second by Marcotte is basically the same, except of course, as it
pertains to girls and young women. Both authors utilize media influence on young people to
provide evidence for their arguments, and they both provide a potential solution to problems
looming in the future. Pandya advises that focus move away from traditional ideas of
masculinity, and shift upon traits which are often thought about as typical of females such as
open communication or social intelligence. Marcotte seems to recommend young girls to
look up to heroines like Merida, not exactly because she confronts tradition, but because she
figures out how to unite with fellow women (in this case, her mother) to complete a given
task. Still, both authors appear to agree that industrial-era ideas such as men being better than
women or that masculinity is played out in only one manner needs to come to an end.

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