They Re A Cry For Help Rhetorical Analysis

In Erin Ryan’s essay, “Selfies Aren’t Empowering. They’re a Cry for Help” she begins by introducing the opposing argument to structure the debate and establish her thesis. This approach is used to build strong refuting arguments against actual opposing statements. The emotional appeal is her main form of evidence and is also a way for her to further connect with the audience. With this she wanted to convince the audience that selfies are not empowering young women, but contribute to the need of affirmation from others to determine their self-worth based solely on appearance. However, due to her failure to present more convincing and different forms of evidence showing a connection between low self-esteem, female objectification, and selfies
For an audience to react positively to an argument they must have faith that the author is competent on the subject so Ryan knew that she needed to prove this. She chose to speak on a similar level as one would in a conversation with a close friend using “I”, “They”, and “you” to assist in accomplishing this. Ryan’s use of first person perspective makes her argument feel more personal. An example; “I've posted selfies to Facebook, and Twitter. I always feel bad about it; it always takes several tries to not look stupid, and even now, I kind of hate all of them.” (para.7) Here she shows that she can relate to those who take selfies and has a personal understanding of selfies affect. However, Ryan’s attempt to gain authority through anecdotes is only convincing enough for those who already agree with her on the subject. Another strategy Ryan uses is to make herself relatable to the intended audience is their similar gender. Clearly she establishes this because she rarely referred to men as being victims of the need for affirmation through selfies in her article. She had to establish this connection with the audience so they will be more empathic towards her argument. She demonstrates further relatability with the audience when using “we” and “Me N DFW 4 eva! XOXO #blessed #reading #smart #rip” (para. 4) showing she is involved in social media and is actively aware of what is popular on it further establishing relatability to the audience. To gain the support of another group of women she effectively pushes the emotional downside to selfies by associating them with degrading practices with women. This argument gains the support from a feminist audience who sees the socially ingrained notion that women are as valuable as their appearance as a damaging practice that needs to be eliminated. Ryan’s ability to draw people in with emotional reasoning is effective, but