Written Task:

Adopting the Persona of Penny Drexler

*Note: this work does not reflect my own personal opinions, but rather functions as a display of using different voices and styles in writing.

In this work, I adopted the persona of Peggy Drexler, a writer for CNN opinion and assistant professor of psychology, who often tackles gender issues in American society through writing opinion columns. I reacted to an article by People Celebrity titled “All of the Hollywood Figures Who Have Spoken Out Against Harvey Weinstein”. This task pertains to the discussions of the current issues (in 2017) on the increase of women speaking up against being a victim of sexual assault due to the sexual assault allegations made against Harvey Weinstein.

My written task was inspired by an opinion column titled “'Ugly' people earn more, but at what cost?” by Drexler. My opinion column is intended for feminists and the general public who listen to the #MeToo social media campaign. The purpose of my written task is to tackle the roots of #MeToo and to address the wrong approach of raising awareness for sexual assault. Rather than having a campaign where victims are identified, my task focuses on those who commit the act of sexual assault. To do so, I utilize slightly sarcastic and criticizing register to mimic that of Drexler’s; the devices I used include rhetorical questioning to address the wrongful approach to sexual assault, metaphors to emphasize the problems faced as a woman, and varied sentence structure to further strengthen my argument. My motivation behind this task lies in the idea of addressing sexual assault in a less thought-of method. This task shows an awareness of the potential for educational or political influence of the media, examines different forms of communication within the media, and demonstrates the way mass media uses language to inform and entertain.

Written by me, November 2017