Beauty And The Bloke

1004 Words5 Pages
‘Beauty and the Bloke’ is a light hearted, argumentative article, by Cosmo Landesman. It attempts to convince the audience that men and woman are breaking free of old fashioned stereotypes. The author’s opening line ‘perfume, waxing, cosmetic surgery’ is deliberately misleading as one automatically thinks he is referring to women. He then shocks us by stating ‘nineties man is being forced to go all the way to improve his body image’. It is clear the article is aimed at males as uses the term ‘we’ regularly, ‘in the past all we could do was surrender...’ and refers to males throughout the article ‘sooner or later, every man...’ ‘...I took it like a man’ ‘It’s a brave new world in which man can have what he wants...’ Landesman also states ‘we fortysomethings’ indicating the article is aimed at like minded 40 year old males like himself. The references to ageing, baldness, wrinkles, grey hair and expanding waistline also indicate the age range of audience. Throughout the article Landesman suggests men no longer must be hairy and macho and woman no longer will stand by and put up with it. The underlying tone being woman and the beauty industry are to blame. The author relays this by stating his opinion, ‘the beauty industry is rushing to our rescue [...] that problem to solve all our pulchitudinal problems.’ ‘ ...the lines of demarcation between the feminine and the masculine have been in decline-thanks largely to a combination of feminism and pop culture’ ‘woman came to see through the beauty myth’ ‘don’t blame the market forces. It's woman who have forced men to wake up to reality.’ The use of informative and formal facts and statistics are used to back up his opinion, ‘According to the 1994 Mintel Report...’ ‘The use of hairspray is up by 5% [...] 14% more men are using deodorant.’ ‘The market for men’s fragrance is worth £240 million a year.’ He implies there is a

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