1. Read the quotations below and find a common thread between them: What philosophies of life do the quotations contain? How do they compare? Are they compatible?
2. Pick just one pair: one quotation from Mairs and one from Tolentino.
3. Define the connection between them. What do these two quotation say about a particular topic/concept?
4. Then, work on a paragraph that connects both quotations to make a larger original (=your) claim. Start in the middle (from inside out, so to speak), by connecting the quotations, creating strong IQCDC for both. Then make sure that you write a topic sentence that reflects your original claim based on both quotations.
5. Don’t worry if you are having trouble completing the exercise However, I’d like you to do your best, so that you are well prepared for writing Essay 2.
Note: you could use the lens approach, but you don’t have to.
Your paragraph will look something like this:
Topic sentence
One-two more sentences that extend your claim
Introduce author 1
Quotation 1 IQCDC
Transition sentence to Q2
Introduce author 2
Quotation 2 IQCDC
Transition to your original claim
Discussion of your claim and how it supports the thesis statement (you don’t have to write the latter part just yet)
Quotations from Mairs: “The two elements, the plenty and the privation, are never pure, nor are the delight and wretchedness that accompany them. Almost every pickle that I get into as a result of my weakness and clumsiness . . . is funny as well as maddening and sometimes painful” (Mairs 230).
“And our society, with its emphasis on fun and its association of fun with physical performance, offers little encouragement for a whole spouse to stay with a crippled partner” (Mairs 232).
“Part of the pressure arises from social expectations. In our society, anyone who deviates from the norm had better find some way to compensate” (Mairs 233). “And much of pressure is self-generated” (Mairs 233).
“Physical imperfection, even freed of moral disapprobation, still defies and violates the ideal, especially for women, whose confinement in their bodies as objects as desire is far from over” (Mairs 233-4).
Quotations from Tolentino: “The aesthetic is also marked by a familiar human aspiration, previously best documented in wedding photography, toward a generic sameness. Accounts such as Insta Repeat illustrate the platform’s monotony by posting grids of indistinguishable photos posted by different users—a person in a yellow raincoat standing at the base of a waterfall, or a hand holding up a bright fall leaf. Some things just perform well” (Tolentino 1).
“The human body is an unusual sort of Instagram subject: it can be adjusted, with the right kind of effort, to perform better and better over time” (Tolentino 1).
“The aesthetic is also marked by a familiar human aspiration, previously best documented in wedding photography, toward a generic sameness” (Tolentino 1).
“The writer Kyle Chayka has coined the term “AirSpace” for this style of blandly appealing interior design, marked by an “anesthetized aesthetic” and influenced by the ‘connective emotional grid of social media platforms”—these virtual spaces where hundreds of millions of people learn to “see and feel and want the same things'” (Tolentino 7).
