Dealing with People” (588-589)

Dealing with People” (588-589)

3. “Aunt Tee” (586-587)
4. “The Dating World” (679)
5. “Body over Mind” (570-571)
6 “Friendless in North America” (698-699)
7. “I’m a Banana and Proud of It” (551-552)
8. “Changing Face of Cosmetic Surgery” (706-707)
9. “Keep Your Roses” (720-722)
10. “The Case for Affirmative Action” (579-581)

Lynne , Gaetz, and Phadke Suneeti . The Writers’s World:
Paragraphs and essays. 2nd. New Jersey 07458:
Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.
Free writing exercises. One (1) full page per journal, typed, double-spaced. Write your reaction to the texts analyzed. Do you agree or disagree with their contents? The margins should be one inch on the left and one inch on the right. Use fonts not bigger than size 12, preferably courier or Time New Roman. The journal per text cannot be less than one full page or it will be wrong. You need to type the topic of each journal at the top of the page. Not named.

NINE (9) Journals
Texts to analyze
2. “Dealing with People” (588-589)
3. “Aunt Tee” (586-587)
4. “The Dating World” (679)
5. “Body over Mind” (570-571)
6 “Friendless in North America” (698-699)
7. “I’m a Banana and Proud of It” (551-552)
8. “Changing Face of Cosmetic Surgery” (706-707)
9. “Keep Your Roses” (720-722)
10. “The Case for Affirmative Action” (579-581)

 

2.- Dealing with People
Greg McGrew
Greg McGrew is the president of Hospitality Profit Builders. In the next essay, the author uses the classification writing pattern to describe different types of personalities.
It’s no secret that most of our problems in life are “people” problems. Whether we are running a coffee cart or a full-service sit-down restaurant, how to solve our people problems seems to be a big secret that most of us struggle with, both in our personal lives as well as on the job. Who of us hasn – reflected on an encounter with another person and asked ourselves if we couldn’t have handled the situation better? Yet there are a few people who seem to glide effortlessly through life working with a wide variety of people, achieving success in both their personal and professional lives. How do they do it? Somewhere along their life road, they have learned how to deal effectively with the four basic personality groups: dominants, expressives, analyticals, and amiables.
2 Dominants are naturally highly assertive people, and their behavior is characterized by the way they act. They tend to be active, confident, aggressive, talkative, extroverted, and confrontational. To many people, dominants are a threat to their mental well-being. However, if you know that it is important to look a dominant in the eye when talking to him or her, you can earn this person’s respect and cooperation. Working with the other personality styles requires similar techniques.
3 Expressives are also highly assertive. They generally tell rather than ask and do a lot of thinking out loud. Most importantly, work has to be fun, and they will go out of their way to make it so. Expressives love touching, which makes amiables nervous. The expressive is relationship driven and has difficulty saying “no” because doing so may hurt the relationship. To get on the same wavelength with an expressive, be personable. Give the big picture first and then the details. Let the expressive know you are available at any time to talk.
4 Analyticals are thinkers. They take time to weigh everything out in their minds before they answer questions correctly the first time. To make a decision, analyticals need lots of information. They are good at making decisions; they just need a long time to get there. So, when dealing with analyticals, give them three to five seconds to answer you and ask them; do not tell them. If you do that, you will see analyticals as being logical, industrious, orderly, and systematic. Otherwise, you might think they are indecisive, unclear, and confused.
5 Amiables are very task and relationship oriented. They are naturally good listeners, and trust is key to their relationships. They are also perfectionists who like a lot of information before making decisions. To get the information, they will seek consensus from their peers. To work well with amiables, give all the information plus the result. Give them time and space to consult with others on the team. Treat them with respect and talk in a softer tone of voice.
Those who know how to deal with people use their knowledge of these personality styles to enhance their communication abilities, resolve conflicts more successfully, improve their working and personal relations, and recognize what motivates others. Look at the people around you and determine who are the dominants, expressives, analyticals, and amiables. Now go look that dominant customer in the eye and start communicating!
3.- Aunt Tee

Aunt Tee
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is a poet, historian, civil rights activist, and writer. In this next essay from her collection I Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Angelou writes about an important person in her life. As you read this description essay, also look for elements of narration and comparison and contrast.
Aunt Tee was a Los Angeles member of our extended family. She was seventy-nine when I met her, sinewy, strong, and the color of old lemons. She wore her coarse, straight hair, which was slightly streaked with gray, in a long braided rope across the top of her head. With her high cheekbones, old gold skin, and almond eyes, she looked more like an Indian chief than an old black woman. (Aunt Tee described herself and any favored member of her race as Negroes. Black was saved for those who had incurred her disapproval.) 2 She had retired and lived alone in a dead, neat ground-floor apartment. Wax flowers and china figurines sat on elaborately embroidered and heavily starched doilies. Sofas and chairs were tautly upholstered. The only thing at ease in Aunt Tee’s apartment was Aunt Tee.
I used to visit her often and perch on her uncomfortable sofa just to hear her stories. She was proud that after working thirty years as a maid, she spent the next thirty years as a live-in housekeeper, carrying the keys to rich houses and keeping meticulous accounts.
“Living in lets the white folks know Negroes are as neat and clean as they are, sometimes more so. And it gives the Negro maid a chance to see white folks ain’t no smarter than Negroes. Just luckier. Sometimes.”
F.! Aunt Tee told me that once she was housekeeper for a couple in Bel Air, California, and lived with them in a fourteen-room ranch house. There was a day maid who cleaned, and a gardener who daily tended the lush gardens. Aunt Tee oversaw the workers. When she began the job, she cooked and served a light breakfast, a good lunch, and a full three- or four-course dinner to her employers and their guests. Aunt Tee said she watched them grow older and leaner. After a few years, they stopped entertaining and ate dinner hardly seeing each other at the table. Finally, they sat in a dry silence as they ate evening meals of soft scrambled eggs, melba toast, and weak tea. Aunt Tee said she saw them growing old but didn’t see herself aging at all.
She became the social maven. She started “keeping company” (her phrase) with a chauffeur down the street. Her best friend and her friend’s husband worked in service only a few blocks away.
7 On Saturdays, Aunt Tee would cook a pot of pigs’ feet, a pot of greens, fry chicken, make potato salad, and bake a banana pudding. Then, that evening, her friends—the chauffeur, the other housekeeper, and her husband—would come to Aunt Tee’s commodious live-in quarters. There the four would eat and drink, play records and dance. As the evening wore on, they would settle down to a serious game of bid whist.
Naturally, during this revelry, jokes were told, fingers were snapped, feet were patted, and there was a great deal of laughter.
Aunt Tee said that what occurred during every Saturday party startled her and her friends the first time it happened. They had been playing cards, and Aunt Tee, who had just won the bid, held a handful of trumps. She felt a cool breeze on her back and sat upright and turned around. Her employers had cracked her door open and beckoned to her. Aunt Tee, a little peeved, laid down her cards and went to the door. The couple backed away and asked her to come into the hall, and there they both spoke and won Aunt Tee’s sympathy forever.
10 “Theresa, we don’t mean to disturb you,” the man whispered, “but you all seem to be having such a good time. . .”
The woman added, “We hear you and your friends laughing every Saturday night, and we’d just like to watch you. We don’t want to bother you. We’ll be quiet and just watch.”
The man said, “If you’ll just leave your door ajar, your friends don’t need to know. We’ll never make a sound.” Aunt Tee said she saw no harm in agreeing, and she talked it over with her company. They said it was OK with them, but it was sad that the employers owned the gracious house, the swimming pool, three cars, and numberless palm trees, but had no joy. Aunt Tee told me that laughter and relaxation had left the house; she agreed it was sad.
That story has stayed with me for nearly thirty years, and when a tale remains fresh in my mind, it almost always contains a lesson which will benefit me.
I draw the picture of the wealthy couple standing in a darkened hallway, peering into a lighted room where black servants were lifting their voices in merriment and comradery, and I realize that living well is an art which can be developed. Of course, you need the basic talents to build upon: they are a love of life and the ability to take great pleasure from small offerings, an assurance that the world owes you nothing, and awareness that every gift is exactly that, a gift. Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure.
4.- “The Dating World”
The Dating World
by Naomi Louder
1 Dating has changed a lot over the years. Many people, post millennium, can’t help associating the word “date” with a more innocent time and scenarios involving ice-cream sodas, varsity jackets, and drive-in movies. In smaller and more traditional communities, vestiges of this remain, and high school sweethearts who paired up early on wind up getting married straight out of school. Compared to previous generations, today’s singles have a new dating ethic that involves flying straight into a whirlwind affair.
The most obvious difference between the past and the present is in dating methods. In the 1950s and 1960s, potential sweethearts met at school dances, the lunch-line at the school cafeteria, or at school sports events. There were certain formal rules of etiquette to be followed, down to the “base” system, dictating when, where, and how the relationship was to progress to its logical conclusion. People were concerned, after a date, with whether “first base”—a kiss—was attained. Nowadays, it is more common to obsess over the other party’s sexual history, his or her expectations, and whether a relationship might be a possibility. The “base” system has been supplanted, in junior high or even elementary school, by the “gummy” trend, where cheap rubber bracelets, coded by color, announce the sexual experience or willingness of the wearer.
In a traditional dating context, couples worried primarily about pregnancy, and—mainly in the case of the girls—about losing their reputations. An ill-timed boast on the part of a boy could jeopardize a girl’s dating career, while a pregnancy could result in the ultimate shame to the girl and her family or a rushed and gossiped-over wedding. In a contemporary urban center, these worries seem naive. Early sexual relationships are more the norm than before, and the concerns are sexually transmitted infections, date rape, and abortion or adoption versus single parenthood. Certainly, some young people have reacted to these threats by rejecting the ethic of sexual freedom popularized in the 1960s. The revival of traditional religious values has influenced many young Americans, and chastity rings and church events make even the dating system of a more innocent era seem fraught. However, the majority of teens and young adults are more determined than ever to fulfill their sexual and emotional needs, sometimes before they are clearly aware of the consequences.
Both the traditional and the new dating methods have downsides. The new generation, with all its scorn of traditional and prudish dating etiquette, finds itself lost and lonelier than ever. The old-fashioned courtship ritual has been condensed to a witty remark, a compliment or two, and an animal assault on a balcony, on a street corner, or in a taxi. Once the deed is done, people often find that they have no idea who they’re dating. On the other hand, some would argue that when a mutual attraction is felt, holding back from intimacy is counter-productive. For instance, using the traditional method, people may try to represent themselves dishonestly, behaving with courtesy, unselfishness, or generosity that they would never bother with if they weren’t trying to impress. The person’s true personality—perhaps that of a slob or a diva— may only be unveiled when a commitment has been made. Advocates of casual encounters argue that when the formalities are dispensed with, people show themselves as they truly are.
5 There are pitfalls to both of these ways of dating, but the fact is, most people are looking for a partner in life, and the only way to find one is to trust somebody. A high school sweetheart or the best-looking person at a party is not necessarily the ideal partner. For the most part, relationships succeed because there is a sounder basis to them than passion or romance. If a true friendship is possible between two people, when passion and excitement fade, there will still be a reason to stay together.

 

5.- Body over Mind
Body over Mind
Mitch Albom
Award-winning sports columnist Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press. He is also the author of eight books, including Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie. In this comparison and contrast essay, Albom discusses the culture of college sports. As you read, also look for elements of narration, cause and effect, and argument writing.
The little chocolate doughnuts were in a box next to the coffee urn. Normally, high schools don’t provide food for their assemblies, but today was special with all of these TV crews, radio people, and sports writers. A table was arranged near the front of the room, and a reporter set down a microphone alongside a dozen others. “Testing 1-2, testing 1-2,” he said.
2 Suddenly, the whole room seemed to shift. The guest of honor had arrived. He didn’t enter first. He was preceded by an entourage of friends, coaches, his grandmother, his aunt, his baby brother, more friends, more coaches, and his girlfriend. She wore a black dress and jewelry and had her hair pinned up, as if going to the prom, even though it was mid-afternoon and math classes were in progress upstairs.
Her boyfriend took his seat. He wore a stud earring and a colorful jacket. Only eighteen years old, he was the largest person in the room at 6-feet-9, 300 pounds. It was for his body—and what he could do with it—that these people had come.
“Good afternoon,” Robert Traylor began, reading from a sheet of paper. His voice was deep as a businessman’s, but his words were those of a nervous Teen. “I’d like to welcome everyone. My dream is to play in the NBA one day. I’ve chosen the college that can best help me achieve my dream.” 5 The crowd held its breath. For three years, a parade of grown men, employed by major universities, had been coming to Detroit to watch Robert Traylor play. They called him at home, they called his friends, and they called his relatives. They showed him videos and promised him stardom. They wooed him like a golden child.
“The school I will be attending,” Traylor said, “will be the University of Michigan.”
7 The room erupted in applause.
8 Down the hall, sitting alone by a computer, was another high school senior named Kevin Jones. Like Traylor, Jones is black, lives in Detroit, and is being raised with no father in the house. His mother supports the family by working as a janitor. Like Traylor, Jones will also be attending Michigan next fall—on a full scholarship.
9 But unlike Traylor, Jones, a thin kid with a disarming smile, got his scholarship for studying three hours a day, getting the highest grades, keeping his attendance over 95 percent, and never violating school conduct rules.
10 Kevin Jones is the most important currency in the city of Detroit, a kid with a brain. He did not announce his college decision at a press conference; he had to wait for Michigan to accept him. A letter finally arrived at the house his family shares with another family in northwest Detroit. He peeked through the envelope and saw the word “Congratulations.” He smiled. His grandmother hugged him and said, “I’m so proud of you! I’m so proud of you.”
i Back at the press conference, reporters were yelling questions: “Robert, when did you decide on Michigan’?”
12 “Robert, do you think you’ll start?”
13 “Robert, what did the Michigan coaches say?”
14 Traylor smiled at the last one. “I don’t know. I haven’t told them yet.” Not that it mattered. At that moment, it was being announced all over the radio.
15 This is crazy. A press conference for a high school ballplayer? What message are we sending the other students at Murray-Wright High School who were peeking through the doors wondering what the fuss was about? I E Don’t misunderstand. Robert Traylor is a bright young man with a special talent, but why have a press conference about where he will dribble and shoot? Isn’t there enough spotlight on these kids already? Besides, encouraging inner-city teens to shoot for the NBA is like encouraging them to win the lottery. Most will be disappointed.
7 Several years ago, a high school star named Chris Webber had one of these press conferences—and two years later, he held another to say he was leaving school for the pros. Someone asked Traylor about that Monday.
16 “I hope (I can) leave college in two years,” he said excitedly. Later he tried to correct this, but everyone knew what he meant. In his dreams of swimming in NBA waters, college is the diving board.
ii It is more than a diving board to Kevin Jones. He has no plans of leaving early. “I want to study business and open my own one day,” he said. He showed a résumé he had done himself. It noted his awards in the Navy ROTC and his computer literacy in IBM and Macintosh systems.
20 This is no nerd. This is a good-looking kid who hears bullets in his neighborhood and remembers what his grandmother said: “When there’s trouble, just keep walking.” He works hard because he was taught to work hard, and he doesn’t read off a sheet when he says, “One day, after I get my business going, I’m going to come back to this school and teach math.” That is more important than coming back to sign autographs.
21 The doughnuts were mostly gone now. Traylor’s aunt was being interviewed; so were his friends, who mugged for the cameras. Traylor himself posed, wearing a maize and blue Michigan cap. Down the hall, the computer flipped on, and a young man began a new application for room and board money. He started with his name, “Kevin Jones.”
22, No offense, but if there had to be a press conference Monday, it should have been Kevin’s.

 

6.- Friendless in North America
Friendless in North America
by Ellen Goodman
Lynn Smith-Lovin was listening in the back seat of a taxi when a woman called the radio talk-show hosts to confess her affairs with a new boyfriend and a not-yet-former husband. The hosts, in their best therapeutic voices, offered their on-air opinion, “Give me an S. give me an L, give me a U,” You can spell the rest. It was the sort of exchange that would leave most of us wondering why anyone would share her intimate life story with a radio host. Didn’t she have anyone else to talk with? Smith-Lovin might have been the only one in the audience with an answer to the question: Maybe not.
The Duke University sociologist is co-author of one of those blockbuster studies that makes us look at ourselves. This one is labeled “Friendless in America.” A face-to-face study of 1,467 adults turned up some disheartening news. One-fourth reported that they have nobody to talk to about “important matters.” Another quarter reported they are just one person away from nobody. But this was the most startling fact. The study is a replica of one done twenty years ago. In only two decades, from 1985 to 2004, the number of people who have no one to talk to has doubled. And the number of confidants of the average person has gone down from three to two.
3 The people to whom we are closest form our own informal safety net. They’re the ones who see us through a life crisis, lend us their spare bedroom, or pick up our kids at school in a pinch. Social isolation is as big a risk factor for premature death as smoking. Robert Putnam has already chronicled the erosion of the ties that bind in Bowling Alone. But we’ve paid less attention to “coping alone” or “suffering alone.” Imagine if some other piece of the social safety net had frayed that furiously. Imagine if income had gone down by a third or divorce doubled or the medical system halved. We would be setting up commissions and organizing rallies.
4 Not everything in the study was gloomy. Deep in the data is the suggestion that families—husbands and wives, parents and adult children—might be closer. Spouses who call each other “my best friend” might be right. We might have fewer intimates but we’re more intimate with them. On average, we see them more than once a week and have known them seven years. Nevertheless, the big news is that circles have tightened, shrunk, and gone nuclear. As Smith-Lovin says, “Literally nothing takes the place of family.” The greatest loss has been in neighbors and friends who will provide help, support, advice, and connections to a wider world.
There is no shortage of speculation about why our circle of friends is eroding. The usual suspect is the time crunch. It’s knocked friendship off the balancing beam of life as we attend to work and family. It’s left less time for the groups and associations that bind us. But in the past twenty years, technology has changed the way we use our “relationship time.” Walk along any city street and people talking on cell phones are more common than pigeons. Go into Starbucks and a third of the customers are having coffee dates with their laptops. “It could be that talking to people close to us on cell phones has caused our social circle to shrink,” says Smith-Lovin. It could be that we are both increasingly in-touch and isolated. It’s become easier to keep extensive relationships over time and distance but harder to build the deep ones in our backyard. In the virtual neighborhood, how many have substituted email for intimacy, contacts for confidants, and Facebook for face to face?
A few years ago, when my friend Patricia O’Brien and I wrote a book on the power of friendship in women’s lives, we noted that there was no official status for friends, no pro-friendship movement, no cultural or political support system for friends. Yet this voluntary relationship can be the most sustaining one of life.
Now we are living in smaller, tighter circles. We are ten degrees of separation from each other and one or two people away from loneliness. And many now outsource intimacy from friends to professional therapists and gawd help us, talk shows. Who can we talk to about important matters? Who can we count on? As we search for tools to repair this frayed safety net, we can take poor, paradoxical comfort from the fact that if we are feeling isolated, we are not alone.

 

7.- I’m a Banana and Proud of It

I’m a anana and Proud of it
Wayson Choy
Wayson Choy grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown district and has written about his experiences. He is the author of several books, including The jade Peony and All That Matters-. In this definition essay, also look for the
narration, illustration, and cause and effect writing patterns.
My father and mother arrived separately to the British Columbia coast in the early part of the century. Because both my parents came from China, I look Chinese. But I cannot read or write Chinese and barely speak it. I love my North American citizenship. I don’t mind being called a “banana,” yellow on the outside and white on the inside. I’m proud I’m a banana. After all, in Canada and the United States, native Indians are “apples” (red outside, white inside); blacks are “Oreo cookies” (black and white); and Chinese are “bananas.” These metaphors assume, both rightly and wrongly, that the North American culture has been primarily anglo-white. Cultural history has made me a banana.
2 My parents came as unwanted “aliens.” It’s better to be an alien here than to be dead of starvation in China. But after the Chinese Exclusion laws were passed in North America (late 1800s, early 1900s), no Chinese immigrants were granted citizenship in either Canada or the United States. Like those Old China village men from Toi San who, in the 1850s, laid down cliff-edge train tracks through the Rockies and the Sierras, or like those first women who came as mail- order wives or concubines and who as bond-slaves were turned into cheaper laborers or even prostitutes—like many of those men and women—my father and mother survived ugly, unjust times. In 1918, two hours after he got off the boat from Hong Kong, my father was called “chink” and told to go back to China. “Chink” is a hateful racist term, stereotyping the shape of Asian eyes: “a chink in the armor,” an undesirable slit. For the Elders, the past was humiliating.
3 Eventually,_ the Second World War changed hostile attitudes toward the Chinese. During the war, Chinese men volunteered and lost their lives as members of the American and Canadian military. When hostilities ended, many more were proudly in uniform waiting to go overseas. Record Chinatown dollars were raised to buy War Bonds. After 1945, challenged by such money and ultimate sacrifices, the Exclusion laws in both Canada and the United States were revoked. Chinatown residents claimed their citizenship and sent for their families. By 1949, after the Communists took over China, those of us who arrived here as young children, or were born here, stayed. No longer aliens, we became legal citizens of North America. Many of us also became bananas.
4 Historically, banana is not a racist term. Although it clumsily stereotypes many of the children and grandchildren of the Old Chinatowns, the term actually follows the old Chinese tendency to assign endearing nick-names to replace formal names. The semicomic nicknames keep one humble. Thus, “banana” describes the generations who assimilated well into North American life. In fact, our families encouraged members of my generation in the 1950s and 1960s to get ahead, to get an English education, and to get a job with good pay and prestige. “Don’t work like me,” Chinatown parents said. “Work in an office!” The iao wahkiu, the Chinatown old-timers, also warned, “Never forget—you still be Chinese!
5 None of us ever forgot. The mirror never lied. Many of us Chinatown teenagers felt we didn’t quite belong in either world. We looked Chinese h1:- thought and behaved North American. Impatient Chinatown parents wants: the best of both worlds for us, but they bluntly labeled their children and grandchildren juk-sing or even mo no. Not that we were totally “shallow bamboo butt-ends” or entirely “no brain,” but we had less and less understanding of Old China traditions and less and less interest in their village histories. Father used to say we lacked Taoist ritual and Taoist manners. We were, he said, mo
6 He was right. Chinatown’s younger brains, like everyone else’s of whatever race, were being colonized by “white bread” U.S. family televisicL programs. We began to feel Chinese, home life was inferior. We co-operates. with English-language magazines that showed us how to act and what to buy Seductive Hollywood movies made some of us secretly weep that we did not have movie star faces. American music made Chinese music sound like noise., By the seventies and eighties, many of us had consciously or unconsciously distanced ourselves from our Chinatown histories. We became bananas.
7 Finally, for me, in my forties, with the death first of my mother, then father, I realized I did not belong anywhere unless I could understand the
_I needed to find the foundation of my Chineseness. I needed roots. I spent my college holidays researching the past. I read Chinatown oral histories, documents, and searched out early articles. Those early citizens came-back life for me. Their long toil and blood sacrifices, and the proud record of their patient, legal challenges, gave us all our present rights as citizens. Canadian and American Chinatowns set aside their family tongue differences and encouraged each other to fight injustice. There were no borders. “After all, they affirmed, Taaih ga tohng yahn. . . We are all Chinese!”
ii In my book, The Jade Peony, I tried to recreate this past, to explore the beginnings of the conflicts trapped within myself, the struggle between be::: Chinese and being North American. I discovered a truth: These “between world” struggles are universal. In every human being, there is “the Other”— something that makes each of us feel how different we are from everyone even family members. Yet, ironically, we are all the same, wanting the same security and happiness. I know this now.
9 —– I think the early Chinese pioneers actually started “going bananas” from the moment they first settled upon the West Coast. They had no choice. They adapted. They initiated assimilation. If they had not, they and their families would have starved to death. I might even suggest that all surviving
Chinatown citizens eventually became bananas. Only some, of course, were riper than others.
10 That’s why I’m proudly a banana: I accept the paradox of being both Chinese and not Chinese. Now at last, whenever I look-IR-the mirror or hear ghost voices shouting, “You still Chinese,” I smile. I know another truth: In immigrant North America, we are all Chinese.
8.- Changing Face of Cosmetic Surgery
Changing Face of Cosmetic Surgery
by Kate Howell
1 Many people who undergo cosmetic surgery are regarded as vapid, shallow, and lacking in self-esteem. The phrases “Be happy with who you are” and “God made you perfect as is” are thrown around to provide assurance. For instance, a woman who attempts to change her appearance is told that such an act signals a level of dishonesty toward herself, her family and, possibly, her creator. The stigma associated with plastic surgery clearly exists—note the negative connotation of the word “plastic.” However, such attitudes ignore reality. Anyone who uses cosmetic surgery to enhance his or her appearance should be applauded, not condemned.
“It is better to look good than to feel good.” This line was made famous in the 1980s by Billy Crystal’s “Fernando” character on Saturday Night Live, but few would have imagined that it was more than a catchphrase. It was actually an indication of a cultural phenomenon that exploded shortly thereafter. Cosmetic surgery has become popular on TV, in the office, and all around campus. TV shows such as Extreme Makeover have become hits. Prices for all kinds of procedures, from eyelifts to liposuction, have gone down, so more and more people can afford them. The age of plastic surgery recipients has also gone down, with college-aged girls opting for breast implants and nose jobs.
It is not just women who are body-obsessed. According to Health Day News, men are the newest arrivals to the cosmetic surgery party. In 2000, there was a 16 percent increase in body-altering procedures performed on males. Competition in the business world is fierce, and men are looking for any advantage they can find. Bags under the eyes and a weak chin just won’t cut it when there is an army of young bucks with MBAs gunning for every job. The idea that men are not supposed to care or show interest in their personal appearance is outdated and unfortunate. We do not live in a society of cattle ranchers and frontier explorers anymore. The beaten-up faces and callused hands of yore are no longer necessary tools of the trade; in today’s society, they have been replaced by cheek lifts and palm scrubs, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.
There remains a degree of disapproval of plastic surgery, yet the importance of personal appearance is everywhere. Consumers spend billions of dollars each year on makeup, haircuts, tanning salons, manicures, and pedicures. Studies show that good-looking people tend to get hired for jobs. In the movies, some distinct qualities belong to the majority of the stars: trim bodies, immaculate grooming, and gleaming teeth. Yet nobody likes to acknowledge the fact that looks matter. Science tells us we are attracted to certain features, and it is ridiculous to deny that fact. Appearance certainly isn’t everything, but to downplay its importance is self-righteous hypocrisy.
If, as is widely believed, it is what is on the inside that matters, then people should not get in such a huff about altering one’s outside. If a person feels unattractive, he or she should not be held back from making a change because friends or family cling to some half-hearted notion of “playing the cards one has been dealt.” If people desire to remake their body as they see fit, then more power to them. In this time of laziness and apathy, at least these people are taking steps to try to improve their lot in life. As humans, we adapt to our society, and ours is now one of aesthetics. To borrow an of t- used phrase from hip-hop: Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
9.- Keep Your Roses
Keep Your Roses
by Melonyce McAfee
Here’s a plot line for the writers at NBC’s The Office: It’s April 26. Paper salesman Jim presents a bouquet of tulips to his office crush, Pam, the receptionist. The accompanying card reads, “For all you do. Happy Secretaries Day.” Competitive and cringe-inducing boss Michael, until now oblivious to the holiday, sees the card and orders a garish bouquet, large enough to blot out Pam’s head and overshadow Jim’s arrangement. The bouquet arrives at 4:49 p.m. Eyes roll. Administrative Professionals Day is the Hallmark holiday that leads to interoffice jealousy, discomfort, and not much else.
The National Secretaries Association got the ball rolling with Professional Secretaries Week in 1952. The holiday was renamed Administrative Professionals Week in 2000, but I prefer the tell-it-like-it-is Secretaries Day. The NSA (now, naturally, the International Association of Administrative Professionals) claims the day is meant to enhance the image of administrative workers, promote career development, and encourage people to enter the field. But does it really do any of the above?
In my first job out of college, I worked as a typist at a title company, a job akin to cryptography. I pecked my way toward carpal tunnel syndrome to turn chicken scratch into property reports. Typists served the entire office, but title officers also had personal secretaries. On Secretaries Day, we typists sucked our teeth at the bouquets on the secretaries’ desks. At my next corporate job, I had gained an “assistant” title. But along with the other assistants, I was still left empty-handed. The office professionals chipped in for a bouquet for the division secretary, who regularly pawned off duties on us assistants and huffed when asked to, well, work. “I can’t believe they got her flowers,” we hissed.
My mother, a former hospital administrative assistant, was surprised with three greeting cards and a gorgeous scarf last Secretaries Day. She wasn’t aware of the holiday and was touched that the nurses in her department took the opportunity to thank her for working hard on special projects. But she also had to listen to a chorus of “I didn’t get anything” from other administrators. She says that didn’t diminish her pleasure,but it does prove my point. When the holiday makes someone feel appreciated, it almost invariably leaves others out in the cold.
Maybe part of the problem is that in the fifty years since the holiday began, the duties of a secretary have been farmed out across the office, and the job definition is no longer clear. A secretary used to be the woman who answered phones, took dictation, typed, picked up dry cleaning, and stole your husband, if she was really good. Now she (or he) might give PowerPoint presentations or build a Web site. Meanwhile, someone else might do the typing and filing.
The confusion over who qualifies as a secretary creates social anxiety about either overcelebrating the holiday or undercelebrating it. One Secretaries Day, a former advertising-sales assistant and co-worker of mine got lovely plants from colleagues who rushed to point out that they’d gotten her a gift even though she wasn’t really a secretary. She got the impression they thought she might be offended by being lumped in with the administrative staff. The holiday forces workers, like it or not, to evaluate how they stack up. Mail-room guy, copy clerk, typist, receptionist, administrative secretary, executive assistant—are you low enough on the totem pole to merit a gift? Or are you too low?
In some industries, Secretaries Day is less apt to cause confusion. Schools, for example, have it easy—it’s obvious that the lady in the front office with her glasses hanging by a chain is the secretary. But in many workplaces, administrative positions are rife with ambiguity. What about legal clerks at law firms and sales assistants at magazines—when you cut them, do they not bleed Wite-Out? In the media business, assistant positions are often a stepping-stone to greater glory. Still, assistants perform the same duties as secretaries. And even if most assistants don’t do it for long, every publication has a guy who’s been an editorial assistant for fifteen years. He can write a dozen screenplays and freelance hundreds of album reviews for the local indie paper, but he’s still going to be an assistant ten years from now. Does he deserve the same Benihana gift certificate that the publisher’s secretary gets? Of course he does. He just lacks the magic title.
Perhaps my impatience with Secretaries Day springs from job dissatisfaction, as an executive assistant at a New York-based magazine suggested when we mused about why the holiday creates bitterness. True—in my mind, I should be the boss. And I resent being reminded of my slow progress up the chain of command every April 26. Those of us who yearn to be professionals, not administrative professionals, tend to bristle at the idea that we’re just boosters for the big boys and girls.
Some bosses feel compelled to take their secretary, assistant, or whoever out to lunch on Secretaries Day. It’s a nice gesture, but who wants to sit through that awkward meal? Anyone who has seen the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in which Larry David takes his maid on a squirm- worthy lunch date at his country club knows the potential disaster of forced boss-employee conviviality. Instead of Secretaries Day, why not just chip in for a big cake on the Friday before Labor Day and toast everyone in the office. Wouldn’t that be kinder, not to mention easier? I’d much prefer that to a holiday that’s a catch-all for “attagirl,” “I’m sorry for being an insufferable employer,” and “we should talk about that raise.”

10. The Case for Affirmative Action

The Case for Affirmative Action
An Open Letter to Five Justices Dave Malcolm
Dave Malcolm is a professor in San Diego. In 1995, the following letter was entered into the Congressional Record by U.S. Representative Esteban Torres in response to anti—affirmative action decisions by the Supreme Court. In this letter, the author has used thc illustration writing pattern along with the definition, comparison and contrast, and argument patterns.
On Monday, June 12, 1995, at 10:50 a.m., I left the office of my cardiologist having just been informed that my aortic valve implant was “leaking” and that replacement surgery would be required within the next three to six months. At 10:55 a.m., on the same date, I heard on my car radio about two new Supreme Court 5-4 decisions, each apparently placing serious additional limitations on programs of affirmative action. I drove homeward, feeling sick at heart—not from feelings of anxiety about my imminent open-heart surgery but from feelings of dismay at the direction in which the country seems to be moving, especially in regard to affirmative action.
You see, I know a lot about affirmative action. I count myself an expert on the subject. After all, I have benefited from it all my life. That is because I am white, I am male, I am Anglo, and I am Protestant. We male WASPs have had a great informal affirmative action program going for decades, maybe centuries. I am not speaking only of the way our “old boy networks” help people like me get into the right colleges or get jobs or get promotions. That is only the surface. Underneath, our real affirmative action is much more than just a few direct interventions at key moments in life. The real affirmative action is also indirect and at work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year in and year out. Because it is informal and indirect, we tend to forget or deny just how all-important and pervasive it really is.
However, far be it from me to put the direct “old boy” surface stuff down. I was admitted without difficulty to the Ivy League college my father had attended. This was back in the days when the only quotas were quotas to keep certain people out, not to help them get in. There were no limits on reasonably bright kids like me—the admissions people spoke of the children of alumni as “legacies,” but whether this was because the college was inheriting us as students or because the college hoped to inherit money from our families, I was never quite sure. I got a teaching job right out of college in the heart of the Depression—my father was a school superintendent well liked among his colleagues.
After World War II, when I became a university professor, I received promotion and tenure in minimum time, more quickly than many of my female colleagues. Of course, the decision makers knew me better; I was part of the monthly poker group and played golf every Friday afternoon. Yes, direct affirmative action—direct preferential treatment because of my gender and my color and good connections—have been good to me.
5 But, like other white males, I have benefited less obviously but far more significantly from indirect preferential treatment. Indirect affirmative action is at work to a greater or lesser degree on behalf of virtually all white males, whether one is aware of it or not. It is what did not happen to me. There were destructive, painful experiences that I did not have to endure. Early in life, I knew that boys were more important than girls and so did the girls. I have never had to worry about whether my skin color was light enough or dark enough.
For two of my long-time colleagues and closest personal friends, it has been a very different story. Raymond was the lightest skinned member of his family. He recalls that he was the only one who could get his hair cut downtown—but the family had to drop him off a block away from the barber shop. He once told me that he had probably spent more time worrying about his light skin than any other one thing in life. Would his fellow African Americans think he was black enough? When whites thought he was East Indian or South American, should he let them think so?
Maria had the opposite problem. As a child, she was called la prieta (“the little dark one”). Even though she knew the diminutive was a mark of affection, she still was aware that the label was no compliment. When she became a young woman, well-meaning whites told her, “You don’t look Mexican,” meaning that she looked more Spanish and hence almost white. The message always hurt deeply not simply because the speakers personally so clearly believed that there was something inferior about being Mexican but also because they had unhesitatingly assumed that she did, too, and hence would consider such a statement to be a compliment.
I have never had to endure “what-is-he-doing-here?” looks any time I walked along a residential street in a suburban area. I have not had to notice white women clutching their purses more tightly when they meet me walking along the street. I have never seen the “For Rent- or “For Sale” signs figuratively snatched out of the window as I walked up to the front door. I cannot even begin to imagine the insults, large and small, that send a five- or six-year-old running tearfully home to ask Mommy or Daddy, “Why can’t I be white?”
Out of the dozens of times I have crossed the border from Tijuana to San Diego, the one time I was pulled over to have my car inspected was when returning with my friend, Raymond, and another African American male as passengers. I was furious, but my friends restrained me, assuring me it was no big deal and that it happened to them all the time. That day I got some small sense of the rage and fury and helplessness and frustration that some people experience daily and are forced to smother.
10 I have never been so bombarded by negative messages that I began to internalize them and to suspect they might in part be true. As a professional person, I have never had to carry the burden of knowing that the slightest mispronunciation or grammatical error on my part will be seized upon by some people as validation of their negative stereotypes, not only about me but also about my people. But entire populations of my potential competitors have labored and are still laboring under disadvantages of this very sort as they compete with me. This is white male “affirmative action” at its most effective—the flip side of destructive life-long bombardment by negative messages.
Yes, affirmative action for some folks remains alive and well and unthreatened by court decisions. I ought to know. All my life I have been an indirect beneficiary because indirect affirmative action has been so effective at crippling or eliminating so many of those who might have been my competitors. As a white male, I have never had to compete with them on a level playing field.
The promise of the American dream is a society which is color-fair, not color-blind. Formal affirmative action programs play a dual role. They make the playing fields a bit more level, and they remind us that we still have far to go. It is no solution for society to trash its current formal efforts to make opportunity a little more equal as long as so many powerful informal barriers to equality of opportunity still persist. Think about it.

 

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