Expos 101 Paper Five Prompt Professor Molin, Spring 2017 Reading: Leslie Bell’s “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” Michael Moss’s “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” and Tim Wu’s “Father and Son” Question: Leslie Bell’s “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom” proposes that young women often use a mental process called “splitting,” or “dualistic or binary thinking,” to “manage anxiety and to defend against uncertainty” (28). Bell is skeptical that splitting actually works; she argues that the young women she describes are frustrated, not helped, by the two-dimensional identity and worldview promoted by splitting. She creates a typology to describe splitting victims—“the Sexual Woman” and the “Relational Woman”—and proposes a third type—“the Desiring Woman”—who successfully resolves her inner conflicts. Unfortunately, she neither explains “Desiring Woman” in detail nor provides an example of one, so we are left guessing how splitters might achieve a more productive strategy for managing anxiety and doubt. Further, Bell claims that splitting is a particular problem for young women, but after studying the male businessmen in Michael Moss’s “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” and Tim Wu’s “Father and Son,” I’m not so sure the executives, managers, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs described in those two articles aren’t also subject to their own versions of “either/or” thinking and might benefit from ideas about how to reconcile opposing self-images and life approaches. For this essay, combine evidence from all three readings to answer the following prompt for writing: How can the problems associated with splitting be resolved? You are not obligated to answer the following questions, but they may assist you in thinking about your response to the prompt: 1. In your own words, what is “splitting”? 2. In your own words, what is the “split” made by Bell’s “Sexual Woman”? Her “Relational Woman?” 3. In your own words, what are the qualities of a “Desiring Woman”? 4. What are the anxieties of the men described in the Moss and Wu articles? How do they deal with them? Do they equate in any shape, form, or fashion with the problems faced by Bell’s Sexual and Relational Women, or are they completely different? 5. Is there anyone in the Moss and Wu readings who might be the equivalent of a “Desiring Woman”—one who has successfully reconciled two distinctly different self-images, set of priorities, and ways of approaching the world? Administrative Notes: 1. Use MLA Format: Times New Roman, font-size 12, 1” margins all around. Include a standard MLA format header and page number. Cite quotations using MLA parenthetical citations. You do not have to prepare a Works Cited page. 2. Organize each body paragraph around the discussion of quotations from at least two of the readings, and cover all three readings equally. 3. A three-paragraph, three-page Rough Draft is due at the start of Lesson Twenty-Four, April 17. Write an introduction and two body paragraphs in which you connect quotations from Moss, Wu, and Bell. Submit the paper electronically through Sakai and bring two paper copies to class. 4. A full five-page Final Draft is due at on April 27 at 10:20. Submit the paper electronically through Sakai and bring a paper copy either to class or to my box in the Livingston Writing Center.
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