Happy Tree Friends

I read the article "What's Up Doc? A Bloody Outrage, That's What" written by Katherine Ellison. The article was about a cartoon that seems to appeal to children at first but then actually turns quite violent. The author's opinion comes from the standpoint of a mother who's sons have both seen the show. I decided to look up a clip of the show Happy Tree Friends Ellison was talking about to better understand the article. The violence was disgusting and made my stomach churn.
Ellison does a good job setting up her thesis or main argument in the beginning but throughout the article her writing seems to lose some of its focus. It seems that she is trying to argue that violent shows are harmful to the minds of children but then she goes on to write about the advertisements on the show's website. It seems irrelevant that she brings this up because that does not seem to go with her argument. She does cite a quote from an expert in neuroscience who backs up her thesis which adds to her credibility. In fact throughout the article she contacts other people about the show to show that she has done her research and helps give her ethos on the subject.
Later in the article she goes onto say that even though she is for freedom of speech she would "readily skip my next yoga class to march with right-wing fundamentalists in a cultural war against Happy Tree Friends." It is evident that Ellison is against the violence being so easily accessed and shows concern on how to stop it. But then later she contradicts herself by saying "Mad as I am, I'm actually not suggesting that the feds step in and ban this cartoon." It seems that Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, cannot stick to her own thesis which takes away from the logos or logic of her argument. This makes it hard for the reader to understand which side she is on and loses the possibility of persuading her audience in either direction.
Ellison overall does a descent job of keeping the reader interested in the topic but fails to really keep her logic and credibility so in the end her efforts are wasted.

"Beauty"

In society today people are encouraged to look a certain way. We have all known this since we were kids. Women are supposed to be thin and beautiful with long shiny hair and perfect butts. Men are supposed to have big arms and cut six packs. Most of us however do not fit into this mold of the ideal human. The idea of the ideal physical appearance has been around since the ancient world. The Greeks and Romans would sculpt perfectly proportionate men and women. There was even something called the golden mean, which was a perfect ratio for each body part and if you met that ratio you were beautiful. The problem is the pressure to have this ideal body has created an incredible sense of inadequacy in people who fall below the standards. We have created anorexia, bulimia, calorie counters, unhealthy exercise addictions, plastic surgery "improvements" and many more unhealthy lifestyles so that people can attempt to be "beautiful". The question is how far is too far to try and meet this standard and also why do we let people define beauty for us? Today a size two is what is considered to be beautiful for a woman. For those of you who do not know, Marilyn Monroe who was considered to be very beautiful and desirable when she was alive and was actually a size 12, which by today's standards would be considered fat. How could we allow this to happen? When did we decide that it was okay to make our models starve themselves and have guys on so many steroids that they permanently damage their health?! For those of you reading this I encourage you to forge a path away from our society's idea of beauty and to make your own and to live by it and be happy with who you are.