Evolution of the Bikini Summary and response

    While enjoying yourself at the beach, is your first thought of a woman in a bikini of an object or tool? Well in "The Evolution of the Swimsuit" by Jessica Rey, author of "Decent Exposure", Rey argues that bikinis help to objectify women and have stripped us of our modest values. Rey begins with her analysis of the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini". She uses the lyrics of the song to demonstrate the embarrassment of the woman being described in the song. Rey points to this embarrassment as a result of her natural understanding of modesty. Rey furthers her point by describing the history of the bikini and how negative the initial reaction to the bikini was. Rey uses studies from princeton to demonstrate what regions of the brain light up when viewing an image of a woman in modest clothes and a woman in a bikini. When looking at the image of the bikini the part of the brain associated with tools light up, and Rey uses this to show that men objectify women in bikinis .Rey uses images of how woman in the past would wear a one piece or even a full dress while at the beach to preserve their modesty, and proposes we return to to our prior, modest, roots. Although I thought the speech by Rey had strong pathos, unreliable references and studies gravely hurt her ethos and logos.

　

    In the speech by Rey, it was very easy to connect emotionally with her and made me want to agree with her. Her ideas and reasons, like preserving and upholding modesty, would have been improved, if she had reliable logos and ethos. How she was lacking in logos was because a few of her statements did not make sense, like "born with a sense of modesty". People are not born with a sense of modesty, but rather modesty is something that is taught and learned. Another way she lacked in logos was her alienation of people who are not Christians. What hurt her cause the most was how badly her credibility was destroyed with her unreliable statistics and examples. Her princeton example was severely hurt by the lack of details and explanations on how the studies were conducted, leaving questions that needed to be answer like " how long was that part of the brain light up", "how many people were tested", "was it the same person in both images", and "do the men react the same to a live woman rather than an image". Also Rey used a large number of stats and quotes from outdated sources, from over half a century old. For me there were too many holes in her argument, coupled with her using this being an opportunity to make money, for me to side with her.