Written by Lisandra

  "Mascara" "Nail Polish" "Lipstick"                     While the beauty industry is notoriously criticized for its preponderance of male CEOs and company leaders, one of the largest cosmetics companies in the industry is giving back to its main demographic of women by promoting female empowerment. In 2019 L’Oréal Paris collaborated with the McCann Dusseldorf Agency to create the campaign “This is an Ad for Men,” which features three print advertisements directed toward men that advocate for more women leadership. Though the three prints promote cosmetic products sold by L’Oréal Paris, the message goes deeper than commodities and consumerism to address the serious social issues that impact those who use L’Oréal Paris’ products most. Originally created with the fact that German companies are comprised predominantly of men in mind, the advertisements more globally address lack of gender diversity in the workforce as well as th...

            “I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection” (Douglass 370).              One of the most influential forms of advocacy for abolitionism in the 19 th century was slave narrative literature – and perhaps none so well-known and renowned as Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , from which the above excerpt is taken.  Douglass, like other writers of this genre, recounted his experience of slavery to freedom to expose the exploitation and oppression of black and enslaved people in the South. The way Douglass articulated the immorality of sl...

                              -It’s very sad being a panther woman; no one can kiss you.  Or anything. -You, you’re the spider woman, that traps men in her web. -How lovely!  Oh, I like that. -…                                                                                     (Puig 260-261)             Manuel Puig’s novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman is brilliant in both its concrete criticism against the binary gen...

        In his essay titled "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, - that is genius” (236).  The individualism referred to by Emerson, the philosophy that places emphasis on the self rather than the collective, was and remains a significant component of American Renaissance literature as well as American culture.  While Emerson touted the individualistic ideas illustrated in “Self-Reliance” as an ultimate guide to self-fulfillment, this concept was not one that was accepted unanimously.  Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, rejected progressive ideas regarding individualism to instead warn about its dangers: “Individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart” (Tocqueville).  The widely divisive philosophy opened a g...