25. If You Don't Want Girls Judged by Their Hemlines, Stop Judging Them by Their Hemlines

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/02/15/dress_codes_for_girls_they_don_t_teach_self_respect_only_respecting_girls.html

In the article "If You Don't Want Girls Judged by Their Hemlines, Stop Judging Them by Their Hemlines," journalist Amanda Marcotte asserts that girls should be taught to respect themselves by respecting them, not by punishing and humiliating them for their outfits. In her introduction, Marcotte hooks the audience's attention by arousing wonder on why "Middle school teacher Jessica Lahey is very concerned about her students." While she apprises her own credibility by citing a middle school teacher, she presents the audience with the topic issue in a more intimate level, from the view of a  school teacher. Marcotte rewords the common idea that girls must wear clothes that "cover it up" if they do have respect for themselves, as a "notion that a woman loses her claim to respect if she shows an overt interest in sexuality," and calls it "sexism." Marcotte cites L.V. Anderson's acknowledgement (from a recent article) that most girls "will get tired of playing around with the tacky clothes" anyway, to support her argument that teaching the girls should be done by "ignoring their bodies completely and getting directly to the work of cherishing those minds and those hearts instead." For deeper understanding of her assertion, Marcotte also provides an example with disapproving comments about Beyonce's outfit in her Super Bowl show, that "telling women to cover it up is just as surely a form of sexual objectification as telling women to take it off."Marcotte effectively conveys her message mainly by using a middle school teacher's philosophies as her example, and citing other articles to support her facts and claims.

Amanda Marcotte's audience for this article is the general readership of non-specialists with an interest in the topic, including parents, teenagers, teachers, or observers of such issue. Marcotte's purpose is to persuade the audience that the best way to tell the girls that they don't have to expose their bodies to be noticed is by "acting like you believe it's true." The title, "If you don't want girls judged by their hemlines, Stop judging them by their hemlines," also directly reflects this purpose.