Analyze, Analyze, Analyze

Scott Russell Sanders’ essay Looking At Women is an adequate representation of a cause and effect essay. He clearly illustrates the causes of looking at women. For example: he descriptively describes what women wear, how they walk, and the way their hair sways as the walk. He claims women dress up and get dolled up so that men may look at them. He uses personal anecdotes to describe why he looks at women. He illustrates how when he was smaller he noticed a women who “ as [his] mother would say, had just been poured into her pink shorts” (132). This caused the big, impacting effect that has been with him throughout his whole life. The reason I know that this special incident has effected him periodically is because he keeps bringing it up.
The most improtant thing he does is analyze at the end of his essay. This is one thing I struggle with when writing my cause-and-effect essay. I get stuck on stating the causes and effects that I forget to analyze and show the process and how it effected me. At the end of his essay you can almost see his thoughts while reading. You can see how he analyzes and thinks about his topic and what he wrote about. It seems as if he discovers something while writing his essay.

Look at That Chassis

The author of, "Looking at Women", uses cause and effect to effectively explain to the readers why men look at women. So he tells us about the girl that his friend said had the nice "chassis" and then he explains to us how he began to understand why friend looked at women the way that he did. He went on throughout the explain what different things caused for him to examine the way men looked at women. He explain all these things but he ended just where he began; with the girl in the pink shorts. He used practical examples that all of his readers could relate to one way or another. He kept the readers attention by not drifting to deeply into any of his examples. He kept his essay interesting and didn't use to few or too many examples.

The Essay Like Mine

So I wrote a cause and effect essay, and because everyone helped me edit it up, I'm revising it. I was given a cause and effect essay to tell me how I should write mine, and it was called "Looking At Women." It was a long and arduous read, partly because I found it hard to understand, but in the end, I was helped along to comprehension by the discussion my classmates held. The essayist is very descriptive with his thoughts, which I am not used to because it leads to a lot of words that I have to read while he pins down his thought. He asks a very good question, which is why do men look at women, and how should men look at women? His first point is that men are hardwired to look at women. That is the way we are, and the greatest men of the age have been just men. He uses examples, both personal, when he explains his thoughts on Playboy models, and political, when he mentions Jimmy Carter, to show his point, which is that everyone feels lust. He concludes the section by explaining that he bears the responsibility of what he does with his desires. His next section deals with the female part of things: why do women make themselves desirable? They get dolled up, wear tight and/or revealing clothing, compete for title of prettiest in a certain area. His argument for this one is that regardless of what the woman is wearing, the desire of a prettied-up woman is this: to be seen as art. Men should look at women the same way we look at Picasso or Dali. His third point is that it is simply wrong to look at women like they are simply objects of desire. It makes women easier to handle for the man looking, and that's why it happens. However, it's wrong for women to turn themselves into objects, and it's wrong for men to look at them like they are objects. He concludes with his personal idea: that there is desire in his genes and women all around him, and his responsibility is to look at women the way they deserve to be looked at.
Works Cited:
Sanders, Scott Russel. "Looking At Women." The Norton Reader: an anthology
of expository prose. 'Comp'. Linda H. Peterson et. al. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. Print.

On "Looking at Women"

How does Scott Russell Sanders use cause and effect analysis to get his perspective across in "Looking at Women"? That's an interesting question, you see, because I don't know. To answer this question you first have to ask, "What is Sanders' purpose/perspective?". Well, Sanders is, in a sense, trying to answer the question of, "How should men look at women?". The problem for readers is that his essay doesn't answer the question with a clear and direct answer, which is okay for such an open ended question. Sanders instead describes how men look at women then answers why they look at women. He also describes what women think of men looking at them and how it further effects their actions. The causes and effects that he provides illustrate the problem that men looking at women are causing women to feel like objects or pieces of meat; makes them what to become like pieces of art or toys for men to play with. Showing the effects of looking at women answers the question of, "How should men look at women?". The rest is up o the readers discretion. If they believe the effects are wrong then they will find the answer to be that men should not look at women the way that they do so now.