Rachel Luo
M/W 9:30am-10:45am
9/29/2011
In Spite of Women – Esquire Magazine and the construction of Male Consumer
Rhetorical Analysis One

During early thirties and forties which was right after the depression, government and corporate felt the necessity to revive the market. At that time, people thought women were the ones with dominating consumption powers. As Kenon Breazeale quoted in his article, “Women are indeed the shoppers of the world.” (Breazeale, 231). However, some people such as those in journalism fraternity regarded women’s buying power as “gullible vulnerability to consumerism’s trashy faddishness” (Breazeale, 232). Those people spread wide hostility toward women’s taste and argued that men should be the ones with dominating consumption powers. In this article, Breazeale’s purpose is to make people better understand how some people tried to court man as the main audience in the marketplace under a phenomenon which women were regarded with the major consumption powers.
To better achieve his purpose, Breazeale specifically focused on a male targeted magazine Esquire to analyze how it was constructed to attract male audiences. Breazeale argued that Esquire was the first comprehensive magazine which attempted to manipulate and reconceptualize its audiences and targeted men as consumers. He first discussed how Esquire manipulated text to get rid of femininity factors associated in the market which it planned to open for male readers, by using “lifestyle” sector as an example. In next few paragraphs, Breazeale discussed in detail how Esquire further utilized different illustrations to emphasize men’s dominating position in social roles.

Breazeale first supported his argument that Esquire was trying to reconceptualize its audiences by discussing the magazine’s attempt to detach all those femininity factors associated in the “lifestyle” sector