Department of Rhetoric and Writing

The University of Texas at Austin

“Kids These Days”: The Not-at-all New Phenomenon of Fashionable Childhood Sexualization

Last year, when Miley Cyrus gave us this delight:
Miley VMA
Image Credit: Mirror
the interwebs exploded with home critics—often sloppy analyses of Cyrus’s performance, rife with moral judgment and fear for the future. The outrage regards not whether the singer is talented, or whether her show was successful, but over her behavior, and, especially, her clothing.

"Most Adorable Accessory": Celebrity Kid Fashion

Apparently, Kim Karshasian and Kanye West dragged their toddler to Fashion Week. The dubious wisdom of doing such a thing is beyond the scope of this post—North West’s misery has already been catalogued.
North Squirming
Image Credit: Gawker

Underwear, Public Fitness, and the (Dubious) Progress of #aerieREAL

I’m going to take it as an assumption that in any thorough discussion of fitness, we’re also inevitably going to talk about body image. Lately, when I’m thinking about fitness and body image, I am unsurprisingly (and, perhaps unoriginally) drawn to underwear. I am not the first to write about a connection between underwear advertisement and fitness complexes. There’s even a meme that highlights the absurdity of underwear advertising:
Womens Mens Underwear Ads
Image Credit: WeKnowMemes

Marshawn's Mask, Extreme Fitness, and the Economy

Marshawn Lynch in a multicolored high-altitude breathing mask.

Image Credit: SI.com

In a sport known for its trash talk, boastfulness, and elaborately arcane jargon, Marshawn Lynch’s mouth is the exception. Whether wearing a distinctive mask or remaining taciturn in interviews, one of the world’s greatest rushers has made a name for himself precisely be keeping his mouth closed. This reticence—as well as his resultant struggles with the NFL powers-that-be—that makes him a fascinating icon of our current trust in fitness as a source of security in a very economically uncertain time. 

Fitness Trackers and Carrot-and-Stick Motivation

This is not an ad.

It is, however, a shameless account of my fixation on the Jawbone UP24 fitness app. I'll admit, I love data, especially highly specific digital data. Admittedly, some of my organizational tendencies are old-school. Every day, I make a note card filled with every single thing I'll do in the next twenty-four hours, including "drink 3/4 gallon of water" and "exercise." I'm not sure why I like the note cards in spite of my plethora of technology--all of which is capable of organizing and replicating my to-do lists. I think maybe I fetishize the documentation of it. I really like running a nice line through each of my tasks. The actual exercise from the list, though, I need to be as techy as possible. I want records of my heart rate, my sleep cycles, my weight training routines. And I want them to be pretty.

So a little over a year ago, while recovering from spinal surgery, I bought an UP24. For anyone who isn't familiar with fitness wearables, I give you the UP:

Jawbone Up

Image Credit: Jawbone 

Remembering Jim Wiedner

Before starting up for the spring semester, we would like to take a moment to remember Jim Wiedner. Those of us on the viz. team had the privilege of working with Jim both on the blog and in the Digital Writing and Research Lab. In every writer’s meeting, Jim was always incredibly kind and thoughtful to each of us. We'll miss viz.'s “Resident Dude”—as both a colleague and a friend. We hope the posts below give you a sense of the Jim we knew: a funny, sharp, and well-dressed guy a heart of gold. Read more about Remembering Jim Wiedner

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The Super Bowl, Visual Rhetoric, and Marshawn's Mask

Note: the following blog was slated to be published last week, but due to technical difficulties got pushed back a week. While I considered going with more topical material this week, I decided ultimately that it would be tragic if the Viz blog ignored the wonders of Left Shark, not to mention Marshawn Lynch's ironic relation to the culture of extreme fitness.

  Read more about The Super Bowl, Visual Rhetoric, and Marshawn's Mask

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