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Alynah Orozco
Mrs.Kennedy
AP Language
20 September 2018
Cinderella ate my daughter rhetorical device essay
Peggy Orenstein , author of Cinderella Ate my Daughter, goes into depth explaining how
young girls are influenced into a certain stereotype and then investigates the influences on
gender-based stereotypes and how they affect young girls and their self-esteem at such a young
age. Throughout Orenstein’s novel, she continues to question why at such a young age, girls are
exposed to gender bias and are pressured into liking certain things based off of their gender.
Orenstein is able to prove her understandings of young girls and the huge influences on them by
the use of anaphora, tone, diction, hyperbole, and hypophora.
Orenstein is able to explain her reasoning by using anaphora throughout her novel. “It
was like when i was a kid… we did not dress head to toe in pink. We did not have our own
miniature high heels.” Orenstein is able to use anaphora in the following sentence to emphasise
that as a child she was not influenced to wear a certain color because of her gender nor dress a
certain way either. She also had mentioned how during her young ages it was a time when
“feminism was still a mere twinkle in our mothers’ eyes” but still she was not pressured to
change to a certain way to meet society's standards for a young girl. Orenstein goes on to say
“An indication that girls could celebrate their predilection for pink without compromising
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strength or ambition.” she says this because she is trying to not read so much into certain things
and sometimes things are just as they say/look to seem without trying to demean them.
Throughout the novel, Orenstein's tone played a big role and with her tone, you were
able to really understand with her views on gender bias at young girls ages. “Where was i to
understand the new culture of little girls, from toddler to “tween,” to help decipher the potential
impact if any - of the images and ideas they were absorbing about who they should be, what they
should buy, what made them girls? “ Just by the following quote, you can see how Orenstein is
confused by the fact at what really makes a girl, a girl? She wants to understand why and how
people form these gender-biased opinions on what certain things truly make a girl. That society
has made such an impact on what the “standard” girl should be seen as. Orenstein continues on
by mentioning princess such as by saying “Was walking around town dressed as jasmine
harmless fun, or did it instill an unhealthy fixation on appearance?” Orenstein's tone in the
following quote conveys a lot of questioning and concern about if a young girl dressed as
Jasmine is harmless or an unhealthy fixation on their appearance. Throughout the novel,
Orenstein's tone is mainly questioning and her curiosity of gender bias and the effects it has on
young girls.
Diction happens to play a big role in Orenstein's novel as well, by using words intended
to clarify ...
