Deborah Tannen

In Deborah Tannen's piece, "There Is No Unmarked Woman",exemplification is demonstrated in the authors usage of examples.

The Paradigm "There Is No Unmarked Woman"

Within the piece, extensive exemplification is shown from the shoes to the hair styles.  Interesting enough, while the author crafted a carefully written argument contrasting fashion between men and women, pointedly creating a stereotype focused on the sex of an individual alone.  Perhaps the author is sensitive to her audience, or is purposely avoiding other audiences largely due to the complexity that is associated with her examples.  As the paper is written, there is no default audience, what race, or religion, or ethnicity, let alone cultural or social status.  And while the author hints at social standards, there is no clearly defined understanding of what the baseline standard is, but only what the author considers important.  I find it hard to follow a piece when the subject being discussed neither implies a social factor that is inherent to the climate in which I live.  And while my own paradigm may be exclusive to others, it is not so narrow-sighted to exclude the societal awareness of common paradigms.  Surely, this is a subjective view that on its on merits is spitting in the wind.  And one might glean that this rhetoric is nothing more than author-bashing.  And you would be right.  However, the other component missing in Deborah's piece is the scope to which "There Is No Unmarked Woman" attempts to draw a distinction.  Is this title appropriate to reflect the theme, or is it a cleverly crafted diversion to distract the reader away from the critical audiences, such as myself.  Knowing this is a possibility, I would be more inclined to entertain this piece had the author incorporated the underpinnings that society also considers.  Could the reader also draw the conclusion that the author is sexist?  The point that the author draws the conclusion that men are 'unmarked', is a pure example of sexism.  I would argue that women, and men alike, are fashion-driven, and to say that only women wear this label can be construed as narrow-minded by my constituent men-folk.  Aside from the paradigm "There Is No Unmarked Woman", I would argue that there is no unmarked man.