“Be a Lady They Said”

“Be a Lady They Said” is a feminist video that has recently gone viral. The video is intense, and it deals with the unnecessary social sexist pressures women face every day. American actress Cynthia Nixon discusses the phrases and comments that women listen to and put up with daily about how they must be and about how they must behave to fit into society. The primary purpose of this video is to have the face of an influential activist call out the ridiculous expectations women deal with when it comes to beauty, their bodies, and behavior. In this video, it calls out the impossible standards women are told to aspire to, and how often those standards contradict each other. In this short film, it leaves behind such a shocking and robust feeling with the viewer; through its intense rhetorical devices, images, and tone of voice– it will have you question what it is to be a woman.

This video is alarmingly powerful and reveals the overwhelming pressures that come with being a woman. The narration is combined with grim, menacing music and images from advertisements, movies, TV, and photographs from Girls Girls Girls magazine. It also features Rachel McAdams’s famous magazine cover wearing a breast pump. This video is essential, compelling, and worth the watch mainly because watching it will force you to think. The narrative tone is matter-of-fact and everything that is said contradicts one another. Later I will be analyzing the rhetorical devices that were used that stood out to me the most. Such as: anaphoras, persuasion, enumerations, repetition, rhetorical questions, etc. 

The condescending tone behind “Just be a lady” makes it seem as though being a “lady” is simple, that standards are easy to uphold if you just conform to society’s demands. Standards are easy to uphold if you just conform to society’s demands. Personally, I find the word “Lady” belittling. Typically when someone says, “Be a lady,” they mean to be polite, look presentable, and keep quiet. I say screw that. Be loud, be strong, wear what you want, do what you love, embrace your sexuality, nurture your body. This video is alarmingly powerful and reveals the overwhelming pressures that come with being a woman. The narration is combined with grim, menacing music and images from advertisements, movies, TV, and photographs from Girls Girls Girls magazine. It also features Rachel McAdams’s famous magazine cover wearing a breast pump. This video is significant, compelling, and worth the watch primarily because watching it will force you to think.

 I believe the target audience that the author is addressing is mainly women who are struggling in society to confine themselves to extreme norms to “be a lady.” Another target audience is the media (such as magazines, advertisements, movies, etc.) The audience will affect the author’s initial argument because the author is trying to voice how the media plays a crucial role in the stress women endeavor of having to act like a proper lady. Women specifically affect the author’s initial argument because she is trying to make aware of the phrases and comments that women listen to and put up with daily about how they must be and how they must behave to fit into society well. In essence, women can learn not to listen to those words and to be beautiful in their own skin. 

 The narrator uses a particular tone of voice when delivering this poem. As well as the alarming pictures to show the harsh conditions women are forced to do and how they need to behave. The poem has very contradicting sentences such as using words like do not do this and do not do that, but do this. Furthermore, the ‘this’ part contradicts the don’ts. The poem was describing all the ridiculous expectations women everywhere deal with when it comes to beauty, their bodies, and their behaviors. Using repetitive words and always pausing and saying “be a lady they said,” really impacts the reader and how the message resonates with them afterward. 

Suffocating judgments on a top and skirt being ‘too short’ are clamped with forcing a lady to be ‘sexy,’ but not provocative. With lines conveying that ‘men have needs’ and ‘men cannot resist themselves,’ a woman is stripped of her own personal choices. This kaleidoscopic video venture jumps into food habits, and each sentence is its former’s contradiction. A trap is weaved rapidly, and the listener’s thought of a solution is smothered by the next obligation. ‘Eat up,’ ‘slim down,’ ‘order a salad,’ ‘you look like a skeleton,’ and ‘men like women with some meat on their bones’ come rapidly – and the audience gets no chance to think for itself. It is thus a very apt portrayal of the ways the society can press down on a lady, offering no escape, no peace. 

 Some rhetorical devices used in “Be a Lady They Said,” is anaphora, enumeration, simile, persuasion, pathos, logos, and ethos. An anaphora is when a specific word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of clauses or sentences that follow each other; for example: “don’t,” “cover,” “wear,” and “be.” An enumeration is used to detail how to be a lady for a man properly: which entailed, “remove your body hair, bleach this, bleach that, eradicate your scars, cover your stretch marks, plump your lips, botox your wrinkles, lift your face, tuck your tummy, perk up your boobs…” A simile is used to insult or depreciate a women’s esteem. When the narrator says: “you look like you’ve let yourself go,” and “God, you look like a skeleton.” 

 ‘Be a size zero, be a double zero, be nothing, be less than nothing,’ is one of the strongest sentences in this video, complete with an ECG machine’s continuous beep in the background. It also focuses on the pressures the society supposes it is at liberty to exert on women. The commercialization of Botox, ‘tucking the tummy,’ removal of bodily hair, plumping lips, removing stretch marks, and scars are forced alongside the compulsion to look natural. It is said that men do not like women who try too hard now, do they? It becomes the society it condemns, forces you to ‘feel’ by stealing each emotion, and asks you to be a human by letting go of each drop of humanity.

 One of the most powerful tips on being persuasive in a rhetorical piece is making the audience feel. In this video, it leaves you with a shocking and silent view on how women are forced to live up to these ‘perfect’ standards. Rhetoric is the study and art of writing and speaking well, being persuasive, and knowing how to compose successful writing and presentations. In the video “Be a Lady They Said,” it prompts the viewers to invest emotionally and personally into the topic of women and captures their attention to acknowledge them about the crucial standards.