Andrew Meacham's Article: Men Have Issues With Body Image

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Andrew Meacham's article "men have issues with body image" was published in the magazine Tampa Bay Times in 2017. This article aims to create awareness that men, and not women alone, do harbor self-image issues concerning their bodies. Obesity or gaining too much weight is not a gender-related problem, but a health and personal problem. The author uses personal experiences to show his struggle with body size and his attempt to perform exercises with hope to reduce weight and become fit. Furthermore, the article touches on the health aspects that relate to gaining too much weight. Meacham highlights that eating disorder is one of the main causes of accumulation of fat in the body because the body craves for foods that negatively affect health, …show more content…

The sources include the Current Psychiatry Reports and the Mayo Clinic. Citing these sources significantly boosts the integrity of the Meacham article. It also shows that he has conducted extensive research and offered expert’s perspective to support his claims and provided factual information as well as statistics. Furthermore, the use of personal examples from his life experiences in introducing and supporting the claim demonstrates to the readers that he has first-hand experience with body weight and, therefore, he understands their struggles and needs (Meacham, …show more content…

In his introduction, he makes use of emotionally-charged arguments and phrases that develop a sympathetic image. Meacham states that "my unwillingness to engage in discussing my body made me become antisocial (Meacham, n.p). The use of graphic images effectively persuades the reader to view things from the perspective of the author, who is the victim. One can feel the emotional torture of Meacham having considering using suspenders while they had bee n out of fashion for more than 100 years. The image Meacham evokes the struggles and vulnerabilities of being overweight as well as the emotional traumas of the situation. This perspective effectively introduces his claims and a high degree of seriousness. The goal here is to enlighten the readers, motivate and encourage those that are experiencing overweight issues. Additionally, using phrases like ‘yo-yo’ evokes negative emotions about the obese body (Meacham, n.p). This makes the readers sympathize with men who are

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