To Watch The Faces Of The Poor Summary

“Identity” can be seen as a person’s conception of themselves, however, it is becoming more prominent to define “identity” in a social way or how people express themselves based on the demand for acceptance by others. Chris Cunningham, in “To Watch the Faces of the Poor”: Life Magazine and the Mythology of Rural Poverty in the Great Depression”, details the desire for middle-class citizens to be viewed as or compared to “the pioneer” due to the positive reputation given by the media. Cunningham describes the effects of labeling through the changing attitudes of citizens towards each other once they were segregated into socio-cultural groups. Tom Delph-Janiurek takes an innovative look at the masculine-feminine discrepancies in “Sounding Gender(ed):

Delph-Janiurek examines to what extent the relationship between voice quality and personality traits are interrelated. He accepts and expands on the notion that “characteristics of voices and notions of identity are very closely connected” by arguing, “voices are used to perform gendered and sexualized identities.” Delph-Janiurek claims that a person’s voice and thus, identity, can be classified under stereotypical gender cues that allow others to be aware of how a female or a male voice should be expected to sounds like according to the “gendered dualism of voices.” That is, a women’s voice should sound feminine with a higher pitch, wider range, and is associated with emotion, whereas, a man’s voice should sound masculine with a lower pitch, narrower range, and is associated with logic and power. However, Delph-Janiurek does not end his argument there, he suggests that one’s personality depends on their voice which varies

Cunningham illustrates identity as being the expectation of reader’s of Life Magazine to be compatible and suitable with the “identities” given by Life Magazine in order to fit into a category. Identity, in Cunningham’s view, is a classification of people that encompass a specific description that is created to distinguish or “identify” one person from another. In Cunningham’s opinion, identity is something that goes unchanged or fixed. Likewise, once Life Magazine established someone as a “New Pioneer”, “white trash”, or a “Negro”, it is inescapable, unavoidable, and unpreventable to be viewed in any other way. For Tom Delph-Janiurek, however, identity expression is controlled given a specific audience and place. According to Delph-Janiurek, women’s voices have the ability to attract attention that is, soft and comforting as carers for children and assertive and logical by lowering the pitch of their voices when giving a presentation in front of a group of men. In the same way, a man’s voice is moderated to avoid sounding feminine or emotional as well as, to sound “cool” in order to come across masculine to