Who Am I?

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It is often said that the first thing to go as we get older is our sight. On the other hand, it is also often said that we get wiser with age. It would therefore seem that what we see when we are younger becomes the knowledge that we have when we are older.

I recently received my first issue of GQ magazine and I began to look for any interesting articles and I came across a very amusing one. It was called "On Buying Tampons"i by Elwood Reid. Ordinarily, I would never look at an article with the word "tampons" in the title simply because I have no interest in them, but Reid must have known that a simple cartoon sketch would catch my attention. The picture shows a man who is receiving odd looks from a bunch of men while purchasing an oversized box of tampons. We gather from the caption, that the point of the article was to let men know that they should stop worrying when buying products such as tampons because people obviously know that they are for a wife or girlfriend.

If I had only looked at the sketch and neglected to read the caption, I would never have known the truth behind the sketch. The caption gave me depth into the topic and dispelled any notions I might have conceived about the picture. This is because seeing is superficial. Seeing only allows us to get to the surface of a subject. If we stop there, we can never find meaning or purpose.

It has become obvious to advertisers that we are very visual people. Although we respond to demonstrations of subtleties such as a flirty smile, it is generally the displays of intensity that first grab our attention. Now I am sure that there is some biological / scientific reason that can prove this fact, but I think the advertisements for Victoria's Secrete a...

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...d the truth? I do not think that you can, because I have known myself all my life and sometimes even I do not know.

Works Cited:

i Elwood Reid - On Buying Tampons, Gentlemen's Quarterly (GQ), February 1999, p104-106

ii Moses Maimonides - On the Limits of Man's Intellect from A World of Ideas - Essential Readings for College Readers, Lee A. Jacobus, Bedford Books, 1998, 1849(289 -303)

iii Howard Gardner - A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences from A World of Ideas - Essential Readings for College Readers, Lee A. Jacobus, Bedford Books, 1998, 1993(353 - 370)

iv Percy Sledge - When a Man Loves a Women Calvin Lewis / Andrew Wright, Atlantic, 1966

v Prince - If I was your Girlfriend, Prince from Sign 'O' the Times, Warner Bros., 1987

vi Prince - The Hits / The B-Sides(Inside Booklet) Alan Leeds, Warner Bros., 1993

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