In the essay “Lean In: What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid” Sheryl Sandberg takes the gender equality topic head on. Sandberg starts off the essay with her grandmother’s life story. From there she uses examples spanning from birth names to career paths to everyday examples of gender segregation in our surrounding world. She targets her audience as not just trying to be empowering to women but to also bring the topic to the light for men. Through her eye opening examples, Sandberg effectively establishes a basic understanding of gender stereotypes for her audience, then supports her claim of standing up to gender stereotypes by using examples with emotion, ethics, and logic. One of the ways Sandberg supports her claim is through logos.
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She does this impressively by appealing to both sides of the emotional spectrum. First off, she appeals to our sympathetic emotions by talking about her first attempt at marriage. Sandberg starts off with a happy story about her being fresh out of college and moving to a new city hoping for a nice husband, then ends the story with, “I was just not mature enough to have made this lifelong decision, and the relationship quickly unraveled. By the age of 25, I had managed to get married... and also divorced. At the time, this felt like a massive personal and public failure.” (649) This appeals to our sympathetic emotions, because just through the use of the word failure, it brings the overall mood down with much more impact than a word like disappointment. Everyone has at least felt the feeling of failure at something, therefore Sandberg uses it to connect her views with the views of the audience. On the other hand she uses a comical example from her childhood and how before her parents left on a trip, Sandberg says, “... [Sandberg] protested, ‘Now I have to take care of David and Michelle and Grandma and Grandpa too. It's not fair!’ Everyone laughed even louder.” (651) This appeals to our comical emotions because the audience is pretty sure that old grandma and grandpa can take care of themselves but
She does this impressively by appealing to both sides of the emotional spectrum. First off, she appeals to our sympathetic emotions by talking about her first attempt at marriage. Sandberg starts off with a happy story about her being fresh out of college and moving to a new city hoping for a nice husband, then ends the story with, “I was just not mature enough to have made this lifelong decision, and the relationship quickly unraveled. By the age of 25, I had managed to get married... and also divorced. At the time, this felt like a massive personal and public failure.” (649) This appeals to our sympathetic emotions, because just through the use of the word failure, it brings the overall mood down with much more impact than a word like disappointment. Everyone has at least felt the feeling of failure at something, therefore Sandberg uses it to connect her views with the views of the audience. On the other hand she uses a comical example from her childhood and how before her parents left on a trip, Sandberg says, “... [Sandberg] protested, ‘Now I have to take care of David and Michelle and Grandma and Grandpa too. It's not fair!’ Everyone laughed even louder.” (651) This appeals to our comical emotions because the audience is pretty sure that old grandma and grandpa can take care of themselves but