Ethos Pathos Logos in Bare in Mind
The article “Bare in Mind”, by Rick Reilly, effectively argues women that are in sports shouldn’t pose for nude pictures. Reilly uses strong Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, by building his credibility with convincing facts, reasons, and successfully made use of emotional appeals to his readers.
In this article, Reilly uses other people’s statements that settle his credibility and appeal to ethos. He uses Ethos by stating his credibility. In the article, it talks about how people are upset at Thompson for posing for nude. Reilly gives the Women’s Sports Foundation(WSF) a chance for them to give their opinions. “When you’ve spent half of your life looking down at the line at the bottom of the pool-and you’ve given up everything -it’s incongruent to take that body and use it for sex”(Reilly).
Including the statement of the WSF, helps Reilly’s credibility by letting the other side have the rights to give their opinions. WSF states that people should put to use something that they’ve worked so hard for. He uses ethos by giving the WSF the rights to speak about the picture, which helps boosts up the credibility.
Adding to his appeal of ethos, Reilly successfully makes an appeal to Pathos throughout the article. The article is filled with emotional words, and stages that creates a supportive image. “What a load of hypocrites”(Reilly). Right of a way a person can sense how that person is feeling. Reilly gives an example stating that “ Lance Armstrong, Dan O’Brien and Ricky Williams have all posed for nude, and I don’t remember de Varona rushing around trying to get them to put on a towel”(Reilly).
The person stating this is furious because all those men have posed for nude and nobody seemed to complain about it, but when Thompson posed for nude, everybody seemed to think that it was inappropriate or the picture send a message to the people. Reilly supports Thompson just like the men. His goal is to make his readers see the characters emotions. The feeling of anger that the person has towards the men is what makes the readers sympathize with the person who is angry, which appeals to Pathos.
Along with strong Pathos, Reilly uses strong logos, with so many facts. “ the Australian women’s soccer team and Katarina Witt and Brandi Chastain and 12 women U.S. track and field athletes, including middle-distance runner Nnenna Lynch and high jumpers Amy Acuff and Tisha Waller, and plenty others have posed in the buff”(Reilly). He points out facts about the women’s soccer team and also includes so many other people that prove that they all posed for nude once, and how they weren’t trying to be “hung up about getting liberated”(Reilly).
Reilly adds more facts about what they do for a living. “ Thompson is heading for medical school. Lynch is a Rhodes scholar. Waller is a churchgoing former elementary school teacher”( Reilly). By adding those facts, it supports that there are so many other people out there that are just like Thompson. The facts build an appeal to Logos and impress the reader that Thompson is not the only person who does what she does.
Overall, Reilly uses good writing in his article, good writing is when you are writing to an audience for some kind of reason. Reilly expresses other people’s thoughts confidently in his article. Depending firstly on his great pathos, Reilly also uses the ethos and pathos appeal to be certain that the message for the picture will appeal to the readers.
