Assimilation

In "Fish Cheeks," Amy Tan suggests that immigrants need to remain true to themselves by being proud of their culture. The Asian narrator, because she wants to impress a white boy, is ashamed of the Chinese food that is being served to him. Looking back, she believes believes being proud of the food would have been more true to herself seeing as her mom "had chosen all of her favorite foods" (95.) Tan suggests that complete assimilation is bad, however what she doesn't address directly is the idea that assimilation is imminent for immigrant families. 

Asian's are stereotyped as being smart because their parents generally place more emphasis on education. The more generations an Asian American has been in America, the less likely this is to be true. As they become more American, the original culture slowly disappears. The narrator of "Fish Cheeks" learns to value the culture from her past. However it stands to reason that her children and grandchildren aren't likely to reach the same conclusion. Over generations, the family will blend into the great melting pot. In the context of the story, this feels like a defeat. However I would posit that there's nothing inherent about American Culture that makes it inferior to the Chinese culture of the narrator's parents. Chinese culture is still alive and vibrant in China, the fact that it can't exist for an extended period of time in America makes perfect sense.

Allow me to play you out...

Disability

In Nancy Mair's essay on disability, she comments on the lack of disabled people in advertisement. Mairs proves that though she may have a disability, she still remains "Ms. Great American Consumer" (14.) Part of Mair's claim is that both disabled and non-disabled people need to accept disability as an ordinary part of life; she believes representation in advertising would help accomplish this goal. While adding this representation would be beneficial to disabled that are viewing, it would be a horrible marketing strategy.

Would you rather buy the dog food bought by someone in a wheel chair or someone who was beautiful and perfect in every way? Everybody wants to achieve the inhuman level of perfection they observe in advertisement. The person pouring the food is perfect, I want to be perfect, surely that's the type of dog food for me. Nobody strives to be pouring from a wheel chair.

The advertisement creators have been given a simple choice: fight the good fight, or do their jobs to the best of their ability. They could portray handicapped in their ads and help them be accepted and even accept themselves. However this option would scare ordinary viewers and sales would go down. Ad executives aren't ignorant of the handicapped's struggle. They aren't heartless or indifferent. It's capitalism, pausing for morality or social justice would directly contradict the goal of the ad itself, so there's no place for it. You can't blame advertisements, they're just doing what society wants to see. The problem isn't the media that people are being fed, it's the people themselves.

Allow me to play you out...