A Woman's Relationship with Food Reflection

            In my blog post “A Woman’s Relationship with Food,” I really enjoyed the topic about which I wrote, and I had many points I wanted to make in the post. However, I struggled with the structure of my piece in my first draft, and I ended up not going into as much detail as I wanted. This caused my thesis to be under-supported and for my argument to be a little hard to follow.

As you can see in the screenshot above of my first draft, I ended up splitting my personal anecdote up into two different paragraphs, which made it not as effective. However, in my second draft, I was able to organize my ideas better and elaborate on them more. I started by saying that “society expects women to uphold impossible standards, especially in regards to our bodies,” which shows my overarching theme. After elaborating on that for a sentence or two, I state my thesis that this impossible body standard “causes women to have a love-hate relationship with food,” which I then elaborated on in the next few sentences. After stating my thesis and my reasoning behind it, I then started a new paragraph where I discuss my personal anecdote about my personal relationship with food and how gymnastics impacted this relationship. Through this blog post and through the process of revising it, I learned the importance of regarding writing as a process, the third outcome of the course. To do this, I had to take into account the revisions Ms. Li had, and I also had to reevaluate and reanalyze what I wanted to say and how I could say it in a more efficient manner. This involved reorganization of the blog post and going into more detail, so I had better evidence to support my thesis.

Revised Blog Post on a Woman's Relationship with Food

Society expects women to uphold impossible standards, especially in regards to our bodies. Although our expectations are currently shifting away from the idea that women need to be impossibly thin, women still feel pressure to be just thin enough while also being curvy in the right places. This causes women to have a love-hate relationship with food: many women love to eat, like me, but the pressure to obtain this perfect body that resembles a model generates loads of stress about what to eat, what not to eat, and how much to eat. This causes any woman, ranging from girls in their tween years to adults, to try crazy diet trends, to do crazy workout trends, and to create unhealthy eating habits that could cause permanent harm, physically and mentally.

Being a gymnast for nine years, I never really thought about what I ate since I worked out for four hours a day. Even though my friends would fret about what they consumed, I never concerned myself with the idea for too long since I knew I would be back in the gym soon. However, this changed once I quit after ninth grade. After I quit, I regularly heard the saying that gymnasts are the athletes that always gain the most weight after they finish their careers from trainers at my school, ex-gymnasts, and my ex-coaches. Not only did my mom constantly remind me to be careful what I ate, but also I suddenly became aware of how much my friends would eat during lunch at school or when we would go out to for dinner or dessert. This sudden shift in my life finally made my cognizant of what the rest of the non-gymnast women population thinks and feels in regards to food. I finally understood the hate part of a woman’s love-hate relationship with food.  
Original Post: http://bcalkins2020.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-womans-relationship-with-food.html

Proust Blog Post

            A madeleine, while called a cookie by Proust, is actually a sponge cake made in a special baking pan which causes it to have a unique shell shape. While it is compared to a sponge cake, it uses a batter that is lighter, called génoise cake batter. Often, nuts, especially almonds, and a lemon or lime flavoring is added to the batter, and through this one-of-a-kind taste and shape, suddenly a memory can “[reveal] itself” by simply taking a single bite of this cake. In an excerpt from Proust, the taste of it again after many years causes the narrator to remember the “lime-blossom which [his] aunt used to give [him].” This memory came from a “dead moment” but resurfaced many emotions and memories. From this bite, he begins to vividly remember how “richly sensual” the madeleines from his aunt were. These descriptions from the excerpt shows the power that food has over people and memories. A comfort food can be considered a comfort food because the dish has the ability to connect you to pleasant memories and feelings of happiness. For this reason, eating a comfort food is an extremely personal moment, and it is exactly what the readers see unfold with the narrator.

Fearful for Finals Pie

            Before today, I was already stressed about everything I have during finals week: a Spanish exam, biology exam, chemistry exam, English final portfolio, food blog, and a biography project is a lot to do. However, sitting in health class this morning, I realize I have two presentations, one for my health class and one on my final biography project for my freshman seminar, and my biology lab practical and exam all in one day right after Thanksgiving break is over. An overwhelming feeling of stress comes over me as that realization dawns on me, and suddenly all I crave is sweet, luscious, comforting Nutella to calm my nerves. All of the sudden, a new pie comes to me. I’m calling it Fearful for Finals Pie. It’s a pie with a graham cracker crust filled with indulgent Nutella and topped with sliced bananas, made especially for any stress-eater about to go through anxious times during exams.