Voice Post- Whitney Carlson Edition
Whitney Carlson and her husband, Scott Carlson run a website called He & She EAT CLEAN in which both individuals write blogs concerning topics such as body image, hiking, finance, and minimalism just to name a few. For my post this week Muscle Milk bros and cardio bunnies I will be talking about Whitney Carlson’s blog post on body image in terms of her the tone of voice that she portrays to readers like you and me.
After reading two of Whitney’s many blog posts I felt that her overall tone throughout both of her blogs was one that was very personable and honest. I feel that her main idea within her blog posts is to just be herself, say what she’s thinking without caring about what you or I think, and to just discuss body image in a relatable way that allows her to connect with readers on a somewhat deeper level.
In her blog post, How Getting Into Fitness Gave Me a Negative Body Image, Whitney discusses the evolution of how she went from not caring about her weight or looks to suffering from severe social physique anxiety.
Right from the get go we can tell that she is super sensitive when it comes to this topic. You can sense the consistent hesitation in her writing when discussing how negative body image affects her life through her consistent use of “…” as is seen in an example below.
“Most people probably don’t know this but ever since a few years ago I’ve struggled with body image issues. I’ve shared bits and pieces but not the whole story until now…”
Similarly, Whitney also consistently demonstrates the action of undermining herself and/or illustrating an extreme lack of self confidence and esteem through her use of air quotes as is demonstrated in the two passages underneath.
“I posted the picture below but no one knew I had a shirt on because of the “fat” around my hips…”
“The first year and a half that I was “into” fitness was AMAZING and I never had negative body image issues.”
In that last passage you may have noticed that Whitney capitalized a random word that in proper grammar that one would expect to illustrate regularly for like say a Writ 340 course this expression would be frowned upon. However, Whitney utilizes this random capitalization in order to in order to portray the component of her personality that likes to exaggerate and emphasize things that she finds important or serious as much as possible. For instance, in this quote “I STILL haven’t weighed myself since June 2014 (after ending my “scale project”) because I know that will make it worse”, Whitney clearly shows the reader that she is just like any other person dealing with severe social physique anxiety. She is portraying how afraid, concerned, cautious, apprehensive, and fearful she is to the reader in the hopes that they can help her as well as she helps a reader who also has severe social physique anxiety in the hopes of helping them get through their struggles.
Along with all of these components of voice Whitney lastly within this blog utilizes the medium of bold lettering to portray seriousness and negative feelings concerning having a negative body image of herself. In the line “But now I struggle with this EVERY SINGLE DAY” this illustrates how distraught she’s has become due to dealing with severe social physique anxiety everyday all day of her life, as well as places the seriousness concerning the issue of negative body image in general.
Just as all of these aspects of voice are portrayed through Whitney’s first blog these and other techniques of voice can similarly be found within another one of her blogs called Body Image Ramblings…
In this post one technique she incorporates within her writing pretty frequently are slang words. She inserts slang for multiple topics such as body image through words like “dream body” and fitness through words like “fitness world” or “lean out”. By utilizing slang Whitney conveys a voice that is very personable and conversational, as if she is currently in front of me talking to me about her life (which she isn’t by the way if you were wondering). She also incorporates slang overall in this specific post to briefly talk about her negative body image struggles and largely about how irrational and dangerous all of the social pressures within the “fitness world” are.
Whitney also incorporates the uses of parenthesis within her blogs as a means to insert her humor throughout her posts. This can be seen in examples such as “(obviously)” and “(sometimes, haha)”. This use of parenthesis conveys how even though a majority of Whitney’s negative body image posts are written in a personable tone yet incorporate at times negative phrases, that she is still a comedic young woman who isn’t going to let severe social physique anxiety keep her happiness completely down.
In short my Muscle Milk bros and cardio bunnies we can see from these two blog posts that Whitney Carlson is a down to earth, funny, stern, and honest blogger who struggles with a negative mindset of having a high level of social physique anxiety and negative body image view of herself.
