Retorical Response

In response to the reading “The Biography of Blake Stone” I felt a connection to the narrative. I feel that I can connect personally to the alter ego of Blake Stone. There were times in my own life when I felt insecure and I wished I could be like all the athletes on TV. When I was younger I wished I could be taller and that I could be a better basketball player. In the text, the author speaks of Blake Stone as a man with “piercing blue slate eyes and black hair that gleamed”. Blake Stone was the alter ego that all men wish they could be. All guys dream of being that soap opera character with the washboard abs and the “full year body tan”. As the author becomes more and more like his alter ego he loses apart of himself. In the chat room he is a college student at Stanford when in reality he is a pudgy pubescent boy from Odessa, Texas. Many times in life we lose ourselves when we try to be something we are not. The character in the story becomes a man who drinks martinis and dances gracefully along the ballroom floor. There have been times in my life when I have compromised who I am in order to fit in with a new group of people. When I first arrived at TCU, I wanted to prove to the basketball team that I could play and that I was more than my short stature. During the summer workouts and pickup games I was constantly working harder than my teammates around me. I would stay late and come early. There were days when I felt like my body could not take it anymore but I had to prove not only to the other players and coaching staff but to myself that I was worth signing. When we try to be things that we are not we lose ourselves and we lose those around us. We become people that others do not recognize.

Having an anonymous alter ego online can be fun and exciting. But it can also be dangerous and heartbreaking. In the text, when Stone learns of CalanderGAL’s true identity he is shocked. When she was online, she was a young nurse from Atlanta with long raven colored hair who wore a black cocktail dress that accentuated her voluptuous curves. She made vodka martinis and sang “Unchained Melody”. In the eyes of Stone, she was the perfect woman. In reality, she was a thirty year old woman who was overweight and unattractive. She had low self esteem which led her to create her alter ago. In today’s society, one must be beautiful to be accepted. CalanderGAL was not accepted in society and men did not find her attractive so she was desperate for attention. The use of online alter-egos allows for even the most unattractive people to become beautiful online. In the case of the author, he transformed from a pudgy fifth grader to a suave and debonair young man. In the chat room, he was the man that all the women wanted and the man that all men were secretly envious of. A theme of accepting yourself for who you is prevalent in the conclusion of the text.

The question that I was constantly asking myself while reading the text was why people care so much about how others see them. Magazines are constantly telling women that they have to be thin and that men are supposed to be buff and tan. They also state that men are supposed to be athletic like Lebron James in order to be successful on the court. In reality, most men are not buff and tan. Most men do not have time to go to the gym to work out for hours and hours. There are also very few people who have the athletic prowess like Lebron James. Society focuses on the outer beauty and characteristics that are held by very few individuals. Instead of focusing on athleticism or appearance, people should focus on the character of the person. Instead of talking about how much money a person made, we should talk about their charitable acts or the love they have for their family. When Martin Luther King Jr. made his I Have a Dream speech he stated that he dreams of a land where people are judged by the content of their character and not their appearance. It too is my dream to be judged by the type of person I am and not my appearance.