Chicken Feed Dresses and Fast Fashion

Rebecca Onion writes her Slate article as a linear piece of history with its sources being easily accessible but not prioritized. She writes it in a confined, almost purely informational structure, starting with the origins of the chicken feed fabric and ending with its societal meaning. The information is given neutral historical tone, and an academic journal is the primary source for the article. Onion’s academic tone addresses the audience as impersonal students. Onion’s article is short enough to get her point across and for her point to be easily understood. It ends up sounding like a portion of a high school history textbook, which doesn’t sound interesting, but because of its easy reading level and the fact that it is short, accessible print on the web makes its audience quite varied. When the audience is this varied keeping the sources simple makes sense. This differs entirely from the “Stuff Mom Never Told You” episode focused on Fast Fashion. Both hosts intent is to entertain their listeners for an hour. This means that the academic tone needs to be switched out for something a bit more entertaining. Cristen and Caroline bring a conversational tone to their information, presenting sources not as proof of knowledge but more so an addition to an unfolding conversation. The podcast’s use of sources is far far more expansive Onion’s article, but it makes sense as their episode topic is also expansive. They move throughout topics with intention, while maintaining a casual tone. Because it’s a podcast the audience tends to be more involved,  in fact Cristen and Caroline both deliver sources as if their educating each other, not even the audience. The audience isn’t assaulted with sources and facts, they get information while listening to two interesting women talk about a topic. The fact that they are extremely relatable storytellers also allows for the audience to receive gallons of facts without getting overwhelmed or bored, they sound interesting and relatable, therefore the information seems more appealing.