Russell s TED Talk about Real Value and Modeling

“Looks Aren’t Everything”

The speech by Russell has a very persuasive thesis because it begins with this beautiful model telling the audience that looks are not everything and that the audience should believe her because she, after all, is a model and knows what she is talking about. Everyone in the audience is probably thinking how great it would be to look like a model, but Russell explains that when you’re a model you are insecure all the time and you aren’t able to be taken seriously in any other line of work. So she challenges the audience to look beyond “looks” and she does this by giving a sense of the reality of what it is like to be a model and how what is captured and air-brushed on the screen is a false image—it is not reality or a real reflection of the person who is modeling.

The speech is organized thematically. It revolved around questions Russell is usually asked about what it is like to be a model while dancing in between “confessions” about modeling—how phony it is, how insecure models can be, and how won gets to be a model. It weaves these themes together in a very playful way, eliciting a lot of laughs, which comes naturally enough as Russell has good comedic timing and a natural gracefulness on the stage. She is bright and humorous and engaging.

She uses vivid language in the sense that it is very colloquial and sounds just like the way real people talk. It is not polished or practiced, just authentic, and that is supportive of her overall point—that she is a real person—more real than the images that people see of her, which are not she really. So language is used in the speech to convey that sense of realism, and it is vividly done because it is language that we are all used to and that we all enjoy. For example, the story about her friend “running a red” is one that everyone can relate to (Russell).

Russell persuades the audience basically by being herself, which is very lovely and probably the most persuasive approach possible: “The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity” (Ziglar). She is doing what Ziglar recommends—being her authentic self. And it works to underscore her point, which is that her picture on screens is not authentic. It is just an image that is manipulated. She, however, is a real person and that is why she has value. All people have value because all people are authentic human beings. It is just sometimes lost on them that they have authenticity.