1.Ehrlich in her article highlights that the popular view of the cowboys reflected on the advertisement is completely opposite of cowboys’ real characteristics. Instead of being stern, tough, manly, silent, and whatever that describes “the macho, trigger-happy man”, cowboys in fact have tender hearts, possess “resilience, patience, and an instinct for survival”, and are a little bit shy (Ehrlich). The author uses so much ink to depict the details of cowboys. She regards the spontaneous actions of those cowboys to save their animals stuck in difficult situations as selfless courage, “a form of compassion”, which reflects their extreme kindness toward their animals. She claims that the “toughness” of cowboys is their optimism when facing difficult situations. She discusses cowboys’ “androgynous core” that reflects manliness outside and a cute, gentle world inside (Ehrlich). She mentions cowboys’ shyness toward women and girls because of their isolated environment. All the detailed descriptions jeopardize the popular understanding of cowboys as manly, tough, and thrill for danger that “is built on American notions of heroism” (Ehrlich).

2. Ehrlich employs good diction to effectively express her viewpoint that our modern understanding of cowboys is completely wrong. She uses the word “hell-bent”, “perversely”, “pervert” to highlight that the populous view of cowboys are distorted, false understanding about their characters. Since those words convey a strong and negative tone that can slightly overwhelms the readers, Ehrlich apparently stresses the severity of our distorted depiction of cowboys and criticizes it. To support her opinion, she utilizes words such as “androgynous”, “midwives”, “nurturers”, “conservationists”, “tenderness”, “evasive”, and “vulnerability” in her argument. The word “androgynous” precisely points out that cowboys, besides having the masculine look outside, contains feminine tenderness as well. Also, when readers see the words “midwives” and “nurturers”, they immediately have females characters in mind; therefore, using these words gives readers a clear idea of the feminine characters of cowboys. “Evasive” and “vulnerability” convey the idea to readers that cowboys are shy and weak emotionally compare to people who blend in modern social environment. The careful choice of words explains why the modern understanding of cowboys is incorrect.

3. I totally agrees with Ehrlich’s opinions. Since she has the firsthand experience with cowboys and describes a large amount of details of cowboys, her sayings are solid and trustworthy to me. In addition, people often incline to make assumptions about things that they do not have much understanding about it. There are some examples in our lives. Many people regard Dubai as a extremely wealthy city in which everyone has infinite amount of money and gold. There is even rumor that in Dubai everyone can purchase many sport cars. However, the reality is that they are actually many foreign laborers in Dubai who toil but earn low wages, and their lives far from what people have thought they are. Indeed, they are many skyscrapers, luxurious hotels, and expensive sport cars in Dubai, but the publicity of the city obviously focuses too much on the extravagances of Dubai instead of the objective view of Dubai.