Pronunciation ChallengeIngrid Nilsen Wants Women To Stop Apologizing For How They Look | NYT Opinion

Intro


Hey, guys and girls! Well, girls especially! This week’s pronunciation challenge sentence comes from a video really worth watching. It’s very common for us girls to feel self-conscious about how we look. We have our good hair days and often some bad hair days. We stand in front of the mirror, unsatisfied about
our look and we go through outfit after outfit, feeling frustrated. Some of us might even wake up one hour early just to make sure our makeup is perfect before we leave the house! Watch this video because our key sentence is talking about this ritual of apologizing to others for the way we look. For example, in the beginning of an online video meeting.

Here’s the sentence:

We spend the first few minutes in this ritual of picking ourselves apart for gray hairs, wearing sweatpants, having dark circles, wrinkles, pimples.


Pronunciation Tips:
ritual
sweatpants
wrinkles


Vocab
1. ritual KK[ˋrɪtʃʊəl] IPA//ˈrɪtʃ.u.əl/
n. a set of fixed actions and sometimes words performed regularly, especially as part of a ceremony

Example:
Her pre-bedtime ritual includes taking a hot shower, doing some stretches, and drinking a cup of hot cocoa.


2. wrinkle ​​KK[ˋrɪŋk!] IPA//ˈrɪŋ.kəl/
n. a small line in the skin caused by old age
n. a minor difficulty, usually a small problem.

Example:
The piece of paper is all wrinkled so it’s hard to make out the exact phone number written on it.





3. pimple ​​KK[ˋpɪmp!] IPA//ˈpɪm.pəl/
n. a small raised spot on the skin that is temporary

Example:
You can try applying some tea tree oil on your pimple.


Outro

I’ve noticed that since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve stopped wearing lipstick overall. We have to be fitted with face masks wherever we go, anyway! Do you still put on makeup when you make a zoom call with your classmates or colleagues? Why is it that we often feel the need to apologize for looking the way we look? I hope that one day we can all feel confident enough to understand that we don’t need to look a certain way to please other people. If we want to look good, dress up nicely, wear beautiful makeup—we are doing it for ourselves! My favourite line from the video was this—If isolation has taught us anything, it’s that our most important audience is actually ourselves.

Thanks for listening and remember to record our sentence challenge! Have a great week ahead guys! See you again next time!

We spend the first few minutes in this ritual of picking ourselves apart for gray hairs, wearing sweatpants, having dark circles, wrinkles, pimples.

We spend the first few minutes in this ritual of picking ourselves apart for gray hairs, wearing sweatpants, having dark circles, wrinkles, pimples.