PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

84Figure 3.11 Figure 3.12There exists a moment when the forces of the primitive and modern worldscollide in some of the photographs, such as in figure 3.11, where a woman is wearing atraditional skirt of brilliant fabrics and a simple, non-descript t-shirt. This contrastbetween the traditional wrap and the Western t-shirts throws the two worlds together.This ultimately reinforces how the West influences non-Westerners. Local costumessuggest something about social stability. 161A person in Western dress can be seen asprogressive and desiring social change. This can be comforting to the viewer because itmeans that the native is becoming more modern. This contrast presumes that peoplewearing traditional or exotic dress have a pre-modern mentality.Clothing is not the only way that this meshing of the modern and pre-modernoccurs. In figure 3.12, a young woman in traditional clothing is wearing a baseball mitt,playing a game of catch. The West confronts the tradition of the “other” perfectly in thisfigure. Not only is baseball, a traditionally Western sport, becoming popularized abroad,women are also participating in sports. In fact, women are beginning to play sports inmany countries, but they are still required to or prefer to wear their traditional clothing. 162Volunteers, presumably, are partly responsible for this shift. The photographs ask us toconsider the Westernizing of the entire world.Volunteers are almost never shown wearing traditional clothing. The volunteer isdepicted as maintaining his or her Western values and mindset. In the singular instancefound of a volunteer dressing in indigenous dress, she is smiling and showing off herhenna-dyed hands. She is participating in an exotic ritual, which seems like fun. The