Self-Directed Library Tour

1. No.
2. I have no questions about the current assignment.
3. Eating disturbances, Body Image Disorder
   
4. The books that I looked up on PILOT were not available in the library. I looked up Fat is a Feminist Issue, The Obesity Myth, and The Anorectic's Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age and got no results.
5. Abstracts are good for finding out what the article is about before you read through the whole article. It saves time to read the abstract and see if it pertains to what you are looking for.
6. Hrabosky, Joshua I., et al. "Multidimensional body image comparisons among patients with eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, and clinical controls: A multisite study." Body Image 6.3 (June 2009): 155-163. E-Journals. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 27 Sep. 2009 .
7. The books that caught my eye in the reference section were In an Influential Fashion, and The Pen Is Ours.
   
8. I have no questions about the Microforms room.
9. I looked at Art Papers, Art Forum, and Ceramic Review in the periodicals section.
10. I never knew about the McNaughton Collection before and thought it was pretty cool. Also, I did not know what was in the microforms room or how to use them until now.
    

current research status

As I am looking for information on my topic ideas, I find myself with an overload of information on the topics of female anorexia and its correlations with the media. Finding information on the topics of food related guilt is much more difficult.

I would rather write about food related guilt just because I think it would be more of an interesting topic to explore and for other people to want to read, but I am troubled by the lack of information I am able to find. As a result, I am thinking about collaborating the two subjects and covering the topics of women feeling guilty when eating food due to the coverage of the slender "ideal woman," and the sensory overload of dieting advertisements in the media. I think I will be able to recover enough information to gain some insight on the topic, although I have not explored this route for information yet.


Some questions I am considering for my proposal include:

1. What are some first hand thoughts of women who have eating disorders and what caused them to go down such a harmful and dangerous path?
2. Does guilt related to food consumption have an impact on the presence of eating disorders?
3. Is the media at fault for food related guilt?
4. Are social upbringings at fault for food related guilt?
5. Is the new national campaign for a healthy lifestyle really just harming self-image in women as they learn to associate guilt with certain foods and lifestyles?

Chapter 13 in They Say, I Say dealt with the issue of fast food and obesity in American today. The title of the introduction to the chapter is titled, "Is Fast Food the New Tobacco?" and it poses interesting arguments about the current food industry and how we do and/or should respond to it.

The image of a McDonalds advertisement of a large hamburger at the beginning of the chapter stating, "You know you want me," provided an interesting insight as to the thoughts and eating habits of people and the guilt they may experience when they eat. This interesting conflict of eating food and being healthy or looking good is a very interesting topic to me as a psychological battle. I am interested in investigating this psychological battle in women and the possible consequence of eating disorders and low self esteem.

I think it might be interesting to research the traditions of eating and drinking in America as well as around the world. The idea that it is acceptable to overeat and drink on holidays and special occasions also adds to this negative connotation of consuming food by making it acceptable to consume only on special occasions. Also, the overall evolution of the size and portions of food and drink have dramatically increased over the very recent years. Especially in fast food, the sizes of portions have increased across the board. An interesting research question may ask if fast food really is the problem, or is it just the tradition of overeating that we have adopted in our society.

Keywords:
obesity
overweight
fat
thinness
obsessive eating/not eating
women and self esteem
eating disorders
culture and eating

Main Highlighgts of Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of our Handbook dealt with "Reading to Write." The author addressed the technique of active reading, and its importance to understanding the text you are currently reading. Some examples of active reading that the text gave included previewing a text, highlighting a text, and annotating a text.

When previewing a text, one should skim through it by looking at the table of contents, pictures, and captions. When previewing articles, read the abstract or skim the introduction and conclusion for the author's main points.

Highlighting a text is fairly straight forward. The text suggests to actively read by physically highlighting and underlining key points and their relationships in the text you are reading.

Annotating a text means to think more critically about it by writing comments in margins and responding to the text. This could mean summarizing, defining, or noting parallels in the text.

First Entry

This is my first entry for my English 102 blogs for Austin's class.

In the past, the research papers I have written have been about a topic that has mostly been assigned to me to write about. It will be a nice change of pace to write and explore a topic of my choice and compose a paper, rather than being forced into a topic. I have not chosen a topic quite yet, but I am hoping to apply it to my major. As a ceramics major, I hope to explore an aspect of ceramics to enable me to grow both as a writer and as an artist. I will post later about potential topics.