When you told us about this twenty five “research paper” on the first day of class, I automatically started brainstorming ideas of what I might want to write about. From the start, I was extremely apprehensive due to the fact that I had never written a paper longer than five pages and this was my first legitimate research paper. However, it was not until I saw examples of past papers that I understood that you were not looking for twenty five pages explicitly of research, but that this paper you assigned was more to log our research progress. After seeing previous research papers from your former students I was able to have a much clearer understanding of what you are expecting from this paper. This paper is geared towards helping us expand on our research skills, as well as being able to learn about a topic that interested us in sociology. Seeing as though this was my first sociology class, I took to the internet for some guidance as to what I might want to write about. I did some research online looking up other research paper topics that students who took Sociology classes had written about. However it did not take me long to figure out the direction I wanted to go in due to my feminist ways. After looking up different ideas, I found that sexualizing women in the media had become a recurring theme in many different articles I had been reading. I typed in Google “what is a good topic to write a sociology paper on?”. I found “Great Research Topics” on hubpages.com and “Sample Topics for the Sociology 101 Paper” from midlandtech.edu. They basically just gave me a list of topics that seemed to interest people in sociology and from those two sources I knew I wanted to write about women and how they are portrayed in the media. I did not take a specific topic from either of the sources I only used them to guide me towards the topic I wanted to write about. I myself am a feminist and have been from the time I was able to understand that women should have the same amount of opportunity as a man does, so I knew this would be the perfect topic for me. A common belief among us “feminist” women is that women are victim to injustices because of our female sex. It is also believed, and in many cases proven, that men are at a greater advantage due to the fact that they are males. For example, men to this day on average still make more per dollar than a woman does (http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/pay-equity-and-discrimination). Nonetheless, the views that feminists have can be a whole other research paper on its own! As stated, my personal views guided me to the decision that I wanted to write about the demeaning image young-women have in advertising. I have been interested in this topic for quite some time now, but have never taken the time to actually learn or research exactly what it is about society and their need to sexualize women at such a young age. Since I was younger, myself as well as many other young girls often wondered what it takes to be o.

1. When you told us about this twenty five “research paper” on the
first day of class, I automatically started brainstorming ideas of
what I might want to write about. From the start, I was
extremely apprehensive due to the fact that I had never written a
paper longer than five pages and this was my first legitimate
research paper. However, it was not until I saw examples of past
papers that I understood that you were not looking for twenty
five pages explicitly of research, but that this paper you
assigned was more to log our research progress. After seeing
previous research papers from your former students I was able
to have a much clearer understanding of what you are expecting
from this paper. This paper is geared towards helping us expand
on our research skills, as well as being able to learn about a
topic that interested us in sociology.
Seeing as though this was my first sociology class, I took to the
internet for some guidance as to what I might want to write
about. I did some research online looking up other research
paper topics that students who took Sociology classes had
written about. However it did not take me long to figure out the
direction I wanted to go in due to my feminist ways. After
looking up different ideas, I found that sexualizing women in
the media had become a recurring theme in many different
articles I had been reading. I typed in Google “what is a good
topic to write a sociology paper on?”. I found “Great Research
Topics” on hubpages.com and “Sample Topics for the Sociology
101 Paper” from midlandtech.edu. They basically just gave me a
list of topics that seemed to interest people in sociology and
from those two sources I knew I wanted to write about women
and how they are portrayed in the media. I did not take a
specific topic from either of the sources I only used them to
guide me towards the topic I wanted to write about. I myself am
a feminist and have been from the time I was able to understand
that women should have the same amount of opportunity as a

2. man does, so I knew this would be the perfect topic for me. A
common belief among us “feminist” women is that women are
victim to injustices because of our female sex. It is also
believed, and in many cases proven, that men are at a greater
advantage due to the fact that they are males. For example, men
to this day on average still make more per dollar than a woman
does (http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/pay-equity-and-
discrimination). Nonetheless, the views that feminists have can
be a whole other research paper on its own!
As stated, my personal views guided me to the decision that I
wanted to write about the demeaning image young-women have
in advertising. I have been interested in this topic for quite
some time now, but have never taken the time to actually learn
or research exactly what it is about society and their need to
sexualize women at such a young age. Since I was younger,
myself as well as many other young girls often wondered what
it takes to be one of these beautiful women on a magazine or in
TV advertisements. It took some growing up to understand that
a lot of these women presented in the media are in fact not as
perfect as they appear to be but that a lot of their exotic features
come from computer programs such as Photoshop. However, it
would be a disservice to these women in the magazines to not
appreciate them for their true beauty, the beauty that does not
require media adding special effects.
Once I realized I wanted to write about the young-woman and
how they are portrayed in advertising, I came up with the very
general topic “Image of Young Women in Advertising” and
discussed it with you. My enthusiasm for this topic was
appreciated by you, but you kindly told me that my topic was
unfortunately not narrow enough. At first I was a little upset
because I thought what isn’t specific about “The Image of
Young-Women in Advertising” but after doing more research I
realized that this paper was too short to talk about all the forms
of advertisement and how young-women are represented in all

3. of them. When starting my preliminary research I tried to focus
on the youth in advertising more than women in general because
I felt as though it was more specific. While doing this research I
used key words like image of young women. I then realized that
I should maybe change young women to adolescent women.
From there I started searching in google the image of adolescent
women, adolescent women in the media and realized that there
were too many forms of media to write how women are
represented in each of them. At this point I had a research topic
that could help me to write a novel's worth of information, not a
research paper. I also realized that with Google I was going to
spend more time trying to find credible articles and sources that
would be appropriate for a research paper than was necessary.
So from there I used all the same phrases, but instead I started
using Google Scholar.
.
While searching women in advertising an article The Sexual
Objectification of Women in Advertising: A Contemporary
Cultural Perspective (http://pure.au.dk/portal/files/10594/8_-
_sexual_objectification_of_women.pdf) came about, where I
found useful information but finally understood how broad of a
topic I in fact chose. As I continued reading this article, I
stumbled upon a section discussing the sexual objectification of
women in advertising and the effect it has on attitudes of
women in society. After reading this section, I became
interested in the fact that the role portrayal of women in todays
media in fact affects how society believes a woman should act
or look. Researchers Ford, LaTour and Lundstrom (1991 ADD
CITING HERE) surveyed the attitudes women had towards
female role portrayals in advertising. The results of this survey
said that while women are still critical in the way they are
portrayed in advertisements and still thought that
advertisements treated them mainly as sex objects, women today
are much more forgiving of companies that portray women as
sex objects than they were decade ago or even a year ago!

4. (CITE HERE)I became utterly fascinated with the fact that
women in modern times are less concerned with how they are
viewed as a gender and started to question why women are more
accepting of being publicly degraded in todays society. So I
decided I would base my research question off of how women
are depicted in the media.
How are young women portrayed in the media?
SUB1: How does this portrayal affect young women’s self
esteem?
SUB2: Does the media really affect young women’s opinion of
themselves and their gender on a whole?
SUB3: Has the attitude of women changed over time when it
comes to how they are portrayed in the overall media?
I originally thought that the research question and subquestions
would be a good guide to help me start my paper, but I myself
felt as though the main question itself was too broad. After
discussing my topic and showing my peers(Christina) what I
had come up with, I was advised to possibly narrow my topic
even more. I was told that while young women may seem
narrow, it is overall a very general question that she suggested
may be hard to answer. She suggested to possibly narrow it
down to how young women are portrayed in a specific part of
the media, perhaps television or magazines. However, when
previously doing preliminary research I found that there was not
enough information about how young women are portrayed in
one specific type of advertisement. It was not until I spoke with
you again when you confirmed uneasy feelings I had about my
topic and told me this was also not specific enough. I started to
think that maybe I did not do enough preliminary research. So I
decided to take a different route with it, and do my best to find
a research question for my topic that went along with what your
requirements while also trying to branch off from my original
general topic. I must say it was not easy, but I knew this topic
was something I needed to write about while I had the chance so

5. I knew I had to come up with a more narrow topic. I was
starting to learn that before I figure out research question I
needed to examine journals, books and do more preliminary
research to make sure that I had enough information to prove
my argument.
At this point I realized I had come up with a research question
and sub question to follow, but it seemed as though I was
actually lacking in research, big time. Before I handed in my
first draft, I thought I was on track with some of the research I
have done. But in reality I had no solid research, and nothing
that was going to help me with a research paper. So I decided
that even though I would be taking my paper a different route, I
would still use some of the keywords I had gathered before. I
used key words like adolescent, young women, advertising,
anything in hopes to find a direction I wanted to head to.
Using the phrase, women in magazines on Google Scholar
helped me to find a wonderful paper “Women in Britain”
(file:///C:/Users/Library/Desktop/WomenInBritain.pdf),
however this article was geared more toward British women, but
it seems as though the objectification of women in the media is
not only an issue in America, but global issue as well. This
paper was a great read, but I thought that since the paper
focused on Britains media issues that it may take me away from
my goal which was to narrow my topic. I wrote down a few
notes that I thought might be of some use for my paper in the
future, but there is a slim chance that I will be using much
information from this source. As for sources that this source
cited I found nothing that see would really help me further in
my research.
I began to feel as though I had to start from square one. So I
spent time in the library looking up all types of different
questions related to women in the media and came upon the
keyword body modification. I started looking into body

6. modification through the Rider EBSCO databases and came
across what I thought would be sufficient amount of information
for a paper. I began looking up new keywords like body
modification, women and body modification, and body image.
Growing up made me become resentful of that fact that the
media has a need to make less superior women compared to
celebrities feel inferior and self-conscious. I myself have had
plastic surgery due to an uncomfortability with my self image
so I knew it would be something I could relate to and would be
interested in learning about.
I came across an article Women and Weight: Gendered
Messages on Magazine Covers (CITE ARTICLE HERE) that
provides credible proof that feminist researchers have reported
that the media does provide women with this distorted view that
there is an ideal that women in our society should strive to look
like. For the majority of the female population this “image” is
close to impossible to attain. Due to the fact that women are
unable to resemble this “beauty ideal” they are left with
feelings of inadequacy. (Faludi, 1991; Freedman, 1986; Wolf
1991) On top of the media feeding women these unrealistic
expectations, cosmetic manufacturers and weight loss programs
try and convince women that if they purchase their product or
take part in their programs then they are able to eliminate their
imperfections (Freedman, 1986). I found this article to be the
perfect fit for the direction I was trying to take my paper. I
started to question why the media needs women to feel as
though they have to mirror an unrealistic image in order to feel
good about themselves. What is this “look” that women strive to
achieve?
Does the media’s ideal of what a women should look like effect
a woman's self image enough to undergo body modification?
SUB1: How are women portrayed in the media?
SUB2: Why do women feel the need to obtain this look?
SUB3: Has body modification increased in recent years?

7. SUB4: What is the difference between advertisements for
women and advertisements for men when it comes to bodily
appearance?
My topic seemed to be coming together. So I wanted to make
sure when doing my research that I had an understanding of
exactly what body modification and body image was, so I
started to use the keyword body modification in Google scholar
which led me to an article from Bradley University on Body
Modification & Body Image. This article seemed to help me
understand exactly what a body modification was. Many people
believe human bodies to be products of nature however, human
bodies are also products of culture. There are many different
reasons why cultures, all around the world, modify and reshape
the bodies of their people (Barker & Barker 2002: 88-93). This
article helped me to answer sub question two, “why do women
feel the need to obtain this look?”. Some of the reasons are to
mark social status, to conform the body to ideas of beauty in
their culture, to present information about one’s personal
qualities and accomplishments. For Americans, some body
modifications like henna tattooing in Southeast Asia and the
Middle East, neck elongation in Thailand and Africa, or tooth
filing in Bali might strike us as strange, weird or even exotic
(Larkin 2004; Marker & Barker 2002: 88:93). However, what
many Americans do not realize is that we modify our bodies as
well. Body-building, tanning, ear-piercing, cosmetic surgery,
and dieting are all forms of body modification. In fact, practices
such as body piercing, tattooing, and scarification are all
becoming increasingly popular in the United States. Up until
reading this article, I had no idea that ear-piercing, tattooing
and tanning were considered forms of body modification. I
wrote down notes from this article that I thought would help me
tie in my research at the end of the paper.
The Body Modification & Body Image article, also gave the
divided opinions on the benefits of body modification. The

8. opinions are divided due to the fact that some believe that body
modification can improve self- esteem. However, contrast
opinions say that it is culture that values youth, sexuality, and
appearance more than experience. These opinionists believe that
today's culture has a narrow idea of what beauty is (Jeffreys
2000: 409-427). Well do we, do we as a society have a distorted
view of what beauty really is?
From there I decided I wanted to find information that helped
me get closer to answering my questions. I knew that I needed
to do more research and that I would not be able to answer them
all at once, but I wanted to start using articles to help me get a
jump start. I did not feel the need to answer each question
completely yet. Meaning, I wanted to gather all my information
together and jot down notes from each source that help me
answer my sub questions first because as I was finding
resources I was finding information throughout them that could
help me to answer more than one question. One source was not
answering one question, I was finding that I could use multiple
sources to answer a sub question.
When using the article, Women and Weight:Gendered Messages
on Magazine Covers I found that authors such as Nemeroff,
Stein, Diehl, and Smilack(1994) examined men and women’s
magazines to see if different types of magazines portrayed
different messages for men and women and whether this has
changed over the course of a 12 year duration. The articles of
focus were centered on behavioral means used to attain the
physical ideals. The three categories of magazines they focused
on were traditional magazines, fashion magazines, and modern
magazines. In 12 years, they found that overall the women’s
magazines presented many more body-oriented articles than
magazines targeting male readers. However, they do say that
weight loss articles increased over this period time for men and
decreased for women. This indicates a gender-related change in
trends. It also appeared that the frequency of health articles

9. seemed to increase in mens fashion magazines but not in
women’s fashion magazines. In their conclusion, in their
comparison between the different types of magazines, the
researchers found that fashion magazines were the most
centered on body image. Modern magazines were least focused
on body orientation and traditional magazines were somewhere
in the middle. I thought that this information might help me to
answer sub question 2 “why do women feel the need to obtain
this look?” because the way these weight-related messages on
the covers of magazines were presented to the readers imply
that losing weight may lead to a better life (put sighting here).
For sub question 4, I found what I thought to be good
information to possibly answer the question. In Women and
Weight: Gendered Messages on Magazine Covers, magazine
covers were separated according to the gender of readers and
each cover was looked at by use of a checklist. This checklist
was to see how visual images and text were placed on each of
the covers. It is usually the cover of the magazine that
influences the reader to buy it, hence why it is important to
examine the messages that are being presented to readers on the
covers of magazines. (Lee, 1998, p.1) DiDomenico and
Anderson(1992) wanted to see if the statistics of eating
disorders in the general population would reflect the number of
articles focused on dieting and body shape in the 20 most
popular magazines read by men and women. After their
examination they found that 10 magazines most read by women
had a significantly higher amount of diet articles and
advertisements than the 10 magazines most read by men. They
made note of the fact that men’s magazines advertisements that
focused on bodily appearance were centered around changed in
body shape such as “bulking up”. Women’s magazines on the
other hand focused on changes in body weight and losing
weight. Twenty-five percent of popular women’s magazine
covers contained messages related to dietary habits and weight
loss. DiDomenico and Anderson suggested that popular media

10. may be giving society gender-related norms by implementing
weight and shape ideas of society. The problem with the ideas
that society is setting for people is women feel the need to
mirror this “thin” image, when not all women are capable of
looking like the women on these magazines. This article helped
me with sub question 1 “how are women portrayed in the
media?” and sub question 4 “what is the difference between
advertisements for women and advertisements for men when it
comes to bodily appearance?”. However, although women are
portrayed as thin I knew that was not enough to answer question
1 so I made note of the fact that I needed to gather more
information for that question. Nonetheless, I thought this article
made it clear that the ideals for men and women are represented
different in advertisements.
In the Body Modification & Body Image article I found
information from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic
Surgery(ASAPS). In 2008, Americans spent 10.2 million in
cosmetic surgeries (Mann 2009). In 2008, there was problems in
the economy which led to a small decrease in these procedures.
However, in the last decade cosmetic surgery has increased
dramatically. The majority of cosmetic procedures are
performed on men, but since the year 2000 men’s use of
cosmetic surgeries have increased by 20 percent (Atkinson
2008). This helped me with sub question 3 “has body
modification increased in recent years?”. Clearly, yes it has
increased but is plastic surgery the only body modification
procedure that has seen an increase?
As I started doing more research as stated earlier, I learned that
many things are considered body modification. In past years,
body piercing, tattooing, and scarification were looked at as a
deviant act. However, they have become much more mainstream
and socially acceptable despite their association with deviant
social groups. In a study of American college students it was
found that 60 percent of women and 42 percent of men had

11. piercing (Kaatz, Elsner, & Bauer 2008). While some look at
piercing as a way of fashion, a lot of people are starting to look
at is a way they can control their bodies. In addition, the idea of
tattoos is also starting to become looked at as a way one
controls their identity and expresses their individuality and
creativity(site Bradley University). A recent study says that one
who is moderately to heavily tattooed have “an increased sense
of self-confidence after having pierced or tattooed their bodies”
(Carroll & Anderson 2002). Scarification is also becoming
increasingly practiced in today's society, although it is not as
common as piercing and tattooing. Scarification is when one
cuts or burns their skin leaving permanent scars that form
patterns on the skin. All the information I gathered, helped me
to start to answer sub question 3, “has body modification
increased in recent years?” and the answer is clearly yes, again.
Many people do not look at forms of body modification in a
negative way anymore but as a way to control their body.
Tattoos are now mainly looked at as a means of moving on or
commemoration. In todays society, it is common to find people
with disabilities or illnesses tattooed because people see it as a
way to claim ownership of their bodies (site Bradley
University).
Another body modification procedure that has seen an increase
in recent years is tanning. The Body Modification & Body
Image stresses the fact that the American views of tanning have
changed drastically in the past century. In the Victorian era of
America women having pale was the ideal. Women during that
time actually wore hats and gloves to keep their skin out of the
sun. In the Victorian era many people earned a living by
working outdoors, so having pale skin indicated that this person
had enough time off to be inside enjoying leisurely activities.
However, in the 20th century people often work indoors so
having a tan complexion is a sign of affluence and that one has
the time and money to being enjoying their off time by the pool,
traveling, or enjoying an outside sport such as golf (side

12. Bradley University). Suntanning in todays society is associated
with both health and wealth. Therefore, proving sub question 3
that body modification views have changed in recent years.
Tanning today brings in about $5 billion a year and has become
an addiction to some aspiring to fit the new physical ideal. Tan
skin has become an ideal physical trait in American society,
women and men will wait on lines at tanning salons knowing
that it causes cancer and wrinkles due to their low-self esteem
and need to fix their physical “flaws” (site here).
I knew that the Body Modification & Body Image article was
going to be of help from the beginning, but as I continued to
read this article I started to think I needed to either add a sub
question or change on of mine. I began thinking that instead of
wondering why women feel the need to obtain this look (sub
question 2), I would look at how the idea of body modification
has changed in recent years because I was coming across a lot
of information that could help me to answer such question. It
was a note that I wrote down, and if I find enough information
to answer that question I will probably change it.
As I continued on with my research I found it to be become
much easier due to the fact that once I found resources I would
look at what references those resources used and expanded from
their. At times I found it more helpful to use the references my
resources used than to look for my own because the resources I
was using were found from Google Scholar and I knew that
whatever references the authors of my articles were using had to
be credible, but obviously I looked into it to make sure.
citations:
feminist: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/feminism.htm
http://pure.au.dk/portal/files/10594/8_-
_sexual_objectification_of_women.pdf
(http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018848332464)