Beauty craze in the Western States

Hey!

I'm a student in a german high school and I'm going to finish school March 2011. In Germany, every student has to pick one of his two "intensive subjects" (Which he has chosen the year before and which are twice as often as regular subjects) and write a... mmm... I'm lacking the word... a "short dissertation" (20 Pages) about a self-chosen or proposed topic. Mine is, as you can imagine in English and I've chosen the topic "Beauty craze in the Western States".

My aim is it not only to inform about the facts, i.e. "x-16yr. Old girls in country y" are getting a breast enlargment for their birthday, I want to point out the stupidity of this obession and the unrealistic image the media creates of how a woman (And nowadays even a man) should look like (With the subtle message: If you dont look like this, you're not a respectable part of our society).

Problem is, I've absolutely no idea where to research... I'm sure most of the information about this topic can be found on the internet, but the rules are, unfortunately that at least 2 books have to be used for research. Any suggestions here?

And I've sketched a rough layout... What do you think?

Layout:
 References to current events/Facts
 „Definition of beauty" (Including: Why do we want to be beautiful, genetic predestination)
 Who sets the standard of beauty? And why?
 The role of the woman in the western states
 Beauty and Prestige
 When vanity turns into obsession

I really appreciate ANY help =)!

Cheers
Samuel

I would have to agree on the ridiculousness of this obsession. I am a girl myself, and sometimes I feel the obligation to look/dress a certain way. It's hard to know that people all around expect something of you.

I would suggest (if it is allowed, of course) that you interview a couple girls or women and ask them questions about this topic. It's good to get a wide range of ideas and see how they are affected by the media from [our] point of view.

I'm not quite sure where you would find this subject in books, although there probably are some out there. If anything, magazines definitely have a lot to say about what women should look like. You could include some of that in your essay as well.

Hopefully I helped out a little, good luck with your paper!

If you commit to this process, your whole project will be forced and contrived, lacking spontaneity. Do it the opposite way:

Find some excellent articles, and write about what they show, what they argue, what they prove, etc. write paragraphs all over your word document. No particular order.

BASED ON THIS you will learn. This learning from the articles is the most important part of the process.

When you have a collage of paragraphs, each with a clear topic sentence, you are finally ready to cut/paste the paragraphs into a good sequence, and this is going to make you a REAL expert in the field. You will be deeply familiar with all the current research articles.

When you have written all this, it will be your chapter 2, the Literature Review. Some questions will arise for you after you finish it. As an expert, you will perceive what is missing, what more needs to be done... an experiment? a survey? as series of interviews? A review and analysis of documents? Raise some questions, and then go find:

Cresswell's (2008) work about research methods. Choose a research design that is best for your question. Describe it in chapt 3 of the dissertation

Carry out your research, show the findings in chapter 4

Discuss the findings in chapt. 5

Conclude in chapt 6

Finally, go back and write the intro chapter 1.

I look forward to seeing it!! :-)