Freewriting

The advertising of diets: it's all about the image

Diets have become more and more typical in the recient years. There are isles and isles of books about how to diet, what supposedly works and what doesn’t. And while I am interested in what diet is most effective for weight loss, what is more interesting is: why is the general public (especially women) so obsessed with diets. Is it the research in how being healthier makes you live longer? Or is it the fact that we are constantly bombarded with the pictures of the ‘ideal’ human figure. Opening of the paper should contain an in your face statement with shock value like: do you think your fat? Are you fat? Or Do you feel fat?. Something that is catchy like magazine and newspaper headlines are catchy. Every summer magazine, always next to candy bars, has glamour magazines with articles about special diet and exercises for ab and butt toning. All the magazines have something telling you “you should be dieting” and “you should look this way”. There are healthy reasons you should eat certain diets, but it is the image that compels people to follow the diet. There are other reasons people diet than appearance, mostly medical (Anaphylactic shock, high blood pressure, and other specific diseases), However, in my age group, the reason is mostly appearance. In an older age group, the reason is mostly medical. Walking though the grocery store, headlines grab attention. Even if standing in long line, and happen to open up the magazine, then the first paragraph is designed to draw you in. What sells? Peoples’ wants = be thin, have hard muscles, and be pleasing in bed. What I would like to investigate is: how or why advertising makes people desire to go on a special diet? Tentative thesis: advertising uses the ideal image to promote new diets, even in cases that the diet is not for image reasons. Specialized diets have not always been around; the concept is a human invention and idea, but the question remains: why?

To research this topic I will look at magazine covers and articles advertising diets or other weight loss techniques (excluding specific medicines). I will also investigate the history of diets and the evolution of specialized diets to determine how they came about. In addition, I will research articles that look into the psychology of advertising and dieting and how they are related. I plan to focus on American magazines and advertising so that I can also include obesity facts because obesity is a large problem in the United States.

The most difficult part of the assignment may be narrowing down exactly what I would like to write my paper on. It is difficult to answer why questions and so I will try to make my questions more direct and concrete so that I can answer them in my paper. Another difficult area will be finding journal articles specifically about the topic I would like to discuss. There will be many about advertising and diets, but I will be looking for articles specifically about advertising for diets using visuals.

Mindmap

Why Diet?

Does it suck?

The game where I am supposed to state my opinion. 

Elephant with US flag colors: It doesn’t suck; elephants are cool animals and elephants with the American flag on them can only be better than normal dull grey elephants.

Barack Obama: He doesn’t suck; he is president. Being president is a difficult job and he has managed to not be the worst president ever. He is also black, and black people don’t suck.

Harry Potter: It doesn’t suck; it has an interesting and eventful story line with fun characters and magic. The books were better than the movies but I liked both.

Apple: It doesn’t suck; apple makes the iphone, and iphones can do nearly everything.
Star Wars: It doesn’t suck; the movies are full of action and futuristic space stuff which is cool.

Facebook: It doesn’t suck; I can creep on all my friends and even people I don’t know. It also makes sharing pictures with everyone easier.

McDonalds: It sucks; it smells funny in there, nearly all the food is horribly unhealthy, and lots of people get fat from McDonalds. Even their salads taste bad.

Clemson University: It doesn’t suck; I have lots of friends at Clemson, the campus is nice, and it is far enough away from home my parents don’t visit me too often.

Lady Gaga: She sucks; her music is really over played, and she wears lots of strange clothes.

Justin Bieber: He doesn’t suck; his music is catchy and he is easy to write an English paper about.

Sudoku: It doesn’t suck; it is entertaining for some people and it exercises the brain. Though, I don’t do them because I don’t think they are fun and I would rather exercise my brain in other ways.

Avatar: It doesn’t suck; I haven’t seen it but the blue people look like they could be interesting. It is on my list of movies to see.

Xbox 360: It doesn’t suck; I can connect my Kinect to it and play awesome dance games that are also exercise.

American Idol: It doesn’t suck; I have never watched it, but many people do so right now my opinion is based off of assumption (a bad way to form an opinion, I know).

Glee: It doesn’t suck; the show follows high school kids who follow their dreams and sing about their dreams all the time in public places and no one thinks it is strange.

Ciggaretts: They suck; anything that is addictive and causes cancer sucks.

Guns: They suck; they kill people and killing people is bad.

Abortion: They suck; they also kill people, but sometimes they are needed (in extreme cases).

Dogs wearing clothes: They suck; why would you force your animal into wearing something that it doesn’t want to be wearing. You give the animal no choice. I am not a dog person so my opinion is swayed by that fact as well.

My Writing Process

Writing has never been my favorite subject, but in this class, it has not been too bad. A definite benefit is that the class is online, so I can go at my own pace and do not have to talk, and it is in the summer, so I have nearly nothing else to do. Writing for me is not something that is slow and meticulous (usually). I am not one to painstakingly pick out each word I type, I would much rather type it all out and go back and put in better word choices. I just write whatever comes into my head with my fingers going as fast as possible just trying to get my ideas out. But then I have to go back through and edit all the crap I have just written, as well as all the grammatical and spelling errors I have just made. Last week, while at home, I would wake up in the morning (or sometimes afternoon), and pull out my laptop and finish the assignment while still in bed to get it out of the way before my day even began. It is nice to not worry about it for the rest of the day. This week, I have been on vacation with my family at the beach, and luckily we have had internet, though it has been very slow. I am currently sitting at the long dining room table looking out, over the low sand dunes, watching the ocean gently crash against the sand. In the background, the twelve or so family members are rustling around in the making lunch or just making noise. Luckily the noise, music, and eating does not distract me. When I go back home next week I am going to miss the view, my family, and the noise, but it will be nice to go back to sitting in my bed and writing.

Introductory Comma

From the side of a cereal box

Introductory comma can be seen below the barcode in the paragraph under the title "In Partnership with Organic Farms"

m&m's

·         Saucer shaped

·         Red, yellow, green, blue, brown

 Used to have light brown and dark brown

 Alternate colors: purple – dark chocolate

·         White m on one side (lower case)

·         Come in many flavors

Original, dark chocolate, peanut, peanut butter, mint, pretzel

·         Commercials have character m&m’s in them

 Green one and brown one = girl

·         If put in water, the color comes off and they all look the same

·         Will eventually melt in your hand but slower than plain chocolate

·         Go well in trail mix

·         On the m&m website you can order custom m&m with custom messages and colors

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plain-M%26Ms-Pile.jpg

I Will Not Plagiarize

Copying another person's work and using it as my own is plagiarism. Plagiarism, a word I just learned to spell, is stealing. Stealing is wrong. If I plagiarized, I would be devaluing the source of what I plagiarized. Also, if I what I plagiarize is wrong, then I would be propagating misinformation. Plagiarism indicates that I am not able to do something by myself. Using plagiarism to complete an assignment would demonstrate a skill set I may not possess. If I used plagiarism to misrepresent myself, then I am posing as something I am not, such as an expert on a subject I know nothing about. Posing as an expert would foster a false trust in my information, which could be wrong, and then I am back to fostering misinformation. I will not plagiarize because there is no reason I should need to plagiarize; I am smart enough to succeed in this class without the help from outside sources such as copying from the internet and I have the time to do the assignments. Also, for me, the risk from plagiarizing is greater than the reward. Plagiarizing would merit an immediate failure of the class, all for saving myself less than thirty minutes of work on an assignment. The risk of failing is a much greater risk than I am willing to take. I promise I will not plagiarize because plagiarizing is wrong: it is stealing and misrepresents me.