I used GIL-Find@WestGa to search for two book relating to my topic Anorexia in the media. One of the books my group was give in class i found to be very helpful for my topic. That book is Fat--A Fate Worse Than Death? : women, weight, and appearance. This book focuses on body image as well as the social aspects of gain weight and the need to be as skinny as you can be. I feel this book would be great to use for my research topic not only because of the social aspect of the book, but because the book as a whole is media.
Another book I found very helpful was Women Afraid to Eat : breaking free in today's weight obsessed world. This book also discusses the social aspects of the disease. I feel this book would be better then the other because it goes more in dept into the media aspect of the disease. Along with the other book, this book also goes into dept about body image and the need to be skinny.
Another question that came to mind is why would someone write these books in the first place? is it supposed to help people battling this disease? is it supposed to motivate people to get in shape?
Why someone wrote the books is an important question. At Ingram Library, librarians evaluate and select the best books on all aspects of a subject, so the authors probably wrote the books for the same reason you are doing your paper on this topic -- they want a better understanding of the issue.
ReplyDeleteBut it's important to examine those reasons, since some may be trying to sell you on a specific treatment program (come to my clinic and pay me to treat you!).
Or they may be writing AGAINST something -- so with anorexia, some want to understand why people do that to themselves, but some want to show how evil popular magazines are for featuring super-skinny models instead of normal sized women. If you go into it with an open mind, you may find information that surprises you and leads you to ask new questions. If you go into research to prove an opinion you already hold, you're likely to overlook any information that doesn't fit the conclusion you want to make. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether the author started researching to prove their pre-conceived conclusion or whether they became angry because of what they found in their research -- but it's important to think about these things when evaluating the quality of the information!