Inquiry Topic Proposal

What is an inquiry project?

In class, we are working on an inquiry project. The assignment description is as follows: 

"You will investigate a topic related to digital writing, multimedia, or multimodal composition for your blog. Your resources can be reviewed articles, books, popular magazines and newspapers, and credible websites--do not use Wikipedia!! Your first step is to write a short proposal. Second, conduct your search for sources, read and annotate. Third, write a blog post explaining what you learned. Inquiry Proposal - a position statement based on your current knowledge of the topic and why you picked it, research questions, a research plan."

This blog post is the first step of this project, the Inquiry Topic Proposal! I'm so excited to research the topic I've chosen and I'm even more excited to bring you along, dear reader!

My Inquiry Topic 

For my inquiry topic, I am going to be looking into media representation of plus size people. As a plus-sized person myself, I rarely see my body type portrayed in media unless it’s used to make a villain more undesirable, and I know others my size feel the same way. Representation is a very important thing because it shows the people who consume the media that they are not alone. There are a lot of ways that representation in the media has failed. This includes representing people with disabilities, people with illness, people with mental health issues, people of color, queer people, and many more. I will just be focusing on media representation of plus size people because the semester is simply too short to cover more. 

Research Questions

• How does representation in media affect the minds and self-confidence of children?
• How can the image of plus-sized bodies representing villains and evil characters in media be subliminally harmful to consumers?
  
• What are the most damning examples of plus-sized people in the media that perpetuated harmful stereotypes?
  
• What involvement has the modeling/beauty industry had in creating the “beauty standard” and when did it first start?
• Why is media representation so important to developing humans?

Research Plan

I would like to obtain my research from many sources. One of the most important forms of media for this type of research is individual people’s stories. A “tell-all” video is a popular genre of YouTube video in which a person will record their stories and experiences and post them to the site in order to inform others. I’ve seen many videos in which former models have gained weight and been forced to leave the industry, former beauty vloggers had sponsors pulled after losing weight, horror stories on trying to date as a plus-sized person, and so on. I’d also like to look into the psychology behind the importance of media representation. More specifically, how media representation shapes minds and creates self-image. Additionally, I have a family friend, Deanna Tennant, who has been modeling for 36 years. She has agreed to an interview with me about the modeling industry. I’m looking forward to asking questions about treatment she’s received while being a full-figured model, things that have been said to her, positive experiences she’s had, etc. Her perspective will be key to this research project, I am sure of it. 

Final Thoughts

I'd like to extend a giant thank you in advance to Deanna Tennant for helping me out with this project. I’m extremely excited to research about this topic because it’s very near and dear to my heart. There’s no other way to put the feeling of pure joy I feel when I see a regular, protagonist character on a movie or tv show who looks like me. I want to find out why that is, why it’s so hard to find, and why seeing nothing but skinny, athletic people on my screen hurts my mental health so much. Make sure to follow along for more, dear reader!