Assignment 3 & 4

For this assignment, I wanted to explore an issue that deals with my Psychology major and Consumer Behavior minor.  So I decided to look into controversial marketing techniques, and came across an article about how Yoplait recently pulled one of their commercials because it was triggering people with eating disorders.  The commercial is of a girl (who is already thin) contemplating whether to eat an actual piece of raspberry cheesecake, or have a raspberry cheesecake yogurt.  Her contemplation consists of her telling herself that she has been "good" lately, saying that she could eat a small slice and then have some celery sticks, or eat a slice while jogging in place. She is then interrupted by a thinner co-worker going into the refrigerator and grabbing a raspberry cheesecake yogurt, which causes her to then choose the yogurt as well.  This article also cited other advertisements that the National Eating Disorder Association finds controversial.  I find this issue very interesting, and for my paper I would like to look into the harmful effects that the many advertisements for dieting are having on people, and women in particular.

Assignment 2

For this assignment, I am going to write about the conflict that James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, had in claiming that his book was a memoir.  When his book was first released, Frey claimed that everything in it was true, despite some changes made to protect the identity of some of the characters.  Three years after its release, it was uncovered that a few details about one occurence in the book were fabricated, and many fans, including Oprah Winfrey, became very upset with Frey for categorizing it as a true story.  Ultimately, Frey ended up changing the genre of his book to a memoir/fiction, and putting a statement in the beginning of the new copies claiming that part of the story is not true.  For my paper, I plan to analyze what constitutes a story as a memoir, and the different impact a story has on its audience when it is categorized as nonfiction rather than being categorized as fiction.

Dummy Post

Writing 340 is so great.