Fear and consumption...

So I have to write a final essay for my women's studies class. We were given the entire quarter to figure out and research what exactly it was that we were going to write about, of course there were other writing projects we were required to attend to in the interim.

I initially chose to write about Postpartum depression. I was going to attack its origin and purpose because I came across an interesting paper online that detailed an evolutionary framework in which postpartum depression was outwardly manifested as the fight or flight mechanism of ancient woman. In essence postpartum depression occurred as a survival instinct in early "hunter-gatherer period" humans.

However a majority of the research into PPD that I was able to find online was more medical in nature. That is, the research I found was more focused on PPD as a disease with a cure or as a problem that needed a definition and a solution rather than as a characteristic of a system developed through aeons of evolution which only needed further understanding.

This didn't bode well as the professor wants us to analyze the political, social and economic influences on our particular topic (whatever the hell that really means). Which, according to my limited understanding, means that she wants a paper with a sociological perspective.

In response I have changed my topic. I decided to write about the social, political, and economic influences on individuals eating habits and how these habits are the reflection of a population undereducated about body image. Further I want to discuss the ways in which the government and the food industry manipulate the socially acceptable model of the feminine form and how these manipulations are nothing more than poorly disguised fear appeals (to borrow a psychological term) designed to produce increased consumption propagating a vicious cycle.

Or something like that.

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Invid from the album "The 6ixth Session - CD2" by Dieselboy