published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Subjects rated 12 female body shapes with respect to their physical attractiveness, and the extent to which they would be expected to possess various personality characteristics. The shapes were varied using 3 levels of overall weight and 4 levels of body shapeliness. The sample was modified to control for socioeconomic factors and results are based on 297 undergraduates from Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic racial backgrounds. Loglinear analyses revealed that men and women, regardless of racial background, rated shapely underweight females as most physically attractive, sexy, and ideal for a woman, followed by normal weight figures of similar proportion. African Americans, women in particular, judged the shapely normal weight figures more favorably than the other subjects. Multidimensional scaling and subsequent frequency analyses showed that those figures judged as most attractive, sexy, and ideal were also expected to be fairly emotionally stable, and most successful and interpersonally competitive, but least faithful, kind, and family-oriented. Overweight female shapes, while rated as least physically attractive, sexy, and emotionally stable, were expected to be most family-oriented, kind, and faithful. Shapely normal weight figures were judged to be attractive and sexy, and were assumed to possess a moderate amount of the personality traits in question. The results suggest that Caucasian and Hispanic subjects prefer shapely underweight women, while African Americans, particularly women, find shapely underweight and shapely normal weight women to be physically appealing. African American women also rate shapely normal weight women favorably with respect to personality traits. This perceptual difference may help inoculate them from developing eating disturbances and account for the low prevalence rate of eating disorders in African Americans compared to women of other racial backgrounds. It is suggested that future research identify those beliefs, values or behaviors that seem to inoculate African American women from developing eating disorders. Once identified, mental health professionals may facilitate their development in those women who are likely to have eating problems.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Communication

This thesis consists of two parts – a creative work, Memory and Memorialisation, and an exegesis, Writing Women’s Lives: Women’s Autobiographies,that documents the writing process and the theoretical perspectives informing it at various stages. It is the result of a twelve year investigation into the writing process; the nature of memory, death and desire in objects and places; and their role in personal representation. The exegesis highlights the difficulties encountered in simultaneously writing and critiquing one’s own autobiographical works. As autobiography is also written ‘in relation to’ significant others, the emotional, ethical and legal issues inherent in the writing and publication of autobiographical works are explored. The creative work is not a unitary text and comprises a collection of fragmented yet connected autobiographical stories that experiment with form using archival collections – a blending of memory with family and local history – the results of excavating the past to make meaning in the present. Images are used singly and in collages to signify the temporality and intertextuality of these auto/biographical acts. Restriction: View part thesis only. Contact UWS Library for terms of full-access. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2001. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 225-235).

Not available / text

This thesis is a study of magazine advertisements for beauty products in Canada between 1901 and 1941. It looks at the use of cosmetics and the growth of advertising in the context of the development of North American consumer culture, highlighting the role of gender in that culture. The period studied is divided in two by the mid-1920s to reflect changes in advertisers' views of consumers--from rational decision-makers to irrational creatures driven by their emotions--and in ideals of feminine beauty, as the use of cosmetics became an essential part of the ideal perpetuated by advertising. The thesis attempts to show the link between business history and cultural history by demonstrating how marketing professionals co-opted cultural trends in order to create effective advertising, and how traditional relationships and values were modified by the purchase and use of mass-marketed goods.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis focuses on the significance of the beauty of Helen of Troy in the Encomium of Helen written by the fourth-century philosopher Isocrates. Previous traditions, and especially epic poetry and tragedy, had assessed Helen’s beauty and either blamed or excused her for causing the Trojan War. Isocrates moved beyond this dichotomy to create a new focus on her beauty as the ultimate source of all that made Greek culture distinctive. Modern scholarship, however, has been generally unsympathetic we may almost say blind to this projected beauty. The meaning of beauty in Isocrates’ work has been overlooked by scholars in favor of its rhetorical structure. The work was criticized for its disjointed arrangement and lack of seriousness. The Helen has been interpreted as a reaction to contemporary rhetorical issues or as merely an educational manifesto. This thesis aims to identify and clarify the ideology underlying Isocrates’ construction of Helen’s beauty in his encomium. … The Helen of Isocrates is also compared with the contemporary Platonic work Phaedrus, which explores beauty as a means of arriving at pure knowledge. In this case, comparisons are drawn thematically and reveal that while the two works share similar topics and aims regarding the notions of beauty, Isocrate’s aesthetic idea is much more practically grounded and intended to be of benefit to the entire society when compared to the more idealistic and individual Platonic notion. Finally, the reasons for Isocrates’ choice of beauty as a major theme for the Helen are explored through a comparison of Helen’s beauty to that of Hellas an equation which Isocrates deems important for the fourth-century society.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-170). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2007 / Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Social Work. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-67).