P3 Research Inquiry: Whitewashing in Modern Media and Pop Culture

For P3 I brainstormed the topics of success, happiness, failure, body positivity, race/ethnicity, and criminal psychology. I am very interested in the human condition, and people’s unique identities. I’m also very curious about the about human emotions and how they play a role in success, crime and overall satisfaction in individual lives. As someone who likes to read psychology, self-help, women/ cultural studies and criminology (analysis) books, I wanted to focus on a topic I could read one of my books about. Because of my interests not aligning with the ethics in higher education course theme I am going to have to use some journals, books and other resources for my paper.
At first I was interested in researching what characteristics make people successful, but then I realized in order to get a specific stakeholder I would have to dive into the world of business, which is something I’m not that intrigued by. I chose the topic of skin color in modern media and pop culture, because not only is that something I’m interested in going into for my major (ethnic studies and journalism), but also my pop culture and communications class is currently discussing race/ ethnicities which adds to my resources. On top of that I’ve been meaning to visit the resource centers for racial/ ethnic groups anyway, so I could get even more resources from them. The issue I want to focus on is whitewashing/ lack of representation in media. Part of this is the stereotypes reinforced by media, and roles available to each ethnic group. My research question is,” How does the white beauty ideal in the beauty industry reinforce discrimination in media and pop culture?”.
I came to this research question through analyzing the amount of interest I have in each topic and the amount of resources I could easily access through each topic. Also by looking at the stakeholders, I was able to eliminate some of the topics due to the stakeholder being too broad, or just uninteresting to me. By rewording some of my original questions, such as,”How do stereotypes portrayed in media reinforce racism/discrimination in america?” and “Why is ‘White’ the beauty ideal?”, I was able to come up with my research question. The overall theme is on discrimination/ racism in America. Some potential stakeholders would be film directors, actors/actresses (specifically those in a minority), big beauty industry brands, magazine editors and consumers of pop culture. Personally, I would rather have an unconvinced stakeholder, so I can use statistics and pathos to persuade the stakeholder. Also it would require me to have a stronger argument and build up credibility.  My concerns revolve around how to turn a research paper into an persuasive essay. Given that I can not have bias while researching, I am struggling to understand how to turn it into an argument. As for finding resources I don’t think that will be difficult as I already have 4 different texts I can use, which I can expand upon in the resource centers. In order to resolve my concerns, I could come to office hours. As a suggestion for something to discuss in class, It would probably be the process of discussing research to develop a stance and convert the essay into persuasive writing.