How has Emily Boyd spent her summer vacation?
Gutting her dissertation, for one thing, and getting it pared to a level fit for publication in a prestigious journal.
Boyd, as reported here a few months ago, was one of the recipients of several faculty research grants at Minnesota State University. It allowed her to continue work she started at Florida State University while earning a Ph.D. She now teaches sociology at MSU.
Boyd has been studying the show “Extreme Makeover,” which aired on ABC from 2002 to 2007. In particular she’s looked at the difference in the way men and women are treated.
“I’m taking the article that I wrote, trying to condense it down to one theme, selecting the best quotes, the best frame, literature, and conclusion points you really want to make,” Boyd said.
Boyd is basically taking a piece of writing that was the size of a small novel and getting it down to something publishable in an academic journal. Doing that requires some serious editing because the scope of her research was quite compelling.
She focused not so much on the emotional effects of the transformation of the show’s participants, but on how the show defined masculinity and femininity. Essentially, Boyd says, women on the show were told they needed to obtain femininity through various methods such as plastic surgery and fashion lessons, but men undergoing the same “makeovers” were never portrayed as needing to generate masculinity.
“There’s no discussion of men lacking masculinity, whereas women lacking femininity is a huge threat,” Boyd says. “It’s interesting to me that it’s acceptable to talk about women’s bodies in this way, but not about men.
“It essentially says if you have a problem, there are ways you can solve that problem — by buying surgery or buying these other items that will make you a better you,” she said.
Once the research is pared to about 10,000 words, she’ll submit it to Signs, a social sciences journal. From there, experts will critique and decide if the work is accepted or rejected. If accepted, they’ll send it back to her for revisions. If it’s rejected, she said, she’ll submit it to another publication.
“Revise and resubmit,” Boyd said. “That’s my goal.”
Boyd said the rise of reality TV has provided social scientists with a new frontier for research. She said a lot has been written on the subject, but most researchers have focused on consumers. She believes her research is unique in the field.
Eventually, Boyd says she may expand her reach into this topic by forming focus groups and delving into viewers’ reactions.
If all goes well, she hopes to see her work in Signs about a year after submitting it.
Email this article | Permanent link | Topstories news | Topstories news archives
Minnesota State
University, Mankato
Mankato, MN 56001
1-800-722-0544
© 2005-2013 Minnesota State University, Mankato. Minnesota State University, Mankato is a member of
Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system and an affirmative action/equal opportunity university.
