3) Popular culture paper: Love, sex, and romance in popular culture. Note: this is NOT a paper about women or beauty standards: you must focus on love, sex, and/or romance.   Choose some aspect of popular culture: a genre of magazine (women’s, men’s, teen, directed at a particular ethnic group, etc.), films, music videos, song lyrics, advertisements, television shows, social media, comic books, greeting cards, advice columns, or anything else that interests you. Gather enough material so that you can support your analysis with relevant examples, and have your topic approved by your T.A. in advance (paragraph description of your sources and topic due May 7). Develop your analysis in the context of the course materials. For this paper, think of yourself as an analyst of popular culture.

Remember that a good paper introduces the argument, provides evidence to support the argument, and comes to a conclusion. You will need to describe the body of material that you are analyzing and discuss the audience for which it is intended. Provide at least some of the original source material if possible, but be sure to use sufficient examples from your sources to support your point. The most important thing is to analyze the messages about love, sex, and romance and to make and support an argument about what you think the impact of those messages might be on potential audiences.