Contextual Studies - The History of Make Up and Fashion

This was the part of the first year I thought I was going to struggle with the most as I don't feel I have very good writing skills, so I was very worried about producing an essay to university standard, however I was pleasantly surprised.

Throughout the term we had a number of lectures where we were presented with the history of makeup throughout time. During these lectures I made a huge amount of notes which was very useful for gaining knowledge and information that I could then apply to my essay.

Whilst these were taking place we also had small seminars where our tutor helped us practise our writing skills and how to layout our essay. We were also presented with 8 general statements, of which we had to choose one and turn it in to a more specific question that was specific to our essay.

In the end my final question for my essay was "How have various icons and influences, within the media, affected what is considered fashionable and beautiful, in regards to body image, across society over the years?" I chose to do an essay based around body image as being in a younger generation I, myself feel a huge strain from what society perceives as beautiful, therefore making it something that I could put a lot of passion in to, in the hope of producing a great essay.

As I knew I struggled a lot with writing essays I decided to plan it out well in advanced so I could adapt and add in any new research or ideas I had over time, as well as enabling me to draft up an essay and constantly re-draft and improve it so the final hand-in was the best of my ability.

(Image Below: Final Essay Plan)

I found that once I had planned out all the aspects of my essay and I started writing it, the points just flowed out, to the point where I had to spend a number of hours cutting the final essay down to fit within the boundaries of the word count. Researching and writing the essay was actually really enjoyable for me and I was very proud of the end result, which included a word count of 2081 and 12 images. However something I struggled with massively was referencing, which was something that was commented on in my feedback. I have never had to use Harvard referencing and I found it very confusing trying to fulfil all the elements it involves, however I gave it my best shot. That was really the only negative feedback I got from my essay, the other comments praised how powerful and strong the points in the essay came across, that was a great achievement for me and exactly the kind of response I wanted to evoke with my writing.

I did end up submitting the essay to the wrong link so eventually I had to hand it in as a late submission which was very upsetting considering the amount of work I had put in to it and how proud I was of it. I'm not entirely sure if or how it affected the grade I received but I still ended up gaining a great mark which I was very pleased with.

Over the next couple of years of my degree I am going to have to really focus on understanding how to referencing in order to accomplish it successfully, in order to this I am going to revise over the conditions of Harvard referencing and if needed, speak to my tutor in order to help me understand properly to avoid making the same mistake as I did the first year.

(Images Below: Final Essay Submission)