Choose one of the set texts (10,000 Dresses, Pink, Impulse, Sold or Two Boys Kissing, but with the exception of the text you wrote on in Assignment 2) and a text chosen from your wider reading.* Using evidence from these texts, the unit e-readings and your own independent research, make a case for OR against one of the following statements:  

1.
2. Gendered representations of the child/adolescent body offer structured models of cultural acceptability.
3. Children’s texts provide opportunities for questioning assumptions about ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ identities.
4. The child body as represented in texts for young people is the site for medical, psychological and/or therapeutic interventions that reflect contemporary discourses.
5. The bodies of the young are not their own.
6. Implied child readers are exposed to a narrow range of masculinities that disregards contemporary theories challenging dominant Western notions of male identity.
7. Texts for children and/or adolescents teach young people that the way they look – rather than how they act or think – is important.
8. The non-western child body is often depicted as an Other against which an ideal Western childhood can be imagined.
9. Children’s literature is a lens through which notions of the body are discussed and controlled – it offers a gaze that encourages readers to objectify themselves and others.

In your essay, you must draw on your research and reading to respond to your chosen topic, as well as addressing the various narrative strategies and ideological positions at play in the primary texts you have chosen.

This is a literary studies essay. Elements of literary analysis (e.g. narration, focalisation, figurative language, characterisation, poetics, picture book techniques, etc) must be addressed. Secondary resources should be appropriate to literary studies. Research articles from the sciences, education and social sciences are unlikely to be appropriate.