For this journal entry, find an example of a cultural artifact that is relevant to our discussion of medicalization–this could be an image from popular culture (a meme, etc.), a pharmaceutical advertisement, a video clip, a recent news story, etc. Submit your artifact with a brief (~300 word) discussion.
Questions to think about/discuss (you don’t need to address all of these, they are suggestions to get you started):
- How is normality being defined in this example? How is abnormality defined? What social or cultural assumptions underlie these definitions?
- What is being medicalized in this example? What are the consequences of this medicalization?
- Is this an example of resistance to medicalization? If so, how are ideas about normality and abnormality being reframed through this resistance?
