i cannot turn this paper in

Being Hungry Sucks Dick

You will not be able to convince me that the Food Stamp Challenge was anything but a publicity stunt for those governors and senators and other public officials. Our class provided a microcosm of the same problem linked to inaccurate political generalizations; of my twenty-odd classmates, I was the only one who considered the role of appealingly priced fast food in the malnutrition of poverty. here’s the thing. mcdonald’s spends millions and millions of dollars creating appealing and persuasive depictions of not only the food itself, but also of the seemingly great lifestyle that comes alongside such a distinguished choice in greasy hamburgers. lentils are boring. us Americans love us some variety, and as such, I wanted to explore the effects of consuming items purchased solely from the value menu.
in my preparation for my week of dollar menus, I decided to track my mood and appetite for a few days to try and begin my with a baseline. one thing I chose to do was spend eight of my twenty-one dollars on a bottle of a vitamin blend that provides essential fruit and vegetable nutrients to ensure th
let me tell you something. the dollar menus are full of great deals and almost always tasty snacks. really, truly, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. it seems great, you drive up to the window, hand them a dollar and six cents, and they pass you a steaming double cheeseburger or a mcchicken or two apple pies. it’s easier not to wonder how the hell they can make money charging a dollar for a lot of hamburger meat, because the implications are likely quite troubling and would like discourage my patronage.
the single largest problem with the self as an ethnographer of one’s own situation is that of validity. from the overarching issue of conducting research and making observations that accurately address the intending topic of eating the poverty diet to the more minute aspects of designing a meaningful way to capture and organize data, it is nearly impossible to meet an acceptable level of validity. unfortunately, it is impossible for me to entirely abandon the fact that I am an upper-middle class college student, and as such, I’m not able to understand the yet esoteric feeling of poverty.
inarguably, the food stamp challenge is about simulation, not recreation, and that’s okay. my foray into the world of government nutrition programs has taught me a number of things. in reflection on my week, I have decided that the single most important piece of knowledge I have gained was a direct result of acknowledging that my background was inseparable from my experience. rather than attempting to deny the inherencies of my person and societal status, I realized that keeping these characteristics at the forefront of my mind led me to understand that, for me, this ethnography was not about describing my regular life and my food stamp challenge life, but to describe the intersectionality of the two. not only would it be pretentious for me to deem myself a reputable source for the woes of poverty, but it would also deny the fact that where I started from is also a crucial part of how I chose to present my data. this is not a paper about living in poverty. this is a paper about a rich, suburban kid playing at poverty.
perhaps my week of fast food exclusive consumption was no favor to my body, and yet, there was always the lingering comfort that everything I was doing was a choice. there are safety and comfort in control.
this exercise in ethnography illustrates the difficulties of being a social scientist. even the best designed, most naturalistic observations are unable to skirt the numerous threats presented simply by the virtue of its origins in research. whether the breakdown happens at the individual level, with the ethnographer failing to accurately or completely record information, or at the community level, where participants feel pressured or react with a response bias to sensitive subjects, one thing is clear. as much as we like to think as (amateur) researchers that our work is more or less objective, there is real danger in attempting to mask natural influences by feigning ignorance of their existence.