Writing literacy for chosen audiences, including the ability to draft and format an essay in an appropriate citation style.
I have been writing in one form or another throughout my entire career, but I can confidently say that this program has strengthened my writing skills in several important ways. I have learned how to create academic writing that is also clear (not just long for length’s sake!) and how to correctly cite ideas that were initiated by another researcher.
On April 19, 2012, fourteen-year-old Julia Bluhm started a petition arguing that Seventeen magazine should stop splashing digitally edited or altered images of young girls across its pages, and to “give girls images of real girls!” (Bluhm, 2012). Claiming that she had heard too many complaints from her fellow teenage ballet dancers about their weight and body image, Bluhm took to the petition website Change.org to publish her appeal, calling for Seventeen to print “one unaltered photo spread each month” (Bluhm, 2012). More than 86,000 signatures later, the petition lead to a demonstration at the corporate offices of the magazine’s publishing company, a meeting between Bluhm and editor-in-chief Ann Shoket, and ultimately to the publishing of a “Body Peace Treaty” by Seventeen.
When I heard about this story during the summer of 2012, I wanted to find out more about the petition and how something so seemingly simple could produce such drastic change. As a result, I put together the following critical analysis paper, which helped me examine this phenomenon that I found so interesting. I presented the paper using a Pecha Kucha style PPT, also linked below.
Backstage Communications 