Health and RLA Feature Article

Body image. It affects girls around the globe, and there is one main culprit. Previously, you both know that I had written a social issues story that tied in with body image. It matters to me, so I decided to write a feature article about it.

There is a reason that I'm writing about body image. Did you know that for the first time this year, two of my classes joined together to create one big assignment for us? Try and guess which class joined with RLA. It's the one you would never think of; it is PE! In health class (which is a part of PE where we learn about wellness), we were going to write an article about a topic that came up often in teenagers. Meanwhile, in RLA, we were going to write a non-fiction article too. So for the past few weeks, I've researched and written about body image. I have put in a lot of work; like choosing a topic and slant, finding evidence to support my ideas as well as understand my topic and putting that information into an article/essay. The process is below.

To start of the journey of writing an article, I had to choose a topic out of self-harm, risky behaviour, technology, sleep and of course body image. I think that this took no effort on my part to pick what I wanted; body image is something close to my heart. Girls at all ages feel insecure about their bodies because the perfect body today is not only unrealistic but also everywhere because of photoshop. I'm big on confidence in women because feminism is a topic I am very passionate about. Body image was my clear topic, but then I had to develop a slant, or point of view. Finding a slant was a little bit more challenging, because I had to make sure I had a good message for the reader to take away. Focusing on media's affect on girls was definitely one of my main points, but eventually, I decided that I wanted it to be a community effort. It is not just media that invokes negative body image, but also society's fueling of the media's ideas. I realised that it was nobody's fault (the blame game never works), it was just that no one knew. My slant developed towards girls should support each other and acknowledge this issue. 

The slant was like my thesis of an argument, but the argument is no good if there is no evidence. Of course, like all of my other writing pieces, I spent time researching so I could familiarize myself with the topic. Initially, I used the internet. A lot of the articles I found were linking up to eating disorders and I found a lot of statistics; more than I needed. I wanted to find a good story, but there weren't very many in other articles. Then however, I started using other sources for information. Books, poems, and 

documentaries were all really useful. Understanding emotions of the topic is really important when writing a piece and I learned that. And suddenly, all of the factoids were useful because I could connect the two different sources together, which is called intertextuality. Body image was a theme that popped up in many unexpected places, and I know that my article would not have been the same without all of the ideas and information I had pulled by researching in many different ways.

A lot of my friends would say that writing the article itself was hard, but after exploring the topic, it wasn't hard for me to write. After researching well, the writing element can be quick and easy.  However, editing was where I struggled, because I saw a million things (hyperbole) that had to be fixed. I needed to cut a lot of unessacary words, add in a few explanation and write a new introduction because my old one felt cheesy. When I was going over my draft, I kept thinking, "How did I miss this?"  or "What was I thinking here?". And finally, I put my finished piece into pages, still editing along the way. I never realised how time consuming designing the article was, but I know now how important it is because it helps engage the reader. 

I always summarize my writing stating everything again, but that sounds pretty boring. I learned that when I was trying to write my conclusion, which I had to redo because it was really boring. I had an interesting experience in this unit and know new skills I can use in high school. This has also let me open up my mind to different aspects of body image (which I am still very passionate about). Writing my article was a long process, but I still learned things that will make me a better writer in the future.