Over the past few weeks in RLA we have been working on our feature articles for health class. Our feature articles are about topics/issues that teens teens struggle with, and what can be the solution for that. We were given different topics to talk about: body image, risky behavior, sleep, and self harm. I chose to write my feature article about the topic body image because these days body image is one of the most important things for teens and adults. We get so influenced by images and so many people now get eating disorders or do unhealthy things to have the body in the images. These images can also lead to depression. I felt really strong about the topic of body image, so once I went with that topic, I had to make a slant of what I wanted to focus on. A slant is basically a claim that is followed through the writing piece, but isn't stated. I wanted to make my slant about how images on social media influence people of the perfect body. So, I made my slant: Social media images are causing people to feel shameful towards their bodies to strive for an unattainable body image.
Once I had my slant I had to start my research of facts, background information, solutions, and what I was going to talk about. Before researching I did some thinking of what I should talk about, and I remembered about an article I read a while back of a challenge craze that was going on in China that shows if you have the "ideal body". It was called the A4 waist challenge, which brought me to the idea that I should write my article about body/beauty challenges people do all around the world to attain the "ideal body" on social media. I remembered back to a bunch of old challenges people did on social media for the "ideal body" or to be "beautiful". For example, the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, waist trainers, iphone 6 knee challenge, etc. I also looked up at other Chinese "ideal body" challenges and found many other articles I could use in my article. But, then came the part of writing and formatting my article. I first started my writing with background information of body image, then talked about what the challengers were and then analyzed them. I ended off my piece of solutions to maintain/get a positive body image and what I really think of all the challenges on social media. Then it came to the formatting part of the article which is pretty complicated. I learned about all the text features used in articles and how to put them in your article. For example, some text features I used were lists, caption/fact box, and subheadings. I also learned about nut grafs. Nut grafs are the sentence that is usually next to the title that gives a bit of information on what the article is talking about, or a question to hook you in and give you an idea on the article.
Have a great weekend!
