Photo Credit: Joe Shlabotnik (Flickr/Creative Commons)

Eighth-grader Julia Bluhm made history and headlines last week when her petition and protests led to Seventeen magazine pledging to not ever alter the face and body shapes of young women featured in its editorial pages. 

After hearing too many girls in her ballet class complain about their weight, Bluhm launched a petition on Change.org in April calling for the magazine to print one unaltered photo spread each month. Later she held a demonstration at the corporate offices of Hearst, the company that owns Seventeen. The petition garnered over 84,000 signatures. 

Last week the New York Times reported that. Ann Shoket, the magazine’s editor in chief, wrote in the editor’s letter in the August issue that the magazine had drafted a "Body Peace Treaty," promising not to change girls' body or face shapes (something Shoket insists the magazine has never done, anyway) and to include only images of real girls and healthy models. This is no doubt a response to Bluhm's campaign. 

As a feminist, this story makes me rejoice with the hope that perhaps we will see more and more magazines  start to feature realistic images and celebrate all types of beauty. As a writer, I can't help but think about the fact that Bluhm's crusade would not have been a success without new media. 

Not only did the Internet allow Bluhm to collect more than 80,000 signatures, but the Web also offers plenty of competition for magazines like Seventeen, as Melissa Harris-Perry pointed out on her show Saturday. With a host of blogs and online publications out there offering girls the tailored beauty, fitness, and fashion advice they could once only find in Seventeen, even this iconic magazine knows that despite its status readers are precious and their complaints need to be taken seriously. 

Many writers are afraid of what new media means for our future. Does it mean the death of newspapers, magazines and print books? I don't know. I hope not, but it could. But that doesn't mean our voices will be silenced. Julia Bluhm's story shows us that new media is a great opportunity for all of us -- whether we're activists or artists -- to make our voices heard like never before. 


Maybe you're a rebel with a cause who starts a petition like Bluhm did, or writer who publishes an e-book that inspires legions of people, or a blogger who creates an online publication that's an alternative to the magazines out there that don't seem to tell the stories of your community. 


I live in a city where many of the local newspaper reporters were recently laid off. And the newspaper at which I worked before I moved here no longer exists. So, I have good reasons to have a woeful attitude about new media, but stories like Julia Bluhm's reminds me I have a good reason to have a hopeful attitude instead. 

Photo Credit: Ron Mader via Flickr/Creative Commons

Yesterday morning when I logged onto my favorite social networking sites I was immediately faced with the sad news of the death of Armando Montano, a 22-year-old Associated Press intern. Montano, who was working this summer as a news intern for the AP bureau in Mexico City, Mexico, was found dead early Saturday. 


Montano’s body was found in the elevator shaft of an apartment building near where he was living. The circumstances of his death are being investigated by Mexican authorities.


Even though I didn't know Montano, news of his death hit me hard and not just because he was so young. In the summer of 2003, I too was an AP intern. Montano and I were also both part of the Chips Quinn Scholars program, which offers journalism students of color hands-on training in journalism and mentoring by caring news veterans.


In a Nov. 2007 column for the Denver Post, Montano, who was a Colorado Springs, Colorado resident, wrote about his desire to become a journalist despite the fact that most people would consider journalism a dying field. He wrote: 

Journalism is changing, newspaper circulation is falling, and people are even turning away from broadcast news. So why do I want to be a journalist in this day and age?

For the thrill of getting a hot story. So I can inform the public about wrongdoing. So I can be part of a system that represents and protects democracy.

Just because journalism is changing doesn't mean that we have to discard its best principles. From where I stand — a high school teenager looking for my life's direction — those principles are easy to find.

Chuck Dean, senior political reporter for The Birmingham News, shared his reflections on Montano's words yesterday on Twitter and said that though he's been a reporter for a generation he's "never read better words about why good reporters do what they do or better advice as our craft changes." I couldn't agree more. 

Regardless of your profession, there is a valuable lesson to be learned here from someone who was only beginning to live his life. No matter how circumstances shift and the landscape around you changes, hold on to principles. Ask yourself why you pursued this profession, this passion, in the first place and figure out a way to carry out that purpose no matter what. 

Thank you, Mando, for your wise words. 

There are three reasons why I wasn’t going to write anything about Anne-Marie Slaughter’s wildly popular cover story for The Atlantic “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

1. Even though I’m a woman, I don’t feel like the “Can Women Have It All?” conversation is addressing me. This discussion is about women being both mothers and top professionals and since I don’t have kids I guess I’m a loser that's not even attempting to have it all.

2. Slaughter’s article was so loooong after I read it I wanted to tap a nap, not write a blog post.

3. Anything I could have written about Slaughter’s article was better stated by Lindy West in her insightful and hilarious piece for Jezebel.com, No One ‘Has It All,’ Because ‘Having It All’ Doesn’t Exist.

So why did I finally decide to write about Slaughter's essay? Well, I didn't. Actually, I've decided to write about a segment from Saturday morning's episode of Melissa Harris-Perry Show, a segment that made me realize that perhaps women can't "have it all" but we can have "that."

What's "that"? Well, that's up to you. 

On Saturday’s show actress and social commentator Nancy Giles made a statement that you may not have even paid much attention to as it was squeezed in just before a commercial break. She said that when she began her acting career she heard an actress she admired say: “I can play anything from a man to a speck of dust.” Initially she thought that this was what she wanted too, then she realized she’d be much better off  by focusing on what she does best and perhaps everyone should follow suit instead trying to have it all. “Find something that you do and you love and it’s OK to focus on one thing and not be all over the place with your life out of balance,” she said. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now, I’m not saying women need to just pick one: parent or professional. And I don't think that's what Giles meant either. 

What I’m talking about is purpose and personal calling. Whether you have children or not, chances are your life hasn’t turned out exactly the way you wanted. I know mine hasn’t. And maybe you didn’t accomplish many of the things on your 30 before 30 list. But take a close look at that list and ask yourself exactly why you set these goals.

For example, one of my goals in life was to move to New York and start a women’s magazine. I wanted to do this because I wanted to connect with and inspire other women. But this is something I can do whether I'm a magazine editor in New York or an English teacher in Alabama. I can find small ways to empower women every single day of my life even if that magazine dream never comes true.


So you may be struggling to balance motherhood and your career. (I mean, has anyone, male or female figured out how to perfectly balance their personal and professional lives?) You may not be able to achieve everything on your bucket list and be mom of the year. But go back to your purpose, go back to the reason you set those goals in the first place and consider how you fulfill this calling anyway. 

At this point in life I can't quit my job, leave my husband and head to the Big Apple. Well, I guess I could but   the Mister probably wouldn't like that very much. So, no, I probably can’t have it all, but when it comes to my dream of inspiring women – I can certainly have that. 

What is your purpose? How can you live it out right here, right now?

Nearly every poem I wrote in college was in someway inspired by singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. Many of these poems were bad, really bad, but for better or worse, Ms. Apple was my muse. 


When I heard about the deluxe edition of her new album The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, more simply known as The Idler Wheel, I had to have it. Downloading some digital copy from iTunes just wouldn't do and here's why: instead of an ordinary jewel case, the deluxe version of the CD comes in a journal and with a DVD of Apple's performances at this year's SXSW festival, a poster, and two postcard-size prints. You had me at journal. 

The journal includes the lyrics to each track, handwritten by Fiona herself, some of her artwork, and even random studio production notes. I was eager to get my hands on this hoping it would give me some glimpse into the psyche of the mysterious Fiona Apple. She inspires me and I want to know what inspires her. 


As Fiona says in the refrain of the song "Every Single Night," I just want to feel everything. By delving into the pages of her journal while I listened to her music I was hoping I would somehow feel what she felt when she wrote those words. Silly, I know, but it was a fun experiment, nonetheless, as I lay in the middle of the floor (because I imagine this is what she does when she creates and because this is what I did in college) drinking in her lyrics. 

I must say I'm a bigger fan of her earlier releases, but The Idler Wheel, Apple's fourth studio album, is still a must-have for any Apple-head (yep, I just made that up) and both her voice and the music have a very raw feel to them that I love.


Fiona Apple inspires me because the music she creates is what I consider real art, not just entertainment. I've mentioned on this blog before that I believe true art inspires and transforms the people who encounter and understand it, even if only in a small way. Apple inspires me with her use of metaphor. Take, for example, this verse from "Werewolf": 

I could liken you to a werewolfThe way you left me for deadBut I admitI provided a full moonI could liken you to a sharkThe way you bit off my headBut then again, I was waving aroundA bleeding, open wound

Moreover, I believe that real art teaches us something about ourselves and Fiona Apple's music always does just that. Long ago, while listening to her lyrics, I discovered that I am not an easy woman to love. Fortunately, I've found friends and an amazing husband who are up to the challenge, but I am still keenly aware of this dark truth about myself. In "Left Alone" she writes: "How can I ask any one to love me/ when all I do is beg to be left alone."  Boy, can I relate to that. We writers can be weird that way. 


Fiona Apple was my poetic muse and later in college even inspired a number of my short stories. I hope that one day she'll influence a piece of creative nonfiction I write too. Well, actually, I guess she already has. 


What musicians inspire you? 

Photo by Angie Garrett via Flickr/Creative Commons

The temperature is quickly climbing to 100 degrees. I find refuge in a cool corner of a coffee shop and a mason jar of iced mango green tea.

I’m here on a mission to answer one simple, little question posed in a thick, heavy book that I’ve been toting around for a week. It’s a writing exercise composed of a one sentence prompt: Why do you write?

Open journal. Pick up pen. Ready. Set. Go.

I write for the sake of my heartbeat, to remind myself that I exist.

I write because I can’t help myself.

I write when my hand trembles in fear of the thoughts haunting my mind.

I write between lines for those cast aside to the margins.

I write to punish. I write to praise.

I write to hold tight to grudges. I write to forgive.

I write to feel sincere. I write to expose myself as a fraud.

I write to feel human. I write to feel divine.

I write as an act of prayer, each sentence a chant, a hymn, a meditation.

I write as an act of play, to feel free as a girl flying high in her favorite swing at the neighborhood park.

I write to find community. I write to escape to my own little world.

I write because I want you to love me.

I write to be immortal. I write when I feel ready to die.

I write because I believe that in the end stories are all we have.

*Inspired by “Why I Write” by Terry Tempest Williams

Why do you write?

Photo by Joe Corrigan
Courtesy TechCrunch via Flikr/Creative Commons

“My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have to potential to be the comic stories the next.”  -- Nora Ephron

Author and screenwriter Nora Ephron died Tuesday at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she was being treated for acute myeloid leukemia and pneumonia. 

While I am, of course, familiar with Ephron's movies such as Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally and Julie & Julia, it wasn't until I started reading her obituaries that I realized how much more she had accomplished and the example she set for  women writers. 

As the Los Angeles Times notes, Ephron's "protagonists, who included the chef Julia Child and the whistle-blower Karen Silkwood, were often women and typically were just as capable — if not more so — than the men around them."

And as Mariam of Redbone Afropuff mentioned in a comment to a recent post on the blog, Ephron showed her that "yes, I can be a journalist, a novelist, a memoirist, and essayist, a screenwriter and a playwright all in one lifetime." 

Just to give a sampling of what she accomplished off screen, in the 1960s Ephron worked for the New York Post and then went on to write monthly columns in the 1970s for Esquire and New York magazines. Many of the pieces she wrote for these magazines were collected in three books of essays, Wallflower at the Orgy (1970), Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women (1975) and Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media (1979). 

Examples of more recent writings include her 2006 collection of essays, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman and her 2010 collection of essays, I Remember Nothing, which takes a humorous look at the aging process and other topics.

Prolific is a word that just doesn't seem to fully describe her career, a career I'm sorry I didn't explore more when she was still with us. But her legacy remains to remind us to keep writing, writing, writing and to tell our stories no matter what. 

Let's Eat at AlaBlogMeet!

Birmingham resident Rachel Callahan had made connections with writers all over the world, thanks to her popular blog Grasping for Objectivity. But she knew very few bloggers in her hometown. She searched for a website that helped local bloggers connect, but with no luck. 


"So I decided to create one," Callahan says. 


Callahan launched Alabama Bloggers in May of 2009 and eventually took these online connections to real life with regular meetings now known as #AlaBlogMeet. The next meeting is at 11:30 a.m. Friday at The Silvertron Cafe, 3813 Clairmont Avenue in Birmingham. I'll be there and I hope those of you in town will join me. 


"When I started the site, I said that I would provide meet-ups, but I didn't really mean it," Callahan confesses. "I was scared to death to meet people in real life! But one of the original members called me on it and offered to host the first one. We had 19 people show up, and I enjoyed every minute of it."


Since then the group has had a meetup at least every other month. 


What can you expect if you're a first-timer? 


"Lots of laughter, banter, and some really good blogging advice mixed into the cracks," Callahan says. "You're sure to walk away with some new friends. And we always have at least one first-timer at every meetup, so don't be afraid!  You're always welcome."


Click here to RSVP if you plan to attend the Alabama Bloggers June #AlaBlogMeet. 



Crossposted at See Jane Write Birmingham.