Hi-My name is Melissa Castillo-Garsow, I'm sixteen and a junior at Ithaca High School in Ithaca, NY. This school year I started an organization called STARRS (students taking action requesting real shapes). We feel that magazines which use starvation imagery are disrespectful and harmful. Right now we are circulating a petition which we plan to send to magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Seventeen, etc. and to news organizations after we get over a 1,000 names. We feel as though we can reach that number in Ithaca, but the more names the merrier!. Hey, how about 5,000? We hoped that you might consider circulating it around to your contacts and then send it back to us so we can send them off in a big heap. The petition is attached and also copied below. We just started it, but so far in one day I personally got 242 signatures.
Sincerely,
Melissa Castillo-Garsow

PETITION
We the undersigned believe that magazines such as Teen, YM, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, CosmoGIRL, Marie Claire, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Allure, Elle, Glamour, Mademoiselle, GirL, Lucky, and Nylon represent an unhealthy image of women which is both disrespectful and harmful. The use of ultra-skinny models in such magazines hold up an unhealthy ideal of women and often leads to eating disorders and body loathing. We feel that magazines which use ultra-skinny models should take responsibility for their actions and represent women in their magazines as women really are: in all shapes, colors and sizes with the average American women at 5'4'' and 142 lbs.
Name______________________ Location_______________________

Please print a copy of the Petition and have your friends sign it, then send it to the address below. For a printable version of the petition click to the left. Or you could sign the guestbook below.

Melissa Castillo-Garsow
CO/ Marth Aguilar
Ithaca High School
1401 North Cayuga St.
Ithaca NY, 14850 USA