Hello, I am Allison Miller and I am a Mechanical Engineering student from Missouri S&T. In my English course this semester, my final project was to write an essay and make a poster relating one of the readings we had to our personal life and an organization. I chose Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” where a beautiful body positive woman with a birthmark on her face is verbally abused by her husband, grows to believe she is ugly, and dies in the process of trying to remove the birthmark. This really hit home for me because I have always struggled with my body image and body weight. I am still working to have the number on the scale not define my self worth and learning about the work at The Body Positive has helped with that a lot. I called Connie Sobczak to learn more about the organization and get her view on why projects like these are important for schools to do. Not only do projects like this teach history, culture, and points of view to help the next generation learn and grow, but they also help the student grow as a person and individual. I thoroughly enjoyed this project, and I am very thankful for Connie’s help with this.

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