2016.6（2）passage3

Jody Hubert is a diet and nutrition expertwho travels around the states to speak in middle and high schools. She primarilyspeaks to students in health classes but sometimes the school will arrange forher to speak to several different groups of girls. Her biggest concern is theemphasis American culture places on thinness and the negative ways this affectsgirls today. Jody has a Ph.D. in nutrition but more important, she has personalexperience, her mother taught her to diet when she was only 8 years old. Jodyhas created several different presentations, which she gives to different typesof audiences and she tries to establish an emotional connection with thestudents so that they will feel comfortable asking questions or talking to herprivately. She shows them pictures and images from popular culture of beautifulwomen and explains how computers are used to make the women look even more thinand beautiful than they are in real life. She describes how the definition ofbeauty has changed over the years and even from culture to culture. She thentalks about health issues and the physical damages that can occur as the result ofdieting. Finally, she addresses self-respect and the notion that a person’ssense of beauty must include more than how much a person weighs. Sometimes Jodyfeels that she succeeds in persuading some students to stop dieting, other times she feels that she fails.