Personal stories are newsworthy, also

By ETTY GROSSMAN

In our days, there’s a common thought about the lack of humanity among the news. People believe that the news media are only interested in breaking news about prominent or public figures. However, if we do a deep search we can find many news sites focused on real life stories about ordinary people.

CNN is one in many news channels that opens the door to its public to express themselves and share their stories, which are very interesting and touching.

In the case of CNN, there are established categories from which the person can choose to write about: Overcoming anxiety, your “Aha” weight-loss moment, how you found happiness or your journey to body acceptance.

At a first glance, the topics might seem a little controversial, but the way in which they are addressed tend to seek for social justice. The stories selected do not promote anorexia, unhealthy methods to lose weight or physical beauty as an important value; instead they ask people to tell their stories to help others to overcome this type of problems that were probably caused by societal pressures.

The assignments not only values people it also encourages them to serve as inspirational models.

Weight gain and obesity trends often make headlines, but many people have found a way to lose weight and get fit by healthy methods and this are the type of stories they are looking for.

Personally, I believe these testimonies are very useful and should be valued. We live in a world where instead of sleeping an extra hour per day, women decide to spend three hours and 19 minutes each week in front of the mirror.  I’m pretty sure that it is not to enhance their beauty, but because they don’t feel comfortable with themselves.

Instead of reading about Kim Kardashian’s new surgery, stories such as “how one woman learned to love herself” should hit the front page of every news channel because they really teach us how to recover from daily problems by natural, real and accessible methods.