Amplify Utah supports and facilitates dynamic journalistic storytelling to celebrate diverse points of view. By partnering with traditional media, we cultivate an environment that encourages stories be shared widely and made easily accessible for our communities to read, hear, watch and engage.
Sandy’s new female speaking club strives to amplify women’s voices
07-06-2025 By Savannah Stacey
These women have entered their public speaking era.
Utah Vipers women’s rugby team takes shot at a national title
05-15-2025 By Elle Crossley
There’s “no choice but to win” for this team, whose members range in age from 18 to 52.
80 Years Later: Student Documentary Revisits Utah's Topaz Camp
05-11-2025 By Jordan Thornblad
"It [is] so important to Utah history that we don’t brush this under the rug."
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Eight women – thin or pregnant, in their 20s or early 30s, and sporting waist-length curls and long eyelashes – dance around a beige hotel room in matching black sweats to Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” and blow kisses with full lips playfully at the camera.
It’s a common scene among the hundreds of videos posted by the social media influencers behind “MomTok,” which started to go viral in 2020 and has drawn international fascination, fueled by some of the women starring on Hulu’s reality show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
Other Utah-based reality TV shows, such as Bravo’s Salt Lake City edition of the “Real Housewives” franchise, frequently spotlight medical spas, with its stars checking in for treatments. From Botox parties featured on the shows to “Real Housewives” cast member Heather Gay’s two Beauty Lab + Laser locations in Murray and Riverton, these procedures are often prominently promoted on-air.
For Brookelyn McAllister, 23, seeing these nonsurgical cosmetic procedures on television helps normalize the trend, she said.
“When you know someone who's done it, it makes it less daunting,” said McAllister, who graduated from Utah Valley University in 2023.
Utah reality TV stars and social influencers, many boasting followers in the hundreds of thousands on their social media accounts, frequently promote their procedures, blending on-screen appearances with online endorsements.
Pioneered in the late 1990s, medical spas combine more traditional spa treatments, like facials and chemical peels, with noninvasive aesthetic procedures, such as laser hair removal and injections. Today, billboards with slogans like “Freeze Your Fat For Good” and “Love Thy Selfie” from these clinics are common along Utah’s highways.
“When I was living in Pennsylvania or different states, [I didn’t] see plastic surgery billboards like you do here,” said McAllister.
The commonness of the ads helps create a sense of normalcy, said McAllister, who has had lip filler and underwent a labiaplasty, a cosmetic surgery to resize the labia.
This surgery, familiar to those who watched the first season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” in 2024, was featured when one of its stars, Jessi Ngatikaura, underwent the procedure. She celebrated the occasion with a “mommy makeover” party, celebrating alongside her castmates, who gathered around Ngatikaura’s bed and examined the blurred-out results on air.
“After getting my labiaplasty, I was a lot more confident,” McAllister said. “That was a major insecurity of mine for a really long time.”
Seeing and hearing about other women getting other procedures, however, makes her question whether she’d like to do more treatments as well, she said.
“I think, ‘OK, well, I have done some stuff. If I do [more], is it going to make me happy? Or am I going to be like, I need to fix something else? It’s just a cycle,” she said.
Plastic surgery has become increasingly popular with younger people according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, nearly 230,000 cosmetic surgeries and nearly 140,000 noninvasive cosmetic procedures were performed on people under age 19 in 2020.
Stephanie Godfrey, a certified aesthetic nurse practitioner who specializes in cosmetic injectables at Aesthetica Medical Spa in Pleasant Grove, said she’s seen an increase in younger people visiting her spa, as social platforms like TikTok have grown.
“Injections have become extremely popular over the years, especially with younger people,” she said. “I wish … social media didn’t give young people this biased view of what they should look like.”
This phenomenon is especially noticeable in Utah, which has more plastic surgeons per capita than the Los Angeles metropolitan area, according to a 2017 study by researchers at Utah State University.
Courtney Grow, a Utahn whose fashion posts on Instagram have amassed a following of more than 170,000 people, said influencers have expanded their reach beyond traditional celebrity culture.
“[They] have kind of taken this celebrity tier and expanded it,” she said. “We used to only have celebrities, … but now there are so many people we have parasocial relationships with online.”
Grow said she has also noticed her influencer peers promoting plastic surgery procedures more frequently.
“I feel like I've seen a shift where it's like, ‘Come with me to get Botox’ or … something like that,” she said. “[It’s] being incorporated into content.”
While reality TV has attracted audiences drawn to Utah’s unique culture, often revolving around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the state’s beauty standards have also attracted attention online. The TikTok suggested search “Every Utah Girl Looks The Same” showcases women with similar looks to that of the state’s reality stars and have drawn over 1 million views.
Godfrey said this shift is also reflected in medical practices across Utah.
“Influencers are huge in Utah, and they really do set the standards for beauty in the state,” she said.
As an increased focus on “preventative Botox” has extended to people in their 20s and younger nationwide, Godfrey said she feels an obligation to educate younger patients on anti-aging procedures.
“You don’t need to start until your 30s,” she said. “The way I treat is more of a natural approach.”
The medical aesthetics industry has seen steady growth over the past 15 years, with the number of spa locations increasing from 8,899 in 2022 to 10,488 in 2023, according to the American Med Spa Association. This growth reflects ongoing consumer demand for aesthetic treatments and suggests that the market remains far from saturated, according to the association’s 2024 state-of-the-industry report.
With a second season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” confirmed for spring 2025, Godfrey said she expects interest in med spa procedures to continue as well.
“With ‘Mormon Wives,’ everyone wants to know what they do,” she said.
Georgia Metcalf wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text: This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Georgia Metcalf wrote this story as a journalism student at the University of Utah. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
Libraries at Utah’s colleges and universities, like many businesses throughout the country, have felt the impact of COVID-19 on its workforce over the last two years.
Some — including libraries at Salt Lake Community College and University of Utah — have remained partially open throughout the pandemic, providing services for students and community members such as internet access and laptops. But keeping staff has been a challenge.
“We’re running a bare-bones crew here, so if somebody’s been exposed but has no symptoms and can’t get a test, [I ask myself] ‘Can I let this person work?’” said Angela Beatie, assistant director of library public services at SLCC.
In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, three of SLCC’s four campus libraries — Jordan, Miller and South City — were closed until June 2020. They reopened, with shortened hours, through August 2021. Then the Omicron variant surge hit.
For the past two months, Beatie said she starts every day asking herself, “How many people are going to be out sick today?”
Since December, more of SLCC’s library staff have tested positive for COVID-19, forcing them to be out for three to 12 days at a time. The increase in cases and exposures, Beatie said, has led to one-on-one discussions about what to do — because of the need to have employees work in-person.
The University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library, meanwhile, was closed from April through June of 2020. During that time, onsite employees worked with students and patrons on research requests over Zoom and mailed out books, laptops and other materials, said Melanie Hawks, assistant dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and director of Library Human Resources.
The Marriott library reopened in June 2020, under shorter hours, through August 2021 — when the library returned to its pre-pandemic schedule.
Early in the pandemic, the library staff made contingency plans to address potential staffing shortages, Hawks said — but the library has not had to put those plans in action.
Hawks said employees “have been able to maintain our service levels despite any absences due to illness or isolation/quarantine requirements.”
Jon Glenn, director of SLCC library services, said that even before the pandemic, his school’s libraries were having difficulty hiring and retaining people in some positions, such as evening and weekend shifts.
Beatie, who worked at three Kansas schools before arriving in Utah, said she was surprised by the number of part-time positions — which are less stable than full-time jobs — at SLCC’s libraries.
“We rely a lot on part-time employees, and we’re having trouble getting them and holding on to them,” she said.
Beatie oversees three full-time and 25 part-time employees — all important, she said, to keeping SLCC’s four campus libraries functioning. (Another 11 part-time employees also work in SLCC’s library system, under other supervisors.)
“A lot of the positions I hire for don’t require previous work experience or an associate degree,” Beatie said. “So, we’re competing with a very broad market as opposed to more specialized positions that you need a lot of education or experience for.”
At the Marriott library, part-time positions are reserved for students which, Hawks said, means higher turnover in those positions as students balance other priorities like courses and family life or graduate.
As the pandemic, and its economic effects, continued, Glenn said, many SLCC employees put in their notice.
“People started leaving for better paying jobs, or just because it had become too stressful to work on the frontlines with a pandemic raging and the state taking away the ability to require protocols to keep staff safe,” he said, referring to state laws that limited public-health officials’ authority to issue emergency health orders.
Julie Meldrum, who works at SLCC’s Miller Campus library, said pay is likely a large factor discouraging applications. Entry-level part-time positions at SLCC pay an average of $12 an hour — a level that was raised from $10.25 last July — and applicants have more options that pay better, she said.
“Unless we raise the average pay at SLCC, we will have an increasingly difficult time hiring and retaining quality employees,” Meldrum said.
Zack Allred, assistant director for library academic services, said pay across the board is still not competitive enough, compared to other businesses and colleges.
“I’ve had both part-time and full-time job candidates turn down job offers because the pay is so low, and I have very little control in how much I can pay,” Allred said, adding that he has experienced a 120% turnover rate in his team’s part-time employees over the past two years.
“Even if I can get someone to take the position, they usually don’t stay very long, and they all say the pay is why they leave,” Allred said. “They enjoy the work, they like the college environment, but they can’t survive on the pay.”
Beatie said she has spent too much time, sometimes weeks, guiding applicants through the hiring process — only to have them reject a job offer because of the low pay. She has learned, she said, to be upfront about pay in applicants’ job interviews.
At the Marriott library, Hawks said, the entry-level pay for student employees isn’t much higher — ranging from $11 to $13 an hour, depending on the position. “We raised our student pay rates in August 2021, and are currently analyzing our budget to determine what more we can do in 2022,” she said.
Supervisors, she said, have felt the pinch of the job market when replacing vacancies. “Applicants get hired elsewhere before we can interview them or get multiple job offers along with ours,” Hawks said.
Students turning down job offers, Hawks said, “used to be an uncommon occurrence, but in 2021 it happened with 10% of the offers we made to students. Our acceptance rate in 2022 is looking better … but the recruitment and hiring process is still more challenging than it was prior to 2020.”
Because of staffing shortages, the Markosian Library at SLCC’s Taylorsville Redwood Campus began to shut its doors last fall at 10 p.m. instead of midnight. Early closures have continued into the spring semester.
Over the last six months, Beatie said she has continuously struggled to fill between five and eight of the library system’s 36 part-time positions. SLCC’s library services have tried to solve the problem internally, but understaffing “stretches us all,” Beatie said.
Beatie said she would like SLCC to consider hiring more full-time employees, but the system is limited by its staff budget.
“I feel like we would have a lot more stability [and] be more competitive,” she said. “I would like to continue to have conversations across the college about our historical reliance on part-time employees, because any potential change needs to be supported by our leaders.”
Although Beatie said she feels like the library system is “climbing out of the fog a bit,” she said there still is a small chance the libraries will have to be closed Saturdays during the spring semester, depending on such unpredictable factors as staff illnesses.
“I feel like Silly Putty, where I’m just being stretched and stretched,” she said. “There’s going to be a point where things break.”
Andrew Christiansen wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Andrew Christiansen wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
A hashtag that includes emojis of a seedling, flower and bee has amassed more than 50 million views on TikTok.
The tag is a nod to the trend known as “flower bombing,” a form of guerilla gardening where native wildflower seeds are planted in unoccupied public spaces. The purpose is to promote biodiversity, re-establish native plants and disrupt urbanism.
“When you are young, full of ideals and just want to make a difference – the idea of tossing a little [flower] bomb that will take on a life of its own, I think, is appealing,” said Keith Homer, a Utah-based landscaper and high school teacher.
A decrease in roadless areas results in less biodiversity, as flora and fauna lose their habitats to road development. This then leads to pollution and human interactions, such as vehicle collisions with animals due to increased traffic.
Homer said he has done his own share of guerilla gardening, recalling one occasion when he planted extra tulips in his neighbor’s backyard under the cover of night. “[My neighbor’s] wife went on and on about the miracle of these tulips popping up, and she was crying because she thought it was a miracle,” he said.
While flower bombing can help beautify urban spaces, it’s illegal to garden on a property you don’t own. It can also pose an environmental risk.
Brittany Blackham, an environmental and sustainability student at the University of Utah, said anyone considering flower bombing should think first about the possible effects, good and bad.
“I have some automatic hesitations,” she said. “Just thinking we can go in and do whatever we want has created a lot of problems in terms of climate change, unsustainable practices and abusing resources.”
Once something has altered an ecosystem, Blackham said, it’s challenging to remove the seeds, which can be detrimental to the environment if plants sprouted from those seeds become invasive and threaten native species.
Homer said one of the dangers of invasive species is not knowing how it could affect people and animals. For example, myrtle spurge, a succulent that sprouts yellow and white flowers, is an invasive species that the Salt Lake County Health Department considers a noxious weed.
“I’ve gotten it on my skin … and it just starts to itch and you get a big rash,” he said, noting that some people can suffer swelling, blisters, eye irritation and temporary blindness from touching myrtle spurge. “That’s one the people have propagated in the past because it looks cool.”
Before planting any flowers, Blackham suggested first doing research to ensure those flowers are native and non-invasive. She recommends resources like the National Invasive Species Center, Utah Pollinator Habitat Program and Utah State University’s yard and garden web page.
“Support it with education,” Blackham said.
Thoughtful and informed flower bombing, Homer said, can create eye-catching flora and improve biodiversity — so long as those engaging in the practice are aware of the potential long-term consequences.
“If you can make someone stop in their tracks or do a double take when they’re [walking] by, your design has changed someone’s life,” he said. “You have affected the universe in a way.”
Paige Ney wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text: This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Kyle Paige Ney wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
A series of anti-LGBTQ+ flyers seen around Salt Lake Community College during Pride month — and a response from school officials that one advocate called “vague, almost cryptic” — have sparked discussion at the college.
The flyers, said student Kai Lyon, “made me feel … like I’m not respected. It’s not healthy for a learning environment, in any way or shape.” Lyon works with SLCC’s Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center (GSSRC) through the college’s internship program.
Students and staff were notified about the unauthorized flyers in SLCC’s weekly newsletter on June 28. The notice didn’t specify the information in the flyers, or where they appeared, but it encouraged anyone who felt harmed by them to reach out to the college’s Center for Health and Counseling, as well as other LGBTQ+ resources, including the GSSRC, located on SLCC’s South City campus.
“People had no idea what [the email] was about, and so they came to me asking questions because it was so vague, almost cryptic,” said Peter Moosman, manager of the GSSRC.
Moosman and Lyon both said they wished SLCC officials had expressed more explicit words of solidarity with the queer community.
After meeting with students a day after the newsletter went out, Moosman contacted the school’s administration — which sent him a scanned copy of one of the flyers. Moosman and other GSSRC staff shared the information, and denounced the flyers on their respective Instagram accounts.
The flyers contained no images, but repeated rhetoric common among anti-LGBTQ+ groups, asserting unfounded claims that the queer community pushes for “child sterilization” and “cult indoctrination.” The flyers concluded by equating support for Pride month with support for pedophilia.
According to Peta Owens-Liston, assistant director of public relations at SLCC, an employee at the Miller campus reported four flyers to the school’s public safety department on June 6. A student reported a fifth flyer, also at the Miller campus, on June 14.
After the fifth flyer was reported, SLCC’s public safety department notified Candida Mumford, the dean of students, and Juone Kadiri, the school’s vice president for institutional equity, inclusion and transformation. Kadiri wrote and sent out the notice in the June 28 newsletter — three weeks after the flyers were first reported.
College officials did not immediately contact the GSSRC or the school’s Queer Student and Employee associations, Owens-Liston said.
Campus police identified the person who distributed the flyers, using security camera footage. Owens-Liston could not confirm whether that person was a student or staff member, but said that, as of mid-July, “ongoing disciplinary action” was being taken.
Owens-Liston said the person who put up the flyers violated SLCC’s advertising and posting policy, because they did not go through proper channels to get approval to post on campus. The flyers were removed because of that, she said.
While Moosman and other GSSRC members said they were concerned that the flyers’ message could be classified as hate speech, Mumford said the flyers fall under the legal definition of free speech.
“It’s one of the challenges in higher ed,” Mumford said. “I think most institutions are grappling with this. … We’re really constrained by the legal system and by our Legislature, and there are a lot of things that we [must] adhere to as an institution.”
Mumford co-chairs SLCC’s bias response team, created last year to respond to reports of hate and bias — usually directed against marginalized groups. The team, however, does not handle disciplinary action.
“What we’re trying to do is elevate other voices so we can help educate and inform people [and] bring more dialogue,” Mumford said. She cited an incident last year, where a student pulled off another student’s hijab — an incident that led to organizing a forum, where a panel discussed the hijab’s cultural significance. (Mumford said the student who pulled the hijab went through a review, based on the school’s student code of conduct. Mumford would not say what disciplinary action was taken, citing confidentiality.)
Mumford said SLCC’s department of public safety informed the bias response team about the flyers — but the team did not handle the response. The team did log the flyers as a hate and bias incident, which will appear in a public report at the end of the academic year.
Owens-Liston said the college will form another group whose role will be to “review and make recommendations about the processes around incidents like this one.”
Kadiri, in a statement to The Globe at SLCC, reiterated the college’s commitment to creating inclusive learning and working environments where “all feel welcome and respected.”
“While we are required to permit a broad spectrum of messaging on our campuses,” Kadiri said in the statement, “we want to make it clear that we do not agree with and adamantly oppose any hate-filled and harmful messaging that targets specific groups or identities on our campuses.”
A 1942 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that “words meant to incite violence,” also known as “fighting words,” may not be protected free speech. SLCC relays the text of — and limits to — the First Amendment on its website.
Mumford pointed out, however, that the flyers found at Miller, under the strict interpretation within courts, do not meet the legal doctrine of “inciting violence.”
Moosman called the flyers an example of “abusive and dangerous” attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community among some groups of people — and are a genuine concern.
“These are very strong claims that are driving people to physical acts of retaliation,” Moosman said of the flyers’ messaging. He cited similarly targeted actions in Utah during Pride month, such as when pride flags were cut down from people’s homes and burned in a Salt Lake City neighborhood.
Moosman also mentioned the November 2022 shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo., in which a gunman killed five people and injured 26 others. The shooter was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
“People are not being violent in silos,” Moosman said. “They’re part of a bigger picture.”
Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.
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We also request organizations include the following text either at the beginning or end of the story text :This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and [Your Media Organization's Name] to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through emerging journalism. Cristian Martinez wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. For more stories from Amplify Utah, visit amplifyutah.org/use-our-work.
