The modern way to collect signatureson a petition requires no paper or penor standing on a street for hours.All it requires is going online.Change.org is a social action websitewhere people around the world can startor sign online petitions.The top causes range from animal protectionto criminal justice to women's rights.There are many different reasonswhy people start petitions at the site.Lauren Todd of New York told CBS televisionthat she started a petition a few months agoafter she saw a picture of a girls shirt on Facebook.The shirt read: "I'm too pretty to do homework,so my brother has to do it for me."LAUREN TODD: "It was outrageous enoughto be posted on Facebook,but it was actually more outrageous than that,and I felt like I needed to do something about it."Ms. Todd's petition urged shoppersto boycott J.C. Penney storesuntil they stopped selling shirtswith what she called sexist messages.Five hours later, Shelby Knoxstarted tweeting about the petitionto her thousands of Twitter followers.Ms. Knox is the director of women'srights organizing for Change.org.Some of her followers also started tweetingabout the shirt and signing the petition.SHELBY KNOX: "From the time that Laurenstarted the petition on Change.organd J.C. Penney pulled the shirt,it was about ten hours,in which it got over two thousand signaturesand at one point was generatingover four hundred tweets a minute."Ms. Knox said that with each new signature,an e-mail automatically went toJ.C. Penney's public relations team.Another went to the company's chief. J.C. Penney,without comment, discontinued the shirts.Clothing designer John Noone has workedwith a number of large stores.He says he has always used words like "pretty"or "princess" when he creates shirts for girls.JOHN NOONE: "Because it's easy to do,I guess it's just so ingrained in our culturethat just it's an easy sale.It's going to be easier to sell a shirt that says,you know, 'My little princess' than, uh, 'My A student.'"Mr. Noone says fashion designersfind their ideas in many places.It could be a celebrity's tweetor something said on a TV show.JOHN NOONE: "And if you think it's funnyand the designer thinks it's funnyand the buyer thinks it's funny, then it,you know, it makes it to the store."But now, with the Internet,consumers who take offense can do more thanjust write an angry letter to the company.Another clothing seller, Forever 21,got in trouble not long after J.C. Penney.Forever 21 was selling a girl's shirtthat read "Allergic to Algebra."It stopped selling them the dayafter the story spread.Robin Sackin is a professorat New York's Fashion Institute of Technology.She thinks people should not get so angry.Children are influenced by their parents,she says, not the words on a shirt.ROBIN SACKIN: "So if my child says to me'Mommy, I want to get that,' I've said,'OK, you can have it, but just remember something-- I don't care if you're pretty,you're doing your homework.'"And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report.Have you ever started a petition -- online or on paper?Tell us your story at 51voa.com.