If you’re in New York this evening, you may want to head over to the Housing Works Bookstore Café (126 Crosby St.) at 7 p.m. for a free panel discussion on “marketing embarrassing products to women.”

While that might not sound like the most appealing way to spend a Monday night, consider these three reasons to attend

Panelist #1: Sarah Haskins created, wrote and performed in the “Target Women” series on Current TV, where she spoofed advertiser’s and marketer’s ridiculous ways of selling women products, entertainment and ideas. She now writes screenplays. Funny ones.

Panelist #2: Susan Kim is a playwright, TV writer and author. She co-wrote “Flow: the Cultural Story of Menstruation” with Elissa Stein, and she has two graphic novels, “City of Spies” and “Brain Camp” (co-written with Laurence Klavan) due out from First Second Books this year. Her plays include the stage adaptation of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club” and numerous one-acts.

Panelist #3: Allison Silverman launched “The Colbert Report” as co-head writer and later helmed the show as executive producer. She was awarded a Peabody, an Emmy for Outstanding Writing, a Writers Guild Award and three Producers Guild Awards. Her previous writing credits include “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” for which she won a Peabody and an Emmy. Silverman was recently a recipient of New York Women In Film and Television’s Muse Award.

The moderator is Hanna Rosin, co-editor of Slate’s DoubleX and contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Bonus: 100 percent of the profits at this cultural center go to Housing Works, Inc., which provides housing, healthcare, job training and advocacy for New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. Now go with the flow.

by Meg Young
Our Bodies Ourselves intern

Reebok recently launched a new ad campaign for its women’s “Easy Tone” sneakers that is definitely not focused on feet. The shoe’s selling point is that the sole is supposedly constructed in such a way that it works the wearer’s hamstrings, calves and glutes as she walks, resulting in “better legs and a better butt with every step.”

From watching Reebok’s ads, however, one would think that the company is promoting lingerie, not a new fitness sneaker.

One of the ads begins with a close-up of a woman’s breasts in a bra, then pans to her panty-clad backside before briefly flashing a picture of the sneakers. In another ad, the bra is long gone as a faceless woman stretches her body — almost naked except for underwear and sneakers — over a bed. The only thing missing is porno-groove music. Oh wait, it’s there, too.

In the only ad depicting a woman wearing clothes (short shorts and an exercise tank top), she is unable to get the cameraman to focus on her face (instead of her behind) as she presents the virtues of “Easy Tone” sneakers.

YouTube has tagged the videos as “inappropriate for some users” and requires viewers to state that they are 18 before watching.

The late-night style ads aren’t the only bizarre thing about this sneaker campaign. Jami Bernard at WalletPop points to this warning on the Reebok website : “Due to the instability of the balance pods, activities with unplanned side-to-side movement and/or any lateral-movement -sports such as tennis or basketball-should be avoided.”

A fitness sneaker that you can’t play sports in? Huh?

Reebok’s website proclaims that upon wearing the sneakers, “88% of men will be speechless. 78% of women will be jealous.”

I’m 100 percent sure I can find a better way to spend $110.

Meg Young recently graduated from high school in Middlebury, Vt., and will enroll at Tufts University in the fall of 2010 after taking a gap year.

Hope you’re all relaxing today, at least for a little bit. Here are a few articles that seem fitting in honor of Labor Day …

- At Women’s eNews, Kate Kelly describes the work of Lillian Moller Gilbreth, also known as the Mother of Modern Management, who was an industrial engineer and a pioneer in creating work environments that met the needs of the disabled. This is the first I’ve heard of Gilbreth, a mother of 12, and continued to read more about her incredible life at Webster and Wikipedia. Gilbreth’s papers are at Smith College.

- From Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz: “Last week, in a 5-1 ruling, the highest court here ruled that an Ohio law that bans discrimination against pregnant women does not protect them from punishment for taking unauthorized breaks to use a breast pump after they birth those babies. And you thought we were a trendsetter only in presidential election years.” Read on.

- “Mad Men,” my favorite TV show of the moment, offers a poignant look at the trials of women in the workplace in the early 1960s. The series is set at a growing ad agency on Madison Avenue (that’s copywriter Peggy Olson, played by Elisabeth Moss, above), and it’s full of cringe-worthy moments. Seven of the show’s nine writers are women, which Amy Chozick notes is a rarity in Hollywood television.

Joan Wickersham, who worked as a copywriter in a Boston ad agency in the 1980s, writes in the Boston Globe that “long after the 1960s, the workplace was still stuck in the same cultural blind spot satirized in ‘Mad Men.’” She shares this story of a client presenting prototypes of two computer games — the one targeted to boys involved building a railway empire; the one targeted to girls involved deciding where to put furniture in a house.

I suggested to the client that maybe the girls’ game needed a little more substance. The boys’ game was ambitious, intellectually challenging – couldn’t something similar be devised for the girls? Or maybe they didn’t need their own game. Maybe they’d be just as excited as the boys about building a railway empire. Maybe . . .

One of the men I worked with gave me a look. A look that said: “You’re being a pest, and a troublemaker. Shut up.’’

And I did.

Fast forward another 25 years, and consider Wal-Mart’s gendered back-to-school commercials, as described by Claire Mysko:

Boy version with Mom voiceover: “I can’t go to class with him. I can’t do his history report for him, or show the teachers how curious he is. That’s his job. My job is to give him everything he needs to succeed while staying within a budget…I love my job.” Cut to boy with his new affordable laptop. He’s getting applause from his teacher and the students in the class as he delivers a report.

Girl version with Mom voiceover:“I can’t go to school with her. I can’t introduce her to new friends.” Cut to girl nervously asking “Can I sit here?” to a group of girls sitting together at lunch. “Sure, I like your top!” one of them answers. “Or tell everyone how amazing she is. But I can give her what she needs to feel good about herself without breaking my budget. All she has to do is be herself.” Cut to smiling girls walking arm-in-arm down the hallway.

It appears that much work still needs to be done.

A commentary in the current issue of the journal JAMA [abstract only] addresses Merck’s marketing of its HPV vaccine, Gardasil, and describes several ethical and public health-related problems with the company’s approach.

The authors observe that the vaccine was “promoted primarily to ‘guard’ not against HPV viruses or sexually transmitted diseases but against cervical cancer,” and provides an interesting critique of the broad approach vaccine-maker Merck used. The company’s tactic was to encourage all girls within a certain age group to be vaccinated as a cancer avoidance measure, rather than to work with public health officials to target those girls at the highest risk:

Marketing this HPV vaccine as an anticancer vaccine appears to have enabled its manufacturer to circumvent possible parental and public unease with an antidote to sexually transmitted diseases. But in doing so, the company bypassed public health officials who would have spearheaded a risk-sensitive vaccination campaign. So too, this manufacturer understandably wanted as many adolescents as possible to be vaccinated. But the pursuit of this goal was neither cost-effective nor equitable. It meant rather than concentrating on populations in geographic areas with excess cervical cancer mortality, including African Americans in the South, Latinos along the Texas-Mexico border, and whites in Appalachia, the marketing campaign posited that every girl was at equal risk: “Your daughter could become 1 less life affected by cervical cancer.”

The authors also explain how, in order to “avoid limiting the vaccine to high-risk populations, promote it for all women, and secure government reimbursement and mandates,” Merck approached professional medical associations (PMAs), and funded them to promote the vaccine. These included the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology, the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists , and the American College Health Association, according to the authors.

Funding to at least one of these organizations was used to develop a kit to guide speakers in promoting the vaccine, including the directive to encourage the audience to ask for state mandates and funding for the vaccine. Speakers were also instructed to play down sexual transmission of HPV, and the organizations were asked to report back to Merck on their promotional talks.

The authors of the commentary describe the ethical problem with this approach, and provide guidance to medical organizations:

Professional medical associations are obligated to provide members with evidence-based data so they can present relevant risks and benefits to their patients. To this end, PMAs must become more transparent about their relationships with industry, disclosing both the precise funding and technical assistance they have received to develop and disseminate the promotional products. Under no circumstances should PMAs administer product-specific speakers’ bureaus, nor should they accept funding that requires them to report activity to the donor.

A related editorial on the risks and benefits of HPV vaccination is freely available in the same issue of JAMA. In it, the author explains that while “the theory behind the vaccine is sound,” long-term follow-up is needed to determine whether there is an effect on cervical cancer incidence 20-40 years from now. The author also notes that the net benefit of the vaccine to an individual woman is currently unknown.

Last week, the New York Times hosted a “Room for Debate” discussion on prescription drug ads that focused on whether these ads harm consumers or serve as educational resource. Participants included medicine/public health and advertising/marketing experts, science/medicine authors, and drug company critics.

For context, check out this ad for a drug for restless leg syndrome:

Notice the warning about how the medication can cause “new or increased gambling, sexual, or other increased urges”? Really makes you want to try the drug, huh?

Also check out this ad for “Latisse,” a prescription drug for “eyelash hypotrichosis,” which is… get this… when you think your eyelashes are too thin and light.  The product, advertised in medical-sounding language, attempts to convince women that this is a real defect that requires prescription therapy.

A recent Times piece on these ads calls this “inadequacy mongering.”

The “Room for Debate” article notes that some lawmakers would like to further regulate direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads, especially when drugs have been newly released. According to a follow-up article on the initial debate, many NY Times readers agree: “Of the more than 300 comments the forum generated … the overwhelming majority would like to see these ads altered or banned altogether.” The article includes excerpts of the relevant reader comments.

For further reading, check out this earlier post on the topic of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising.

A bit of catching up to do …

About That Pro-Life Majority …: Amy Sullivan always thought the Gallup poll released in May that showed, for the first time, a majority of Americans describing themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice,” was a fluke. And she was right:

My skeptical interpretation of the poll didn’t turn out to be terribly popular. The idea that just a few months after the election of a pro-choice president, Americans were racing to embrace the pro-life cause was too tempting a storyline. The poll made headlines everywhere, and we ran an essay on it anyway.

Now along comes a follow-up poll from Gallup and whaddya know, the much ballyhooed pro-life majority seems to have disappeared. The percentages of Americans calling themselves “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are essentially the same (47% for pro-life; 46% for pro-choice). Meanwhile, the positions they hold — a more useful indicator than the labels people choose for themselves — haven’t budged. A solid 78% think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances.

Think Prescriptions Are Private? Think Again: After buying fertility drugs at a pharmacy in San Diego, a woman started receiving coupons and samples in the mail — for everything from diapers and baby formula to gifts for an elementary school graduate — for a child she did not have. Milt Freudenheim writes that your prescription information — including your and Social Security number — is “a commodity bought and sold in a murky marketplace, often without the patients’ knowledge or permission.”

But protections might be strengthened under federal law:

The federal stimulus law enacted in February prohibits in most cases the sale of personal health information, with a few exceptions for research and public health measures like tracking flu epidemics. It also tightens rules for telling patients when hackers or health care workers have stolen their Social Security numbers or medical information, as happened to Britney Spears, Maria Shriver and Farrah Fawcett before she died in June.

“The new rules will plug some gaping holes in our federal health privacy laws,” said Deven McGraw, a health privacy expert at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. “For the first time, pharmacy benefit managers that handle most prescriptions and banks and contractors that process millions of medical claims will be held accountable for complying with federal privacy and security rules.”

The law won’t shut down the medical data mining industry, but there will be more restrictions on using private information without patients’ consent and penalties for civil violations will be increased. Government agencies are still writing new regulations called for in the law.

New Blog: The Global Fund for Women has a new blog: http://globalfundforwomen.wordpress.com. Read about reflections on gender and power; a feminist look at the financial crisis; and tips from Dolores Huerta on keeping activism alive.

Egg-As-Person Crusade Draws Big Money: “In just five short years, the primary movers and shakers in the absolutist anti-abortion/anti-choice movement seeking to promote the ‘personhood’ of zygotes (the single cell that forms after a sperm fertilizes an egg) have amassed nearly $58 million in tax-deductible contributions for their cause,” writes Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check. Norris profiles five organizations that have raised the most money.

Plus: “A Vermont woman whose 6-month-old twin fetuses died after a car crashed into the family van wants them to be legally recognized as children, which is not the case under current state law,” reports the AP.

Why LeRoy Carhart Won’t Stop Doing Abortions: Newsweek profiles Omaha physician LeRoy Carhart, one of three abortion doctors who took turns assisting at the clinic of George Tiller, the Kansas doctor who was murdered in May. Sarah Kliff writes:

Carhart knows there are people who want him dead, too. A few days after Tiller’s murder, Carhart’s daughter received a late-night phone call saying her parents too had been killed. His clinic got suspicious letters, one with white powder. It’s been like this since Carhart started performing abortions in the late 1980s. On the same day Nebraska passed a parental-notification law in 1991, his farm burned down, killing 17 horses, a cat, and a dog (the local fire department was unable to determine the fire’s cause). The next day his clinic received a letter justifying the murder of abortion providers. His clinic’s sidewalks have been smeared with manure. Protesters sometimes stalk him in airports. The threats, the violence, now the assassination of his close friend — all of it has left Carhart undaunted, and the billboard-size sign over his parking garage still reads, in foot-high block letters, ABORTION & CONTRACEPTION CLINIC OF NEBRASKA. “They’re at war with us,” says Carhart of the anti-abortion activist who killed Tiller. “We have to realize this isn’t a difference of opinions. We need to fight back.”

Health Insurance Fail: Sarah Wildman’s daughter cost more than $22,000. Not because of fertility treatments, or adoption. And yes, she and her partner have insurance, which they obtained on the individual market:

Our insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, sold us exactly the type of flawed policy— riddled with holes and exceptions — that the health care reform bills in Congress should try to do away with. The “maternity” coverage we purchased didn’t cover my labor, delivery, or hospital stay. It was a sham. And so we spent the first months of her life getting the kind of hospital bills and increasingly aggressive calls from hospital administrators that I once believed were only possible without insurance.

Wildman continues:

Last fall, the National Women’s Law Center issued a report detailing exactly how women who want to bear children are derailed when searching for out-of-pocket health care. Only 14 states require maternity coverage to be included in insurance sold on the individual market, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. In contrast, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 requires employers with more than 15 employees to include maternity benefits in their health insurance packages. “We looked at 3,500 individual insurance policies and only 12 percent included comprehensive maternity coverage,” said Lisa Codispoti, Senior Advisor at the National Women’s Law Center. Another 20 percent offered a rider that was astronomically expensive or skimpy or both. One charged $1,100 a month; others required a two-year waiting period.

Continue reading at Double X.

Gene Mutation That Affects Hair Color Linked to Greater Pain Sensitivity: “A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine,” reports The New York Times. The story goes on to note that the mutation in the MC1R gene also occurs in people with brown hair, though it is less common. I think I’m one of ‘em.

Picture this: You walk up to a magazine rack at your favorite bookstore and you’re confronted with numerous self-improvement suggestions: “10 Easy Ways to Lose Weight” … “Exercises to Get a Bikini Body” … “Fashion Tips to Look More Like [Someone Else] … OK, you’ve been here before. You know exactly what this looks like.

Now imagine that instead of walking away frustrated, you reach into your Super Activist Bag and pull out a new, empowering cover — it rereads: “BEAUTIFUL just the way you are.”

You slip it in front of one of the make-over-you magazines and walk away, satisfied for having spread a new message.

This newly launched “art action” is more than a good story. It’s the brainchild of Massachusetts artist Lillian Hsu, who created the website www.bjtwya.com to protest the objectification of girls and women — and to do something about it.

Hsu encourages placing one of the BJTWYA posters “over every stack of magazines that uses the female body to sell something — to sell the magazine, or to sell an article, or to sell a product, or to sell a lifestyle, or to sell a promise, or to sell the idea that you need to match your body to the picture. You decide which covers qualify. You place a poster over them. Then you walk away. That’s it.”

All you need to participate is a supply of posters, which you can get by emailing “bjtwya AT yahoo DOT com” with your name, mailing address, contact information, and number of posters needed. The posters are printed on 8.5×11″ paper, heavy enough to stand up on a magazine rack.

If you have a color printer or can’t wait for delivery, print your own copies of the poster (PDF).

Either way, be sure to visit bjtwya.com to learn more about how Hsu came up with the art action. You’ll also find links to organizations and activists that address media and body image issues. And if you’re anywhere near Gloucester, Mass., an exhibition related to Beautiful Just The Way You Are is at the Jane Deering Gallery through Aug. 3. The opening reception is this Thursday, July 9, 6-8 p.m.

Here’s an excerpt from Hsu’s smartly worded and compelling statement:

The magazine rack is only one of many locations where we are taught the lessons of our culture, but it is one that is ubiquitous throughout our towns and cities and reaches every stratum of the population. At the magazine rack words and pictures work together seamlessly, like a good children’s book, to teach and tell a story of who we are. The covers shout their messages with surprising confidence that we will know these commands are for us. Before we are ten, and then without pause throughout our lives, we internalize the lesson that our bodies are how we will be first judged as individuals, and that there is a body type that we must attain to be judged worthy of attention. We learn that the female body can be used to sell anything — tangible or intangible — to women, men, and children. The use of a motorcycle, a deodorant, a vacation, a necktie, or a beverage implies ownership of the woman’s body pasted into the advertisement. Although all humans are born with beauty and power, our early unquestioned self is quickly corrupted. We adopt an anxiety in navigating a path towards a culturally dictated state of beauty and power.

BEAUTIFUL Just The Way You Are seeks to intervene in the space between all who stand before the magazine rack and the engine of advertising and mass culture. In that space of daily life it places an alternative.

Prop 8 Decision Due Tuesday: The California Supreme Court will announce its decision on Proposition 8 on Tuesday, May 26. The court’s decision will be posted online at 10 a.m.: www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme

Check www.marriageequalityusa.org or www.equalityactionnow.org for info about where and how to organize a response.

“If we must reverse Prop. 8 at the ballot, we will do so,” Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and a lawyer for couples in the case. “We will win – if not on Tuesday, then one day soon.”

A post-decision event is scheduled for Saturday, May 30. Marriage equality supporters from across California will “Meet in the Middle for Equality” at Fresno City Hall to celebrate or protest the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Standing Up For Her Own: Vogue’s Anna Wintour does her best to fulfill every dreaded stereotype of how fashion magazine editors regard the rest the word.

Ruling Against Tobacco Companies: A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a 2006 court ruling that found cigarette companies deceived consumers for decades about the dangers of smoking (view the decision [pdf]). From the Washington Post:

In a 93-page opinion, a three-judge panel cleared the way for new restrictions on how cigarette companies market and sell their products. Under the decision, the manufacturers will no longer be allowed to label brands “light” or “low tar” and will have to purchase ads on television and in major newspapers that explain the health dangers and addictiveness of their products.

Tobacco companies indicated that they will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, a process that would probably put compliance with the ruling on hold for at least several months.

Vermont Shines Light on Payments to Doctors: The Vermont Legislature has passed the nation’s strictest law (pdf) concerning the relationship between the medical industry and doctors. Under the law, which will take effect July 1 (assuming the governor signs it, as expected), pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers would be required to disclose all money given to physicians and other health care providers. Natasha Singer of The New York Times writes:

The Vermont law promises to provide a window into the considerable efforts and spending by device and drug makers to woo doctors even in a small state.

Makers of medical products spent about $2.9 million in fiscal year 2008 on marketing to health care professionals in Vermont, according to a report last month from the state’s attorney general. Of Vermont’s 4,573 licensed health practitioners, almost half received remuneration, including payments for lectures, meals or lodging from pharmaceutical companies in the 2008 fiscal year, the report said.

“If the drug industry gives $3 million on average for three years now to physicians in a small state like Vermont, what is happening in California and New York?” said Ken Libertoff, director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health, an advocacy group that supported the law.

Plus: Richard A. Friedman, MD, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, writes about the popularity of “sexy blockbuster drugs” that are newer, but not necessarily better, and the effect that drug company marketing has on both patients and physicians.

Midwife Shortage in Mexico: IPS reports on the shortage of professional midwives in Mexico and the training at the only officially accredited Mexican school of midwifery, run by the non-profit Centre for Adolescents of San Miguel de Allende (CASA). Since the school was founded in 1997, 38 professional midwives have graduated; currently, 32 women are being trained.

Violence Against Women – Yawn: “We are so used to violence against women we don’t even notice how used to it we are,” writes Katha Pollitt, in a column on the shooting death of Johanna Justin-Jinich, a Wesleyan University student.

“When we’re not persuading ourselves that women are just as violent toward men as vice versa if you forget about who ends up seriously injured or dead, or pointing out that most murders are of men by men, we persuade ourselves that violence against women just comes up out of nowhere. Murder is serious, especially if the victim is young, white, middle-class, pretty; harassment, abuse, domestic violence, even rape, not so much.” Do go and read the rest.

Student Activists: In her first column as The Plain Dealer’s philanthropy writer, Margaret Bernstein writes about a group of high school girls who are taking on relationship violence. “These girls may not sound like philanthropists, but I think they are. They’re grass-roots philanthropists, using their actions instead of money to spark change.”

Rape Escalates in Eastern Congo: Dominique Soguel reports for Women’s eNews on the worsening sexual violence in the Eastern Congo. “Last week,” she writes, “the Congolese army came under scrutiny from the United Nations and human rights groups for its role in raping, killing and looting sprees during military operations in the two eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.

“Human Rights Watch called on the army to hold accountable soldiers involved in the rape of 143 women and girls, more than half of the 250 rape cases the organization documented in North Kivu.”

Plus: Eve Ensler, writing about the war on women in the Congo, asks: “I was in Bosnia during the war in 1994 when it was discovered there were rape camps where white women were being raped. Within two years there was adequate intervention. Yet, in Congo, femicide has continued for 12 years. Why? [...]

“What is happening in Congo is the most brutal and rampant violence toward women in the world. If it continues to go unchecked, if there continues to be complete impunity, it sets a precedent, it expands the boundaries of what is permissible to do to women’s bodies in the name of exploitation and greed everywhere. It’s cheap warfare.”

You Know You’re Not in the U.S. Anymore When …: BirthActivist.com posted an incredible video of a Barcelona couple’s at-home birth — a video made all the more amazing because it’s a commercial for a Spanish mattress company. The tagline: “Your bed, the most important place in the world.” Swoon.

Snow White, She’s Not: Almost three quarters of a century after the debut of Snow White, Disney is about to release a film starring its first black princess, Tiana. Neely Tucker writes in the Washington Post:

Her appearance this holiday season, coming on the heels of Michelle Obama’s emergence as the nation’s first lady, the Obama girls in the White House and the first line of Barbie dolls modeled on black women (“So in Style” debuts this summer), will crown an extraordinary year of visibility for African American women.

But fairy tales and folklore are the stories that cultures tell their children about the world around them, and considering Disney’s pervasive influence with (and marketing to) young girls, Princess Tiana might well become the symbol of a culture-changing standard of feminine beauty.

“If this figure takes off, you’re looking at 30 or 40 years of repetition and resonance,” says Tricia Rose, a Brown University professor who teaches both popular culture and African American studies, citing the enduring popularity of Disney princesses at the company’s theme parks, on Web sites and in videos.

Not only that, but Tiana learns that she needs love and a career to find happiness. Finally, my wish has come true.

Fan Club for Non First Lady Fans: “A first lady whose entire bearing says, “Here I am!” and who by all appearances is living comfortably in her own body is a compelling symbol of female agency,” writes Rhea Hirshman in the New Haven Register. “Even as she is being made into a fashion icon, Michelle Obama is subverting the status quo, thus pulling off the neatest trick of all.”

Plus: More on Michelle Obama from Patricia Williams.

Deadly Silicone: A 43-year-old woman died a day after receiving silicone injections from an unlicensed practitioner. The New York City Health Department is concerned that illegal use of silicone as an alternative to cosmetic surgery is on the rise, reports The New York Times.

Drugmakers Spend Less on Advertising in 2008: “Drug makers cut their spending on consumer advertising of prescription drugs by 8% in 2008 to $4.4 billion, the first pullback since at least the late 1990s,” reports the Wall Street Journal.

Pharmaceutical-ad experts blame last year’s spendng decline on fewer new-drug introductions and heightened congressional scrutiny of drug marketing. Critics say the ads, which are permitted in few other countries, inflate health-care costs by prompting patients to request brand-name medicines, rather than cheaper generic alternatives. The industry’s trade group, however, cites a 2003 statement from the Federal Trade Commission that argues that the ads educate consumers about drug options and haven’t been shown to lead to higher prices.

In the U.S., ads aimed at consumers typically account for only about 40% of the total marketing budget for prescription drugs, according to the pharmaceutical industry. The majority of manufacturers’ promotional efforts are directed at doctors.

Spending on drug ads peaked in 2007 at $4.8 billion, according to IMS Health. The market researcher last month reported that annual U.S. prescription sales grew 1.3 percent in 2008, to $291 billion.

Plus: FDA rules designed to clarify pharmaceutical companies’ online ads — such as paid Google ads — and provide more consumer information are causing more confusion than before, say industry officials. How do you list side effects in 95 words or less?

Plus 2: The AP reports that drug makers “spent more than $2.9 million on Vermont’s doctors, hospitals and universities to market their products in the last fiscal year, according to a report issued Wednesday by the state attorney general’s office.” The reports’ findings note that 25 doctors and nurses each got more than $20,000 in cash or benefits from the companies; 10 got more than $50,000; and one psychiatrist received $112,000.

$10 Million if You CanTransform Health Care: The X Prize Foundation is offering $10 million to the winner of a contest that aims to transform healthcare in a small U.S. community:

The Grand Challenge for the Healthcare X PRIZE is to create an optimal health paradigm that empowers and engages individuals and communities in a way that dramatically improves health value. The proposed prize is designed to improve health value by more than 50 percent in a 10,000 person community during a three year trial. In order to effectively compete for this prize, teams will need to fundamentally change health financing, care delivery, and create new incentives that will result in achieving the required improvements in health value for both individuals and communities.

Reuters has more.

“Be Fruitful and Multiply”: NPR’s “Morning Edition” reports on the small but growing Quiverfull movement. These conservative Christians shun birth control and advocate for large families. The agenda is political as well as religious.

“They speak about, ‘If everyone starts having eight children or 12 children, imagine in three generations what we’ll be able to do,’” said Kathryn Joyce, author of the new book “Quiverfull: Inside The Christian Patriarchy Movement. “”We’ll be able to take over both halls of Congress, we’ll be able to reclaim sinful cities like San Francisco for the faithful, and we’ll be able to wage very effective massive boycotts against companies that are going against God’s will.’”

Eight-Year-Old Denied Divorce: From Akimbo: “Earlier this week, a judge in Saudi Arabia refused for the second time to annul the marriage between an eight year-old girl and a 47 year-old man. The girl’s father promised her hand in marriage to a friend as payment for financial debts. The girl’s mother brought the case in an attempt to free her daughter from the forced marriage. While this disturbing case has made headlines, it is not uncommon.”

Read the full post for steps advocates and governments should take to eliminate early and forced marriage.

More than 50 years ago, network censors prevented Lucille Ball from using the word “pregnant” to describe her, um, pregnancy on “I Love Lucy.” She instead had to say she was “expecting.”

Fast forward to 2009, where the leading home pregnancy test, First Response, appears on TV shows like “Gossip Girls” and in the movie “Juno.”

Andrew Adam Newman reports in The New York Times that in addition to nifty product placement, First Response has rolled out a new advertising campaign built around three pregnancy-related products, including its newest one: an at-home fertility test that measures FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). FSH stimulates the growth of ovarian follicles in the ovary, so measuring it and finding a healthy level shows that one sign of fertility is present.

The test, performed on the third day of the menstrual cycle, is sold at major retailers such as CVS and Wal-Mart. It is not without its critics, however, who note that it has some obvious limitations — the test can’t gauge if there are problems with the uterus, cervix or fallopian tubes, or the man’s sperm. And yet the packaging seems to gloss over this:

In capital letters in large type, it says, “Are You Able to Get Pregnant?*” with the asterisk referring to smaller type that specifies that the product will not really answer that question, saying, “This test detects F.S.H. This test does not detect all fertility issues.” (Instructions inside the package emphasize that even women within the normal F.S.H. range who are under 35 and who have been trying to conceive more than a year, or over 35 and trying for six months, should consult a doctor).

First Response also makes a daily ovulation test. Ads featuring all three products ask: “Am I …” followed by “fertile?” “ovulating?” and “pregnant?”

“We really believe First Response can and should be the brand that helps women in the whole reproductive cycle,” Stacey Feldman, a marketing vice president at Church & Dwight, maker of First Response, tells the NYT. “It’s not really about one product — it’s about the system.”

First Response started running ads this week on AccentHealth, a CNN-produced program shown in waiting rooms, including 1,500 obstetrics and gynecology offices, and print ads will appear in the fertility magazine Conceive and on the magazine’s website.

Plus: Writing about a new study that shows children born to older dads have, on average, lower IQ scores, than to children born to younger dads, Lisa Belkin sees the potential for reconsidering our cultural attitudes toward gender and aging:

The push and pull between timetables and dreams, between our bodies and our babies, is at the core of many women’s worldview, which also means it is at the core of relationships between the sexes. This tension feeds the stereotype of woman as eager to settle down and men as reluctant, and it’s the crux of why we see women as “old” and men as “distinguished.”

If those underlying assumptions were to change, would all that follows from them change as well?

Read the whole piece.

Publicly Funded Family Planning Programs Make Sense: This new report (pdf) from the Guttmacher Institute on the essential role of family planning shows the pay-off: prevention of nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions each year, saving billions of dollars.

“Report co-author Rachel Benson Gold called the family planning program ’smart government at its best,’ asserting that every dollar spent on it saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to mothers eligible for Medicaid-funded natal care,” reports the AP.

Iran’s Women Are Taking On The Mullahs: “Iranian women, and not just the sporting queens or Nobel prize winners, are standing up to the mullahs. And some of them are experiencing a frightening political backlash,” writes Katherine Butler at The Independent. A strikingly good story, it provides an in-depth look at life in Iran. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in for this one.

Sex-Discrimination Suit at Boston Hospital: Dr. Sagun Tuli, a 39-year-old neurosurgeon, filed a lawsuit against her employer, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and her boss, Dr. Arthur Day, the chairman of the neurosurgery, alleging a hostile work environment and retaliation against her when she complained.
After a seven-week trial, a jury agreed and awarded Tuli $1.6 million, reports the Boston Globe.

Read more analysis from Vanessa Merton at Feminist Law Professors.

Facts Matter Most: When you need to be reminded that kids today are (generally) all right, check in with Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco who also heads up YouthFacts.org, which aims to debunk media myths, such as all girls are “girls gone wild.”

Star Tribune columnist Gail Rosenblum recently wrote about a lecture Males gave, sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health, that separated fact from fiction.

Plus: Here’s a great response to the media coverage of Chris Brown & Rihanna, penned by Alex Pates, 15, and Ansheera Ace Hilliard, 17, members of the Chicago-based Females United for Action. FUFA is a youth group that works on issues of violence against women and media justice.

Beautiful Cervix Project: It took a headlamp and a lot of mojo, but photos of a cycling cervix are now available. From the author’s introduction: “I am a 25 year old woman who has never given birth.  My intention with this project was to better understand my cycle and the changes in my cervix throughout the month. As a doula and student midwife, I used this project to help me see how a cervix might look different throughout the cycle in the absence of vaginal infections and to understand speculum exams.”

Another Sign of the Financial Crisis: We know advertising standards have loosened over the years, but it took an economic downturn for some media outlets to let alcohol and sex ads go prime time, reports the L.A. Times.

Food/Access Studies: There’s new research out linking the availability of healthy food and the quality of one’s diet with place of residence. The studies, by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, appear in the March 2009 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the December 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Place of residence plays a larger role in dietary health than previously estimated,” said Manuel Franco, MD, PhD, and lead author of the studies, in this release. “Our findings show that participants who live in neighborhoods with low healthy food availability are at an increased risk of consuming a lower quality diet. We also found that 24 percent of the black participants lived in neighborhoods with a low availability of healthy food compared with 5 percent of white participants.”

Paging Mr. Whipple: A Toilet Paper Crisis: “The national obsession with soft paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra — which in 2008 alone increased its sales by 40 percent in some markets, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm,” writes Leslie Kaufman at The New York Times.

“But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.”

Searching for Common Ground: Robert Pear of The New York Times reports on an apparent consensus emerging among key players in the health care debate:

Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.

While not all industry groups are in complete agreement, there is enough of a consensus, according to people who have attended the meetings, that they have begun to tackle the next steps: how to enforce the requirement for everyone to have health insurance; how to make insurance affordable to the uninsured; and whether to require employers to help buy coverage for their employees.

Health Care “Reform” is Not Enough: “Most current health care reform initiatives, including those of Barack Obama, focus on providing wider access to health insurance. They do little to address the underlying problems with our health care system,” writes Susan Yanow in On The Issues magazine. Yanow identifies the top five problem areas for women with our insurance-driven health system.

Plus: This list of 10 ways to spend less on health care during a recession is well-meaning, but the list assumes a level of privilege that leaves out millions. I keep thinking of this story from last week.

“Is Your Daughter Safe at Work?”: The PBS program NOW has collaborated with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University on an unprecedented broadcast investigation of teen sexual harassment in the workplace. Check your local PBS station schedule for air dates.

The NOW website has a terrific collection of useful links and resources, as does the Schuster Institute, including an interactive map with links to information about specific teen sexual harassment cases gone to court. Keep in mind the map reflects a tiny proportion of probable cases. Kudos to EJ Graff for kicking off this project with her article, “Is Your Daughter Safe at Work?,” published in Good Housekeeping in June 2007.

The Trouble With Repeat Cesareans: “Much ado has been made recently of women who choose to have cesareans, but little attention has been paid to the vast number of moms who are forced to have them,” writes Pamela Paul at Time magazine. “More than 9 out of 10 births following a C-section are now surgical deliveries, proving that ‘once a cesarean, always a cesarean’ — an axiom thought to be outmoded in the 1990s — is alive and kicking.” A good look at the VBAC-lash.

North Dakota House Passes Egg-as-Person Bill: “On Tuesday, one body of North Dakota’s state legislature voted, 51-41, not only to ban abortion, but to define life as beginning at conception. Such a measure, considered extreme even by pro-life standards, would have far-reaching consequences on women’s health,” writes Kay Steiger at RH Reality Check.

Understandably, Rachel Has Some Concerns …: About a proposed Tennessee bill that calls for testing some pregnant for alcohol and drugs.

Gone Daddy Gone: I couldn’t agree more with Creativity magazine editor Teressa Lezzi, who writes at AdAge.com:

After this year’s Super Bowl, I just couldn’t do it anymore. As it was, any time I had to log on to Go Daddy I felt some combination of embarrassment and annoyance at the registrar’s approach to women and marketing. But after its execrable ad efforts around this year’s game, I found that I just couldn’t stomach contributing anything to this organization any longer. I’m transferring my domains and my insignificant little piece of business elsewhere.

GoDaddy turned me off years ago because of its super lame ads, though I sometimes have to deal with the company for other clients. If sexist advertising isn’t reason enough to stay away, GoDaddy’s user interface sucks.

Cervical Cancer Vaccine Usage in California: A study by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research found that one in four teenage girls in California  — about 378,000 out of 1.5 million — received at least one dose of the Gardasil vaccine in 2007, its first full year of distribution, reports the L.A. Times.

Truth Catches Up: Remember the eye-catching “truth” anti-smoking ads? Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the American Legacy Foundation estimate that the nations’ largest youth smoking prevention campaign saved $1.9 billion or more in health care costs associated with tobacco use. The findings appear in the Feb. 12 online edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The American Legacy Foundation, which launched the ads in 2000, spent $324 million to implement and evaluate the truth campaign.

Plus: Cigarette-maker Philip Morris was ordered to pay $8 million in damages to the widow of a smoker who died of lung cancer in a case that could set the standard for 8,000 similar Florida lawsuits, reports NPR.

Bayer recently launched commercials for the contraceptive drug Yaz that feature a female spokesperson and begin with a statement that the FDA thought Bayer’s previous ads were inadequate and asked Bayer to clear up a few things. “The F.D.A. wants us to correct a few points in those ads.”

I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve noticed an explicit “the FDA made us do this” message in a drug ad.

The FDA really did make them do it, though, issuing a warning letter [PDF] last October stating that “The TV Ads are misleading because they broaden the drug’s indication, overstate the efficacy of YAZ, and minimize serious risks associated with the use of the drug.”

Don’t remember the ads in question? If you sing “we’re not gonna take it” or “goodbye to you” [the songs used in the ads] to yourself and you picture women kicking away or popping balloons with words like “irritability” and “fatigue,” the ads will likely come to mind. Sarah Haskins featured one of the ads in her hilarious Target Women: Birth Control bit, and you can likely find them on YouTube.

You see, YAZ is approved for “PMDD” – premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a diagnosis essentially of severe PMS with depression-like symptoms that entered the general consciousness when the patent on Prozac was running out and so its maker repackaged the drug as Sarafem. [See this related discussion on direct-to-consumer advertising from OBOS]

The ads, though, didn’t make that clear, that YAZ is not intended for regular PMS symptoms. The FDA warned that the:

“TV ads misleadingly suggest that YAZ is appropriate for treating women with PMS, who may not be appropriate candidates for this drug. We note that despite listing certain symptoms of PMDD, nowhere do the TV Ads use the full phrase ‘premenstrual dysphoric disorder,’ to more completely distinguish PMDD from PMS, thereby increasing the likelihood that a viewer, in light of the claims and presentations described below, will understand it to be the same as, or substantially similar to, PMS.”

Today’s New York Times has an article on the required new ads, including commentary from our own Judy Norsigian, who notes that this was an unusual move by the FDA:

“They rarely require these corrective campaigns,” said Judy Norsigian, the executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves, a health education and women’s advocacy group in Cambridge, Mass. But she said the popularity of the Yaz brand and the misleading ads had demanded a rare punishment. “These ads should never have been out there,” Ms. Norsigian said.

Unfortunately, this action by the FDA may not adequately discourage future misleading ads – one pharmacy administrator interviewed for the piece called the corrective $20 million ad campaign “chump change” and “just the cost of doing business,” adding that, “I don’t think it is likely to stop, unless there are more significant consequences.”

Yoplait yogurt will soon be free of artificial bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a synthetic hormone that has been linked to a number of health concerns, including breast cancer.

General Mills announced Monday that it will stop using milk produced from cows injected with rBGH (also known as rBST) in all Yoplait yogurts by August 2009.

“While the safety of milk from cows treated with rBST is not at issue, our consumers were expressing a preference for milk from cows not treated with rBST, and we responded,” Becky O’Grady, General Mills’ vice president of marketing for the Yoplait brand, said in a statement.

The hormone is already banned in Canada, Australia, Japan and the European Union. In the United States, corporations like Wal-Mart and Starbucks do not use milk from rBGH-treated cows in their products.

Breast Cancer Action launched a consumer campaign last year to encourage General Mills to follow Wal-Mart and Starbuck’s lead.

In a guest blog post at OBOB, Pauli Ojea, a community organizer at BCA, explained the connection between rBGH and breast cancer and criticized Yoplait for “pinkwashing” — a term used to describe companies that participate in breast cancer fundraising or awareness campaigns but manufacture products that may be linked to the disease.

BCA’s “Think Before You Pink” campaign warned that Yoplait’s donations to breast cancer (10 cents for every lid consumers mailed in) came from sales of yogurt made with milk from cows treated with rBGH.

“We’re delighted that General Mills has decided to do the right thing in response to consumer demand,” said Barbara Brenner, BCA executive director of Breast Cancer Action, said in a statement released today. “When a company uses the pink ribbon to sell their products, they are making a promise to support women’s health. We want them to keep that promise — and we’ll monitor the company to make sure they do.”

The first daughters have hit the market.

For just $9.99, you can own your own set of “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia” dolls.

“They’re such adorable girls,” Ty Inc. spokeswoman Tania Lundeen said Wednesday of the Obama sisters — Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10. “How can we resist?”

But by the end of the week, Ty Inc. — the company that created Beanie Babies — announced the names were chosen because “they are beautiful names,” not because they resemble the first daughters.

Whatever. Sadly, these dolls lack agency in their own world. Malia doesn’t even have her own camera.

Instead, they “come with a password to an online ‘virtual world’ where real girls can decorate their dolls’ room, change their clothes or go shopping,” reports the Chicago Sun Times.

Michelle Obama is not impressed with the 12-inch pseduo-replicas.

“We believe it is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes,” Obama’s press secretary, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, said in a statement today.

Also this week, Mattel announced it will launch its first complete line of African-American Barbie dolls.

Plus: There’s a new blog on girls as media producers. Mary Celeste Kearney writes that she created Girls Make Media “because I’ve been researching girls’ media production for over a decade now, and wanted to pull together in one place information about girl media producers, as well as programs for and research about girls’ media-making.”

Kearney — an associate professor of radio, television and film, and women and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin — is looking to link to other programs (in and outside of the United States), so let her know if you doing something interesting in this field.

cross-posted from PopPolitics