A late Double Dose …

National Back Up Your Birth Control Day: Today! Feministing has the details. “I just started working at the Institute for Reproductive Health Access and NARAL Pro-Choice New York and have been doing the online outreach of the campaign (it’s a project of the Institute) to remind peeps about the significance of EC and that just because we — as in adults, not minors (except in certain states) — now have OTC (over-the-counter) status doesn’t mean our work around EC is finished. Not by a long shot,” writes Vanessa.

Over at RH Reality Check, Andrea Lynch posted 10 ways to celebrate. Number 1 on her list: “Contact your Senator and ask her/him to support the Prevention First Act, which would ensure that survivors of sexual assault receive factually accurate information about EC (they often don’t).”

Funding Restored: The FDA finally decided to fully fund the agency’s Office of Women’s Health. The Washington Post last month reported that agency insiders said more than one-quarter of the $4 million operating budget had been removed.

From the Post: “‘It is disappointing that on the important issue of women’s health, FDA had to be persuaded to simply maintain the funding level that was requested by the administration and provided by Congress,’ said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), chairman of the House appropriations committee that funds the FDA. At the same time, she said, ‘It is very gratifying that the FDA reversed course.’”

A Day Without Feminism: University of Wisconsin Oshkosh imagined what it would be like. Check out what the school website might have included in the early 1900s.

Another Blast from the Past: “The Making of a Militant,” from The Nation: “This article originally appeared in the December 1, 1926, issue, inaugurating a feature called ‘These Modern Women,’ ‘a series of anonymous articles giving the personal backgrounds of women active in professional and public life.’ The editors explained, ‘Our object is to discover the origin of their modern point of view toward men, marriage, children, and jobs. Do spirited ancestors explain their rebellion? Or is it due to thwarted ambition or distaste for domestic drudgery? The next article is by a woman who, though willing to fit into the conventional picture, found herself unable to do so.’”

Despite ‘Mommy Guilt,’ Time With Kids Increasing: Back to the present, The Washington Post reports on a new University of Maryland study: “In 1965, mothers spent 10.2 hours a week tending primarily to their children — feeding them, reading with them or playing games, for example — according to the study’s analysis of detailed time diaries kept by thousands of Americans. That number dipped in the 1970s and 1980s, rose in the 1990s and now is higher than ever, at nearly 14.1 hours a week.” Also see the related story on fathers.

The Girls Are All Right: Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, sees a lot of good in health and crime statistics and education and employment reports concerning teenage girls, despite the fact the media “reverberates with fears that teenage girls are more violent, disordered, miserable, mean, promiscuous; in short, worse every day in every way.” Plus: Also see Gina Piccalo’s review of “Unhooked,” by Laura Sessions Stepp.

Project Girl: Males also writes, “[Every] new study (check the latest by UCSC’s and other researchers) claims popular-culture images — underdressed starlets, violent heroines, skimpy fashion models, misogynist ads, music and games — are vastly more women-objectifying, preteen-pornographying, drug-glorifying, fashion-mongering and anorexia-inducing than any previous generation faced.”

Enter Project Girl, a Madison, Wisc.-based arts initiative that helps girls become active media critics and informed consumers. The Capital Times recently ran a good story about Project Girl and the organization’s first multimedia art show, which is on exhibit at the Sonderegger Science Center at Edgewood College through April 22.

Plus: The art show opening celebration included a talk by Lyn Mikel Brown, author of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes.” I was excited to see that Brown is presenting at the WAM! conference in Cambridge on March 31. Check out the full line-up here. OBOS’ panel, “Our 21st Century Bodies, Our Multimedia Selves” is scheduled for Saturday, at 11 a.m.

The American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls issued a report this week detailing the omnipresence and damaging effects of sexualized images of girls and young women in American culture.

While much of the first part of the report confirms what most media observers already suspect, it is still enlightening to hear such a precise and thorough analysis. The APA report breaks down the consequences on multiple levels, looking at the effects of sexualized images on mental and physical health, development of a girl’s sexuality, and the development of general attitudes and beliefs concerning femininity and sexuality. The research links sexualization to three common mental health problems among young women: low self-esteem, depression or depressed mood and eating disorders.

It also explores the impact of these images — not just on young women, but on men and society at large. And while the report focuses on advertising and media representations, it also discusses how a girl’s interpersonal relationships with parents, other authority figures and peers often reinforce the media’s portrayals.

The task force summarizes its findings emphatically:

In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner (e.g., dressed in revealing clothing, with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness) and are objectified (e.g., used as a decorative object, or as body parts rather than a whole person). In addition, a narrow (and unrealistic) standard of physical beauty is heavily emphasized. These are the models of femininity presented for young girls to study and emulate.

The most intriguing part of the report, though, discusses the sweeping impact these images have on all aspects of a young woman’s life:

Psychology offers several theories to explain how the sexualization of girls and women could influence girls’ well-being. Ample evidence testing these theories indicates that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality, and attitudes and beliefs.

Although most of these studies have been conducted on women in late adolescence (i.e., college age), findings are likely to generalize to younger adolescents and to girls, who may be even more strongly affected because their sense of self is still being formed.

Report contributor and psychologist Sharon Lamb told the Washington Post: “I don’t think because we don’t have the research yet on the younger girls that we can ignore that [sexualization is] of harm to them. Common sense would say that, and part of the reason we wrote the report is so we can get funding to prove that.”

Eileen Zurbriggen, an associate professor of psychology at UCSC and co-author of the report, told UCSC Currents Online that part of the impetus for the report came from APA staff concerns.

“Like a lot of parents, they were worried about what they were seeing around them — thong underwear for 7-year-olds, pole dancing for girls on television,” said Zurbriggen.

And in film, and on the internet and in games that promise to teach kids how to pole dance at home. The images — and messages — are ubiquitous. And corporate denials insisting it’s all in good fun just seem pathetic. From the Washington Post:

Isaac Larian, whose company makes the large-eyed, pouty-lipped Bratz dolls, says, “Kids are very smart and know right from wrong.” What’s more, his testing indicates that girls want Bratz “because they are fun, beautiful and inspirational,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Not once have we ever heard one of our consumers call Bratz ‘sexy.’ ” Some adults “have a twisted sense of what they see in the product,” Larian says.

Fortunately, the report, which is supposed to be a guide for psychologists in their own practices as well in their collective public advocacy, also offers a series of specific recommendations, including emphasizing the need for “co-viewing” of media with informed parents and as part of school’s official curriculum and encouraging girls to become cultural creators and critics:

Girls and girls’ groups can also work toward change. Alternative media such as “zines” (Web-based magazines), “blogs” (Web logs), and feminist magazines, books, and Web sites encourage girls to become activists who speak out and develop their own alternatives. Girl empowerment groups also support girls in a variety of ways and provide important counterexamples to sexualization.

If you ask me, a good place to start might be About-Face, Girls, Women + Media Project or My Pop Studio. You can find an annotated list of other sites at Women, Websites and Body Image. More media literacy resources are available here. As for magazines, I highly recommend New Moon for girls 8-13 and Teen Voices for early teens.

In the Washington Post article, author Stacy Weiner does an admirable job of personalizing and historicizing the APA findings. She includes many interviews with girls and their parents — and she talks to experts who place the sexualization we are presently seeing in a fascinating context:

When do little girls start wanting to look good for others?

“A few years ago, it was 6 or 7,” says Deborah Roffman, a Baltimore-based sex educator. “I think it begins by 4 now.”

While some might argue that today’s belly-baring tops are no more risqué than hip huggers were in the ’70s, Roffman disagrees. “Kids have always emulated adult things,” she says. “But [years ago] it was, ‘That’s who I’m supposed to be as an adult.’ It’s very different today. The message to children is, ‘You’re already like an adult. It’s okay for you to be interested in sex. It’s okay for you to dress and act sexy, right now.’ That’s an entirely different frame of reference.

At another point, Weiner cites Wheelock College professor Diane Levin’s argument that much of the consumerism problem can be traced back to the deregulation of the children’s television in the 1980s — when product placement really began.

With the rules loosened, kids’ shows suddenly could feature characters who moonlighted as products (think Power Rangers, Care Bears, My Little Pony). “There became a real awareness,” says Levin, “of how to use gender and appearance and, increasingly, sex to market to children.”

And companies have run with it. As Peggy Orenstein all too briefly touched on in her recent New York Times story, “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?” Disney seems intent on selling purity via pink princess culture, until girls grow up and naturally move on to “Dark Tink” panties — as in Tinkerbell — described as “the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

“We need alternatives to the predominant message that says, ‘You are valued only because you’re sexy,’” Zurbriggen, the report’s co-author, told UCSC Currents Online. “We have to ask ourselves if corporate profits are really worth the damage we’re doing to the next generation.”

Lamb, who is also co-author of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes” (St. Martin’s, 2006), notes that the particular representation of sexuality that children are exposed to is damaging in itself.

“The issue is that the way marketers and media present sexuality is in a very narrow way,” says Lamb. “Being a sexual person isn’t about being a pole dancer [...] This is a sort of sex education girls are getting, and it’s a misleading one.”

Abstinence Only Sex Ed Finds Few Scientific Fans: “There is no good scientific evidence that teaching abstinence to teenagers will by itself prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, say the authors of a recent study. Yet they found that comprehensive sex education is declining and that more youngsters are being taught nothing more than abstinence,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

States Fund Anti-Abortion Advice: “At least eight states — including Florida, Missouri and Pennsylvania — use public funds to subsidize crisis pregnancy centers, Christian homes for unwed mothers and other programs explicitly designed to steer women away from abortion. As a condition of the grants, counselors are often barred from referring women to any clinic that provides abortions; in some cases, they may not discuss contraception either,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Love Marriages in India Break Usual Arrangements: “When Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood star, won the ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ reality television show in Britain recently, her mother’s first piece of advice was predictable: Seize the moment! Land yourself a husband!,” writes Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Laurie Goering. “Parents just about everywhere are notorious for urging their offspring to settle down and produce grandchildren. But in India, where family-negotiated marriages remain the norm, ensuring that their children marry well is an obsession.”

The good news is that as women gain education and financial independence, they “are financially empowered to move away from the doormat status they had in marriage in earlier times,” said Shobha De, a Mumbai writer of racy novels, authority on love and author of “Spouse: The Truth About Marriage.”

But at this point, newspapers are still filled with matrimonial ads written by parents seeking suitable matches for their children — the most desirable brides (and grooms) must come from high-status families and have fair-skin. Which leads us to …

Who’s the Fairest of Them All?: Over at Feministing, Ann points to an Indian commercial for Fair & Lovely skin whitener. She writes:

High-end whiteners are also sold by Chanel and Shiseido in the U.S. But they’re huge in countries like China, India and Malaysia, where they help perpetuate the idea that whiter skin = more respect = success in life. They also pose health risks.

As Salon points out, the popularity of Fair & Lovely (the best-selling whitening cream in the world) provides fodder for a debate about whether marketing to lower-income populations helps or hurts them. [...]

But Fair & Lovely isn’t a step up or solution; it only enforces the prejudices that contribute to economic and social inequality.

Skin Color and Salary: Legal immigrants in the United States with a lighter skin tone made more money than those with darker skin, according to a new study by Vanderbilt University professor of law and economics. Using data from 2,084 men and women who participated in the 2003 New Immigrant Survey, Joni Hersch found that immigrants with the lightest skin color earned, on average, 8 percent to 15 percent more than immigrants with the darkest skin tone. After accounting for other factors, discrimination, said Hersch, was the strongest explanation for the salary difference.

Death is so Hot in Pink!: R.J. Reynolds introduces Camel No. 9, a “light and luscious” cigarette marketed to women. “Of course, advertising like this is nothing new,” writes Elizabeth Hemmerdinger. “Though it does seem even more ridiculous now that we know how deadly cigarette smoking is — and how particularly dangerous it is to women.”

Big, Beautiful and Not White: It’s the third week in a row for linking to a body-image story by the Washington Post’s Robin Givhan. This time around, check out the write-up by Tracy Clark-Flory.

St. Louis Surgeon Transplants Ovary: “A renowned infertility expert in suburban St. Louis transplanted a whole ovary from Lagos’ sister into [Joy] Lagos, a step that could enable her to have children. Dr. Sherman Silber completed the transplant Feb. 5, after performing the same procedure between twins last month,” reports the AP (via the Washington Post). Betsy Taylor writes:

The operations are believed to the first whole-ovary transplants ever done in the United States. Surgeons in China reported a successful transplant earlier this decade, but offered scant details.

The surgery could restore normal hormone function for women going through early menopause, whether because of cancer treatments or other, unexplained causes. It also could mean that one day, a woman with cancer could freeze an ovary, undergo chemotherapy and radiation, and have her own ovary returned later to restore her fertility.

Because the sisters are closely matched biologically, the recipient does not need immune-suppressing drugs to prevent organ rejection. “If they’re not a close match, we’re not ready to tackle that yet,” Silber said.

Photo by Techne / view original

As we noted last week, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation is rebranding itself as Susan G. Komen for the Cure, complete with a new edgy marketing strategy.

The New York Times this week spotlights the $1 million campaign and talks with Komen and advertising executives about the branding tactics.

“The campaign is indicative of how nonprofit organizations are significantly revamping the methods they use to reach out to consumers, not to mention the tone of their messages,” writes Stuart Elliott. “Just as marketers of consumer products have had to rethink the way they pitch a new breed of restless, cynical, hard-to-reach shoppers, so too have charities, foundations and other fund-raising organizations.”

We get that times have changed, but take a look at the new tone:

Gone is a profile in silhouette, evocative of a bygone century, next to the words “The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation” written in pink.

In their place are a stylized pink ribbon, the symbol for breast-cancer awareness, next to the words “Susan G. Komen for the Cure” and an additional phrase, “We’re on a mission.”

The campaign also takes a far more modern and assertive approach. Gone, for instance, are ads that showed a woman tying a shoe to take part in a Race for the Cure, which carried this headline: “For over 20 years, we’ve operated on a shoestring.”

Contrast that with an ad appearing in newspapers and magazines and on posters, which declares: “We only focus on one thing. Or, depending on how you look at it, two.”

Or take another print and poster ad, showing a woman wearing a tank-style undershirt on which these words appear: “When we get our hands on breast cancer, we’re going to punch it, strangle it, kick it, spit on it, choke it and pummel it until it’s good and dead. Not just horror movie dead but really, truly dead. And then we’re going to tie a pink ribbon on it.”

If that does not sufficiently convey the foundation’s new spirit, try the message that will appear on T-shirts to be sold to raise money for its work against breast cancer.

“If you’re going to stare at my breasts,” the T-shirts read, “you could at least donate a dollar to save them.”

Chris Orzechowski, director for brand marketing at the Dallas-based foundation, said, “We felt there were missed opportunities, opportunities to affect lives in a greater way and be more inclusive … We felt like we weren’t serving younger audiences and more ethnically diverse audiences.”

“What I love about the new name and logo is that they’re a call to action,” she added, “an opportunity to remind people what we’re about.”

It’s not clear to this reader why anyone not familiar with Komen’s work would take the organization seriously after this. And it’s difficult to imagine how focusing on the bodies of fit young white women — featured in the print and poster ads — is an effective way of reaching out “to more ethnically diverse audiences.”

The punch-cancer-out ad, which debuted Jan. 22, is disturbing on multiple levels for how it sexualizes violence. As Jessica at Feministing observes: “… I was driving and saw the ad on a bus shelter, and all you can really make out from far away is a picture of a woman’s torso with the words, ‘Punch it, Strangle it, Kick it,’ etc. So, ugh. Plus, the headless woman is yet another example of how the Komen Foundation always seems to imply ‘save the boobies!’ rather than ‘save women’s lives!’”

Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy has written a superb critique: “Thus it is through the narrowed eye of resigned cynicism that I view this pornalicious poster: the chest-o-centric pose, the decapitation, the mood lighting, and of course, the snuff film script. …” Go read the rest now.

The print ads are running in People magazine and USA Today. The posters will appear in the following major markets: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County in California and metropolitan Washington, including Montgomery County, Md.

Related Reading: When topics like this arise, we can’t resist pointing to Barbara Ehrenreich’s critical examination of breast-cancer culture and pink kitsch, “Welcome to Cancer Land.” Last year, we took a critical look at the think-and-buy-pink commercial messages that dominates the month of October. And for more resources, visit Breast Cancer Action, where “educate, agitate, organize” takes on real meaning.

Of Condi, Rush & Feminism: Tara Lohan writes that the best commentary she’s seen on this sad and absurd situation comes from Elijah Emily Nella. Check it out at AlterNet.

Winning for Best Title: “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! This mottled neck has got to go.” In the battle between feminism and femininity, women are their own worst enemies, writes Shelley Page in The Ottawa Citizen.

20 Movies and TV Series Later …: “Jane Eyre” may not be the first feminist novel, but it is certainly one of the most enduring,” writes Alessandra Stanley in this literary analysis and review of Masterpiece Theater’s “Jane Eyre,” a two-part series that will air this Sunday and next on PBS.

Women Over 40 Steal the Lights: Writing in The Observer (UK), Jason Solomons considers Hollywood’s new first ladies:

The Oscars have always been a popularity contest but in recent years the Academy has been particularly keen to reward youth over experience, which has not been difficult because it has long been the case that there are few substantial roles for women once they hit 40. Now, it seems, moviegoers and voters have decided that it might be time for a change.

“I think it’s fantastic for all these women, especially Helen Mirren. The Queen is a beautiful film about a woman that is not about her sexuality or being naughty. But it is about a serious adult player on the world stage,” says Ariel Levy, the American author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. “I like to think that audiences crave depictions of women as complicated human beings. With every passing year as women make more progress, it becomes preposterous that movies don’t capture women in their full humanity or cover their lifespan. If you were a Martian and came down to watch a Hollywood movie you would think all women dropped dead at 45.”

The Oscar nominees, by the way, will be announced Monday, Jan. 23.

Be Ugly Campaign Much More than Skin Deep: Mary McCarty of the Dayton Daily News knows it’s a marketing ploy, but she’s still encouraged by the “Be Ugly in 2007″ campaign tied to the Emmy-award-winning TV series “Ugly Betty.”

If you visit the Web site at beugly07.com, you’ll see ABC’s Ugly Betty holding up a sign: “Be Real/Be Smart/Be Kind/Be Honest/Be True To Yourself.”

Here’s the “Be Ugly” manifesto: “It’s a fact that society has an unfair and unrealistic definition of beauty, but many people still struggle daily to achieve it. What’s the result? Most of us continue to feel less than beautiful.”

When was the last time our daughters got that message?

In a Jane Austen novel, probably. They’d be hard-pressed to find it anywhere in our popular culture, even in supposedly highbrow magazines.

Art, Gender and Agency: “Is there such a thing as ‘women’s art’? Do we any longer need to think of women as a special group? Should there be a prize for women artists?” asks Iwona Blazwick in The Guardian. She continues:

For many, the terms female and male are simply cultural. They may also seem dangerously binary and — in the context of prizes or exhibitions such as a forthcoming show celebrating Margaret Salmon, the first winner of the MaxMara art prize for women at the Whitechapel — likely to create a ghetto of Otherness, a special pleading that supports the old patriarchal order.

At least 50 per cent of art students are female. Why is it that over the 19 years of the Turner prize, only three winners have been women? At least 50 per cent of architectural students are female. Why is it, then, that the architectural profession remains dominated by men? Why in the world at large are there so few women leaders? And why is it that, in the 21st century, violence continues, as artist Barbara Kruger depicted in an installation at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art in 2005, to “kill or incapacitate more women aged between 15 and 40 worldwide than cancer, malaria, accidents and war combined”. Most would agree that we should not define ourselves in terms of gender, but the context in which we live and work remains profoundly structured by it.

Is “Quick” Enough?: Are health clinics at stores like CVS, Wal-Mart and Target good for your health? Writing in the Washington Post, physician Ranit Mishori looks at the pros and cons.

Also from the Post, an AP story on the first national studies to tally hospital charges related to birth defects — $2.5 billion per year.

Low-Dose Pill = Higher Pregnancy Rates?: Kaiser reports on a Wall St. Journal story available to subscribers only about pregnancy and the pill:

FDA in documents released Thursday announced it is reconsidering its standards for reviewing the failure rate of new oral contraceptives with lower doses of estrogen and progestin, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the Journal, higher pregnancy rates in studies of new low-dose oral contraceptives have instigated the agency to reconsider what represents an “acceptable failure rate” for new drugs. The agency uses a measurement called the Pearl Index, which calculates a contraceptive’s failure rate by measuring the amount of time women are exposed to a given product and the number of unplanned pregnancies that result.

According to FDA documents, the agency in the 1970s set a policy that it only approved oral contraceptives with failure rates less than 1.5 per 100 “woman-years,” or the number of years a woman has used the drug. FDA has recently approved some pills with failure rates of more than two per 100 woman-years, the Journal reports.

More Work Needed to Improve Lung Cancer Care — Particularly in Women: So say leading researchers and health advocates in the January issue of the journal Lung Cancer. Lung cancer, which is responsible for 30 percent of all cancer deaths for men and women, kills more women annually than breast, ovarian and uterine cancers combined.

“Emerging data indicates that there are differences between women and men in lung cancer susceptibility and prognosis,” said Sherry Marts, Ph.D., one of the report’s authors and vice president of scientific affairs for the Society for Women’s Health Research. “Based on the trends we are seeing, it is important to explore these differences and develop new treatment options that are appropriately responsive to factors such as sex and gender. That will lead to better care for all patients.”

Scrubs Does Good by Mothers: TikVah Girl explains why the NBC series “Scrubs” is her new hero:

The storyline essentially followed Carla from the moment she came home with her beautiful baby — you know, the time when we mom’s are supposed to be blissed out and beautiful, wallowing in o-so-natural mamahood?

Except she wasn’t. She was a bawling, sad pile of mess. And her husband, to the writers’ credit, was not clueless and stupid or neglectful and frustrated. He kicked it into high gear – he immediately encouraged her to get help, go see a doctor, and continually told her it was normal to have those feelings. When she protested it was just “the weepies”, he assured her it seemed more like postpartum depression.

Ahhh, knowledgeable television. I know I seem overly excited about this. But here’s the thing. Towards the middle of the show when she was really, really losing it and clearly could not cope, her husband and his colleague – himself with a wife that had suffered through PPD- conspired to get them together so that Carla could hear firsthand that PPD was not only normal but common – from another mother!!

Honk for Abortion Rights: “The design for a proposed specialty license plate advocating abortion rights will be unveiled tonight at the National Organization for Women’s state conference in Orlando,” reports the Orlando Sentinel. Amy Hunt writes:

NOW’s Orlando chapter spent a year on the project, and it will be another year before the group is ready to seek legislative approval. But after years of unsuccessful court battles to curtail “Choose Life” tags, organizers are eager to get the word out that they are ready to counter with a message of their own.

The Choose Life license plate — on 60,556 vehicles across the state — is one of the most popular in Florida.

“Why have a statewide platform where only one side of the argument gets to speak?” said Cicely Scheiner, vice president of NOW Orlando. “We want the right to display our viewpoint.”

The folks at Choose Life Inc., the Ocala nonprofit that distributes the cash raised from the specialty plate, agree.

“We’ve been telling them to do that for five years and quit suing us,” said Choose Life’s secretary/treasurer, Russ Amerling.

Check out the three design finalists. Thoughts??

Newsflash!: Claims made by over-the-counter diet drugs are not credible, the Federal Trade Commission determined this week, reports the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the New York Times turns to dermatologists who believe women should put their skin care routine on a diet. “Just two products, a gentle cleanser and a good sunscreen, are enough daily skin care for most people, and you can buy those at a drugstore or a grocery store,” says Dr. Fran E. Cook-Bolden, a dermatologist in Manhattan and advocate of skin-care minimalism.

Maybe You’re Just Fine: “The larger threat posed by American medicine is that more and more of us are being drawn into the system not because of an epidemic of disease, but because of an epidemic of diagnoses,” writes a trio of doctors in the New York Times.

Read and Listen: Campus Progress interview (via AlterNet) with Linda Hirshman on women in the workplace, family leave and abortion; remarks by Barbara Ehrenreich on Democracy Now!, from a speech Ehrenreich gave at the 20th anniversary event for the media watchdog group FAIR. Sample: “I acknowledge that there are some innate differences between the sexes. For evolutionary reasons that we don’t yet understand, if you’re a male, you’re 10 times more likely to be a columnist for The New York Times.”

Ready and Waiting: “In the event that the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, Oklahoma needs to be ready, a state lawmaker said Wednesday,” reports the Tulsa World. “In preparation for that possibility, Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, has filed a bill with the state Legislature to trigger a return to Oklahoma’s anti-abortion laws.”

Low Folate Levels Cause Concern: “Blood levels of folate in young women are dropping, a disturbing development that could lead to increased birth defects and may be due to low-carbohydrate diets or the popularity of unfortified whole-grain bread,” reports the AP.

FDA to Label Anti-Osteoporosis Foods “Foods, beverages and dietary supplements containing both calcium and vitamin D may soon carry labels saying they help reduce the risk of osteoporosis, according to a U.S. government proposal made on Friday,” reports Reuters. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s proposal came in response to a petition from Coca-Cola Co., which makes Minute Maid orange juice products fortified with calcium and vitamin D.”

Today’s Most Shocking Read: “In a case fraught with ethical questions, the parents of a severely mentally and physically disabled child have stunted her growth to keep their little “pillow angel” a manageable and more portable size,” the AP reports. “The bedridden 9-year-old girl had her uterus and breast tissue removed at a Seattle hospital and received large doses of hormones to halt her growth.” Here, yes, is the family’s blog.

I can’t say I find much in bridal magazines I can relate to, but in one telling way the women almost always look like me: the vast majority of the gussied-up brides-to-be are white.

Cynthia Frisby, associate professor of advertising at University of Missouri-Columbia, and Erika Engstrom, associate professor of communications at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, looked at magazine covers and advertisements featured in mainstream bridal magazines published between 2000 and 2004 — in all, 57 randomly selected issues of Bride’s Magazine, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride were analyzed.

The researchers concluded that fewer than 2 percent of the advertisements featured black women as brides. And the number of black women chosen for the cover? Zero.

“The dominant image of today’s bride is that she is white, blond, blue-eyed and thin,” said Frisby. “We would expect advertisements and images to reflect a multicultural value, but mainstream bridal magazines show predominantly white brides and a few black bridesmaids.”

“Our data seem to support the idea that the phrase ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride’ was actually meant for how women of color are represented in bridal magazines,” Frisby added. “Such portrayals of African-American women as bridesmaids may communicate a negative assumption that it’s better for African Americans to stay in background roles as opposed to positions of equal status or power. Various forms of bias in bridal advertisements not only harm African-American women’s sense of identity, but also derail attempts to show that our society is multicultural and accepting of people of color. Interracial settings and frequent portrayal of African Americans as main characters may help break down cultural and racial barriers and increase communication among people of all colors and ethnicities.”

The results are published in fall 2006 issue of Media Report to Women.

This study was a follow-up to Chrys Ingraham’s earlier work on representations of women in bridal magazines published between 1959 and 1999. Despite the embrace of multiculturalism in recent years, the wedding industry still wants us to have “White Weddings” (note: a new edition will be out in 2007!).

A consortium of 38 health and women’s organizations are asking Congress to limit direct-to-consumer advertising, Molly M. Ginty writes in Women’s eNews, fearing the abundance of pharmaceutical commercials touting a pill to the new you may in fact be hazardous to your health.

“Fearing that direct-to-consumer ads may harm the doctor-patient relationship, pressure physicians to prescribe certain drugs and lead to the inappropriate use of medications, the group — backed by 200 physicians — is urging Congress to either ban these ads or subject them to a 3 percent tax and the inclusion of consumer warnings that indicate whether these drugs have been tested on less than 3,000 people,” writes Ginty.

“Direct-to-consumer drug ads are not under careful review by the FDA or any other agency,” says Deborah Socolar, co-director of the Health Reform Program at the Boston University School of Public Health. “And since many of them promote drugs that are new, they encourage people to use medications about which relatively little is known.”

Case in point: Vioxx, a painkiller that hit the market in 1999 with commercials narrated by a female voice saying, “Perhaps my biggest victory is being able to plan my day around my life instead of my pain.” In 2004, Vioxx, saw the largest prescription drug recall in history after researchers discovered it doubled the risk of stroke and heart attack, the No. 1 killer of U.S. women.

In defense of drug ads, proponents point to a 2004 University of Pittsburgh study that found these ads do not affect which medications patients receive, but whether they get treatment at all.

“Direct-to-consumer advertising can be a powerful tool in educating millions of people,” says Paul Antony, chief medical officer of the Washington-based industry group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “Because of such advertising, large numbers of Americans are prompted to discuss illnesses with their doctors for the first time, become more involved in their own health care decisions and take their prescribed medicines.”

Cindy Pearson, president of the Washington-based National Women’s Health Network, disagrees. “The feminist health movement of the 1970s was about getting information into women’s hands via package inserts and health texts such as ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’” she says. “But now, drug and advertising agencies are feeding that language back to us with sales pitches masquerading as truth.”

As an added resource, the article links to the Our Bodies, Ourselves section on “Direct to Consumer Advertising.”

The San Francisco-based Women’s Foundation of California last month held nine focus groups with female teens to discuss the influence of highly sexualized images of women in the media. They also conducted an online survey of 700 women and 300 men aged 13 to 18. The data has not yet been fully analyzed, but Sandra Kobrin had access to several of the focus groups and summarized the responses for Women’s eNews.

The results are not very surprising, but they should spark an urgent desire to give young women the tools to see around and through these images to other possibilities (for starters, check out the online resources available at OBOS). Kobrin writes:

Almost all of the teens polled said such highly sexualized images are “no big deal,” part of their daily life, what they expect to see on television and in magazines.

While many said they believe the images are often not beneficial to women, the responses suggest that many of the young women are resigned to this being the way society is right now and that women’s bodies are used to sell practically everything.

In one sense, the results should seem to put to rest any arguments that these exploitative images are simply expressions of freedom and empowerment. Constance Penley, whom Kobrin interviews, holds out hope, though, that the young audience for these images does not simply buy them unquestioningly:

“While there is a flood of mass media images, we believe people have very complex responses to the use of images in ways that are surprising,” she said.

Penley teaches a class that studies how female performers such as Madonna, Sandra Bernhard, Roseanne and Whoopi Goldberg have managed to command public attention, even though none but Madonna conforms to traditional standards of beauty.

“We learned you needed to be perceived as bad girl, a rebel to get heard,” said Penley. “Women who appreciate feminism might be shocked by these young women’s admiration of Madonna. They use her ‘bad girlness’ to come up with an identity of their own. How they are receiving it and transforming it is complex, but they’re taking in those images and doing something with it for their own end.”

Kobrin also interviews Ariel Levy, author of “Feminist Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture,” who has a more negative take:

It gives them a message before they are even sexually active. They have already been taught through music videos, reality TV, My Space, etc., that part of the job of being a female is to put on shows of wantonness … even if it has nothing to do with what you want,” Levy said in an interview. “Young women are trying to look and behave like those images, as if they were porn stars. As if being able to incite lust is women’s work. That’s just your first job, inciting lust.

Nicaragua Bans Abortions: Nicaragua’s National Assembly voted 52-0 to ban all abortions, even in cases where the mother’s life is at risk. “Nicaragua already has strong anti-abortion laws, with women and doctors who take part in abortions facing prison sentences of up to six years,” reports the BBC. “A section of the bill increasing those sentences to up to 30 years was not approved by the parliamentarians, and so will not be signed into law by the country’s President, Enrique Bolanos.”

Protesters gathered in the nation’s capital Wednesday, concerned about the law’s effect on women who suffer pregnancy complications, including ectopic pregnancies. “They are forcing women and girls to die. They are not pro-life, they are pro-death,” Xiomara Luna told Reuters.

“Test Tube Babies” on TV: PBS is airing “Test Tube Babies” as part of its American Experience series. Rachel at Women’s Health News has a write-up. Check here for local listings.

Fired Source Editor Wins Lawsuit: “After a tumultuous two-week trial, Kimberly Osorio, a former editor in chief of the Source magazine, won a workplace lawsuit against the popular hip-hop monthly, and a Manhattan jury awarded her $15.5 million,” reports the Washington Post. “Osorio, who was fired by the Source last year, sued the magazine and its founders, David Mays and Raymond Scott, alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination, defamation, retaliatory discharge and maintaining a hostile work environment.”

“This is a victory for women in hip-hop,” Osorio said after the verdict was reached Monday. Read more coverage from SOHH.com. Interestingly, the jury threw out the charges of harassment and discrimination but found that Osario was fired for complaining to her bosses about those very charges. She was awarded money for the retaliatory firing and for defamation.

Nip/Tuck to a Whole New You: Diana McLellan reviews the new book “Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery” by NYT writer Alex Kuczynski, who first felt the need for Botox injections at age 28.

Medicare’s Racial Divide: Researchers at Harvard and Brown universities looking at the medical status of more than 334,000 elderly patients enrolled in 151 health plans have determined there’s a huge gap in the health status between blacks and whites. The differences were noticeable even for those enrolled in high quality health plans.

These findings suggest “that the problem of healthcare disparities is widespread and deeply rooted, reflecting medical, social, and economic factors ranging from physicians not being culturally sensitive, to patients not being able to afford medications or find stores offering fresh fruits and vegetables,” reports the Boston Globe. “Previous studies had looked at whether blacks and whites nationwide received medical tests at the same rate — which they don’t. Health policy specialists not involved with today’s report called it a landmark study because it looked at the actual health of the patients and found disparities regardless of where they lived or whether they belonged to high- or low-quality medical plans.”

New Breast Cancer Center Opens: “Although it kills about 60 percent of patients within five years, inflammatory breast cancer is one of modern disease’s great secrets — rarely recognized by patients, often misdiagnosed by doctors, poorly understood by researchers,” reports the Houston Chonicle. “The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center hopes to change that. On Friday, it announced it was creating the first clinic in the world dedicated to the treatment and research of inflammatory breast cancer.”

“Pink is Not the Only Color Associated with Breast Cancer”: Boston has relaunched a citywide Pink and Black campaign to raise awareness of how breast cancer affects black women, reports the Boston Globe. “Most of the ads I’ve seen were always white women, like it’s a white woman’s disease,” Carmen K. Johnson, a black woman and cancer survivor who is featured in a campaign ad, told the Globe. “It’s imperative that black women find their lumps early. The doctors still don’t know what causes breast cancer, and they surely don’t know why breast cancer in black women is more aggressive.”

Busy Ballots: “On the list of ballot measures that affect women in this year’s midterm elections, South Dakota’s initiative to repeal a statewide ban on virtually all abortions leaps out,” reports Women’s eNews. “But there are about 200 initiatives on ballots next month — the third-highest number since the first measure was voted on in 1904 — and many also directly affect women.”

My First Stripper Pole: Oh, yes. Via Feministing.

The night of the murder of the Pennsylvania school girls, I turned off the television.

I’m generally a huge TV advocate who would rather discuss media representations than ignore them. But that night it seemed like death was everywhere, and I didn’t want to watch. Three shows that I had landed on while absent-mindedly clicking the remote depicted violence against women. That was enough.

I tried that week to articulate the frustration that these killings managed to avoid scrutiny as hate crimes based on gender — as pre-meditated mysoginistic acts. Two weeks later, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert tackles the issue head-on, challenging the cultural norms that contribute to the media’s silence.

After noting that little of the coverage following the murders made much of the fact that only girls were targeted, Herbert writes, “Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews.”

“There would have been thunderous outrage,” Herbert continues. “The country would have first recoiled in horror, and then mobilized in an effort to eradicate that kind of murderous bigotry. There would have been calls for action and reflection. And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.”

Unfortunately you need a NYT registration to read the column in full. Here’s more of an excerpt from “Why Aren’t We Shocked?“:

None of that occurred because these were just girls, and we have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that violence against females is more or less to be expected. Stories about the rape, murder and mutilation of women and girls are staples of the news, as familiar to us as weather forecasts. The startling aspect of the Pennsylvania attack was that this terrible thing happened at a school in Amish country, not that it happened to girls.

The disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous treatment of women is so pervasive and so mainstream that it has just about lost its ability to shock. Guys at sporting events and other public venues have shown no qualms about raising an insistent chant to nearby women to show their breasts. An ad for a major long-distance telephone carrier shows three apparently naked women holding a billing statement from a competitor. The text asks, “When was the last time you got screwed?”

An ad for Clinique moisturizing lotion shows a woman’s face with the lotion spattered across it to simulate the climactic shot of a porn video.

We have a problem. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed on women every day, and there is no escaping the fact that in the most sensational stories, large segments of the population are titillated by that violence. We’ve been watching the sexualized image of the murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey for 10 years. JonBenet is dead. Her mother is dead. And we’re still watching the video of this poor child prancing in lipstick and high heels.

What have we learned since then? That there’s big money to be made from thongs, spandex tops and sexy makeovers for little girls. In a misogynistic culture, it’s never too early to drill into the minds of girls that what really matters is their appearance and their ability to please men sexually.

What Herbert is getting at is respect — for childhood and for girls and women. We’re so far along on what Herbert terms the “continuum of misogyny” that acts of violence against women merely need to be packaged pretty to be suitable for cultural consumption.

“Once you dehumanize somebody, everything is possible,” Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of Equality Now, tells Herbert. Indeed.

Barbie wears a pink ribbon, too!

Five years after Barbara Enrenreich’s masterful critique of ultrafeminine breast cancer commercial culture ran in Harper’s Magazine, it’s the pinkest October ever.

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there are plenty of exciting ways to get with the cause, from freshening your breath with pink Tic Tacs to test driving a BMW.

Indeed, BMW will donate $1 for every mile to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (“Choose from the sporty 2006 3 Series or the luxurious 7 Series, or better yet take them both out for a thrilling test drive!”).

Or you can just stay home and click on pink text.

But there also seems to be an increased amount of discussion and scrutiny. Within the frame of Ehrenreich’s essay, Rebecca Traister looks at some items on the market this year, including Pink Ribbon Barbie.

“Check her out and tell me how many cancer patients battle their disease while decked out in a mermaid-style chiffon gown,” writes Traister. “And what is there to say about Barbie’s glossy, towering bouffant as an expression of cancer awareness? As the reader who passed this tip along wrote, ‘Does [this Barbie] perform a self-exam when you push a button on its back? Are the breasts and hair removable, to prepare them for future operations and let them know it’s okay?’”

Doubtful, seeing how Barbie gloves go up to her elbows.

Over at I Blame the Patriarchy, Twisty asks, “What will happen to global consumerism if breast cancer is ever really ‘cured’?” Twisty, who lets readers know she was diagnosed one year ago with stage 3 breast cancer, is digging into “Pink Ribbons, Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy,” a new book by Susan King, associate professor of physical and health education and women’s studies at Queen’s University (Ontario):

Under the noble auspices of charity, argues King in Pink Ribbons Inc, global corporations, politicians, and regressive white middle class American ‘family values’ are all getting a big shot in the arm from the pink ribbon juggernaut. Corporations secure, with impunity, free publicity and a means to expand their market share via enlogoed ‘awareness’ campaigns. Politicians support virtually unopposable ‘bipartisan’ breast cancer funding initiatives as directed by behemoths like the massively influential and reactionary Komen Foundation and come out smelling like a rose. The rank and file, conditioned by now to believe that there’s no problem shopping can’t solve, are invited to feel virtuous and altruistic whenever they buy a Yoplait yogurt or a pink KitchenAid mixer.

But where’s the activism? The ostensible focus of all this pseudo-philanthropic pink jockeying is a kind of nebulous breast cancer ‘awareness’, rather than any serious effort at prevention or investigation into what actually causes breast cancer in the first place. Furthermore, once all this ‘awareness’ has produced, via mammography outreach programs or self-exam propaganda (both masquerading as ‘prevention’), a positive diagnosis, there’s not any great push to secure treatment for underserved women.

In other words, when you think of a breast cancer ‘survivor’, you don’t picture a poor black grandmother living in squalor without health insurance (and you certainly don’t imagine a woman who, because of sensible research efforts, never got cancer in the first place.) The Breast Cancer Brand woman is a pro-patriarchy white chick: middle-class, straight, virtuous, concerned with maintaining her femininity, and married with two above-average kids. Ordinarily she’d be content with her life as the unassuming, unpaid family caregiver, but she’s forced by circumstances to be plucky, brave, and heroic.

I’m ordering King’s book today. Here you can read an excerpt, or check out a Q&A with King.

In 2002, Ehrenreich gave a provocative keynote address (read | listen) at Breast Cancer Action’s annual town meeting, building off the Harper’s piece and arguing for a more legitimate and comprehensive response:

[We] don’t need to be infantilized when we’re dealing with a potentially fatal disease, we don’t need to be patronized with cosmetics and jewelry, and told to keep smiling, no matter what.

We don’t need more “awareness” of breast cancer—we’re VERY aware, thank you very much. We need treatments that work, and above all, we need to know the cause of this killer, so we can stop it before it attacks another generation.

And we certainly don’t need a breast cancer culture that, by downplaying the possible environmental causes of cancer, serves as an accomplice in global poisoning — normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience.

What we need is a truly sisterly response to this ghastly disease — one that is both loving and militant, courageous and caring, willing to confront the Cancer Industrial Complex and, when necessary, the entire $16 billion a year breast cancer industry, including the medical profession.

BCA is on it. BCA’s Think Before You Pink campaign, now in its fifth year, is emphasising the questions conscientious consumers should consider as they navigate the sea of pink ribbon promotions.

“Consumers deserve to know how — if at all — their pink ribbon purchases and participation in pink ribbon promotions will support ending the breast cancer epidemic,” said Barbara Brenner, executive director of BCA. “Companies with pink ribbon marketing campaigns need to be more transparent and accountable to people who buy their products.” Here’s one example:

To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?

If research, what kind? Is it the same type of studies we’ve been doing for decades that already gets enormous financial support, or is it innovative research into the causes of breast cancer that always struggles for funds?

If services, is it reaching the people who need it most? Campaigns that are not locally focused may siphon funds away from the community and give them to larger programs that are already well funded.

If advocacy and education, do the programs make steps towards ending the epidemic? Programs supporting “breast health awareness” ignore that we are already well aware that cancer is a problem and it’s time to move from awareness to action.

BCA is also gearing up for a new public education campaign this month that will focus on asking the hard questions about breast cancer that will in turn hopefully lead to better treatment. Consider supporting their efforts.

Then buy the KitchenAid mixer in whatever color you want.

Introducing the 23rd Carnival of Feminists — “This edition has a special focus on women and health care because issues of access and treatment — whether we’re talking about breast cancer, emergency contraception, rape, or a visit to a specialist for further tests — are ultimately issues of control.”

When Is Thin Too Thin? — “Despite perennial complaints that models are too thin, there is a new sense of concern that designers are contributing to unhealthy and potentially life-threatening behavior among models vying to appear in their shows.”

I was uncomfortable with the fact that the Times chose to run a photograph of a grotesquely slender model presented through a distortion mirror on the front page of the Style section, where this story ran (because sickly models are still a style issue — which might explain the Ralph Lauren fashion show ad that pre-empted the online story). The non-distorted inside photo of a lone model on the runway was even more alarming; the difference between the two images is barely noticeable. (As of posting time, this model shot was only in the newspaper, not on the website.)

U.S. Recommends Routine Testing for the AIDS Virus — “By rolling an HIV test into routine blood testing to measure blood sugar, kidney function, hemoglobin count and myriad other health indicators, the policy would make AIDS unique in another way. It would become the only infectious disease tested for more or less automatically in medical encounters. Pregnant women are tested for AIDS, syphilis and hepatitis B, but the CDC policy would cover everyone 13 to 64 years old.”

Nurturing Young Mothers — “A University of Chicago study released Wednesday found that girls in foster care are 2.5 times more likely than their peers to become pregnant before age 19. [...] Experts say the data expose a need for collaboration between child-welfare and pregnancy-prevention advocates that goes beyond basic sex information. The girls, they say, must be motivated to plan for their futures.”

Sterile Victims Stand Up, Decry Legacy of Eugenics — “After Riddick became pregnant from a rape, doctors on the Eugenics Board of North Carolina decided in 1968 that she was too “feeble-minded” to ever be a good mother and wanted to ensure that she would never get pregnant again. So doctors tied her tubes and never bothered to tell her. Thirty-eight years later, Riddick, a 52-year-old with a quiet demeanor, has emerged as a voice for thousands of victims of state-sponsored sterilization programs that were part of the eugenics movement that spread through the United States between the 1920s and the 1970s. Riddick and others are coming forward and forcing states to address their role in a horrific social experiment that went awry.”

Final Results From WomenTK.com: Ratio of male to female writers in national “general interest” magazines, compiled from September 2005 to September 2006: 3:1

If you have some free time today, check out this great collection of vintage drug ads (hat tip: Feminist Law Professors).

My favorite is the one pictured on the left for Mornidine, which was prescribed for morning sickness. (According to this FDA document, approval for Mornidine was withdrawn July 17, 1969.)

Here’s another Mornidine ad, featuring the same model, but now she’s all perky and has “Sunny Side Up!” eggs to prove it.

The ad is for sale at Deco Dog’s Ephemera, which, from the size of their collection of medical advertisements, looks to be original source for all these images.

Searching around, I found an advertisement for Benzadrine Sulphate, an amphetamine. The promo language is more explicitly clinical: “In the severe depression of the menopause marked by apathy and psychomotor retardation.”

However in an advertisement for Benzadrine developed in 1952 (right-side image; larger image here), the emphasis is again on ensuring women are up to their domestic duty. A woman stands before gigantic household appliances, tormented by her daily load: “Doctor, I’m tired all the time … even the thought of beginning a day’s housework makes me tired.”

The image itself is actually quite striking. Very sci-fi. It would have been a terrific illustration for The Feminine Mystique — the medical profession’s perfect cure-all for “the problem that has no name.”

Drug ads today, of course, are not as retrograde; they rarely appeal to women’s inherent domesticity. But under the linguistic veil of “choice” and “empowerment,” they still prey on women’s insecurities. And since the FDA loosened the regulations on direct to consumer advertising for prescription drugs in 1997, every one of us — not just physicians — must be aware of these ads’ manipulative discourse.