A recent study in the Journal of Adolescent Health reports on beliefs about douching among primarily minority students in Texas alternative schools who were part of an HIV prevention trial. The students were surveyed about their beliefs and behavior, as well as their sexual and reproductive health histories. Those who reported douching more than once completed additional questions on this activity.

The authors report:

• 55% of females had reported ever douching; 30% did so monthly, and 20% did so weekly.
  
• Females who had ever douched were “more likely to have had vaginal intercourse, to be older, to be black, to have been tested for HIV, to have been pregnant, and to have female relatives who endorsed douching.”
  
• 22% of the girls thought douching would protect against sexually transmitted infections.
  
• 75% of males preferred that their partners douche, and 25% of girls thought their partners expected them to do so.
  
• Surprisingly, 18% of girls cited healthcare professionals as endorsing douching. Only 7% reported that healthcare providers advised against the practice.

In reality, douching may actually increase the risk of STIs, vaginal infections/odor, and problems during pregnancy, and is not generally recommended by health professionals.

This is of particular interest to me, because in a critique at my own blog about a product which was advertised in part for use after douching, several commenters responded along the lines of “women aren’t stupid, they know they shouldn’t be douching.” I wouldn’t suggest that women who douche are “stupid,” but they may not have been fully informed of the health risks and that douching is unnecessary and not recommended. Although this was a small study, the results suggest that healthcare providers may need to be more actively talking to and teaching their patients, including adolescents, about this issue. It seems clear that douching has not entirely become a thing of the past as some might think, and that individuals are slipping through the cracks on this educational point.

So Not Pretty in Pink: Cheers for U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), for taking on women’s magazines for running Camel No. 9 cigarettes ads — the pink version of Joe Camel aimed at female smokers.

“In June, 40 of my congressional colleagues joined me in writing to the publishers of 11 leading women’s magazines: Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, InStyle, Interview Magazine, Lucky, Marie Claire, Soap Opera Digest, Us Weekly, Vogue and W. We asked them to stop accepting misleading advertisements for deadly cigarettes, particularly for Camel No. 9,” Capps writes in the Washington Post. “Not one of the magazines bothered to formally respond. We wrote again on Aug. 1. Seven of the 11 magazines responded, but none has committed to dropping the ads.”

National Coming Out Day: Oct. 11 was the day, and Pam Spaulding has a great post about it, with video.

Plus: The New York Times last week looked at the prejudices elder gays and lesbians face, particularly those living at long-term care facilities where little thought may have been given to sensitivity training. Also see the accompanying audio and photos of Fred and Emile, and there’s a good list of related reports and demographic information.

Pink That: Lucinda Marshall at Feminist Peace Network put together a list of some of “the most crass, opportunistic list of supposedly cure-supporting crap I’ve ever seen.” And there’s more where those came from.

Being Anita Hill: “Back then, she was either a charlatan or a heroine, depending which side you took in the epic, gut-wrenching showdown that was the Clarence Thomas confirmation battle,” writes the AP’s Jocelyn Noveck. “Sixteen years later, Anita Hill can be found on a tranquil New England college campus, sifting through thousands of documents to try to answer this question: Have things gotten any better in our nation’s workplaces?”

An Emphasis on Homework: Interested in perfecting your housekeeping skills and learning how to defer to your husband in all matters? Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, offers an academic homemaking program — open only to women — that includes “lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies,” reports the L.A. Times.

Linking Stress to Disease: A commentary in the Oct. 10 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association explores whether psychological stress increases the risk of disease. “The evidence from studies of depression and heart disease is most convincing. The HIV/AIDS data are a little weaker. The evidence for stress playing a role in cancer isn’t all that good, even though there is supporting evidence from studies of animals,” said lead author Sheldon Cohen.

“Perfecting” Ann Coulter: Gloria Feldt, writing at Huffington Post, shares the inspiration for her new list: “Full disclosure: I am mentioned 10 times — more than even Jane Fonda or Betty Friedan — by the anti-feminist Kate O’Beirne in her book, Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. From my perspective, this means I must be doing something right. With those credentials as well as being an aficionada of Keith Olberman’s nightly ‘Worst Person in the World’ shtick, I recently decided to start my own list of the Stupidest Women in America (SWIAA ™).”

Vaginal Cosmetic Surgery: Self magazine takes a close look at vaginal surgeries. One 21-year-old dipped into her student loan money to pay for a labiaplasty that cost $5,000 — and left her “deformed” and in unbearable pain. The reconstructive surgery cost an additional $8,700.

Are Annual Check-Ups a Thing of the Past? According to medical organizations like the the American College of Physicians and other professional groups, it’s no longer recommended. “That’s because there is scant scientific evidence showing that yearly checkups help prevent disease, death or disability for adults with no symptoms. Many tests and procedures performed during the visits have questionable value, experts say,” reports the Chicago Tribune.

According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which does not endorse yearly physicals, “interventions that help patients change health-impairing habits or that spotlight emerging illnesses for which reliable and effective treatments exist” do make a real difference. Some examples, according to the Trib, are “Pap smears, mammograms, cholesterol tests, blood-pressure checks, and counseling to stop smoking, lose weight, get more exercise and eat a healthier diet.”

UK Promotes Water Births: The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, a UK health watchdog group, issued guidelines stating that all expectant mothers should be offered water births. From The Guardian:

“There is a perception that water is just nice,” said Dr Julia Sanders, a consultant midwife and member of the group which drew up the guidance. “But it is the most effective form of pain relief barring an epidural in labour. I would like to see more women using water and fewer women using the types of pain relief that are less effective.”

Nice also said clinical intervention should not be offered or advised when labour was progressing normally and the woman and baby were well. Once a woman was in established labour, she should receive supportive one-to-one care.

The guidance is expected to mean longer labours for some but could also mean fewer medical interventions, which can result in more painful and complicated labours.

Marketing is truly an amazing thing.

Only in recent years have mothers been made to feel ashamed if they don’t have stick-thin figures with buoyant breasts within weeks of giving birth. And now there’s a whole industry working off that new guilt, targeting women with a smorgasbord of surgery options packaged as the quick-and-easy path to the perfect body.

Plastic surgeons have figured out a new way to sell a full-body tune-up: Start by calling it the “Mommy Makeover.” Offer a trifecta of procedures — breast lift (maybe implants to go along it), tummy tuck and liposuction — with a price tag starting around $10,000. Cue terms like “positive self image” and “embrace the feeling of being a woman.”

That’s what the website of Dr. David A. Stoker does. And Stoker leaves no question about his opinion of women’s postpregnancy bodies: “The severe physical trauma of pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding can have profound negative effects that cause women to lose their hourglass figures,” Stoker tells the New York Times.

“Twenty years ago, a woman did not think she could do something about it and she covered up with discreet clothing,” he adds. “But now women don’t have to go on feeling self-conscious or resentful about their appearance.”

Of course what this really amounts to is a thinly-veiled critique of women’s bodies that don’t fit a very particular ideal. NYT writer Natasha Singer does a good job of contextualizing this critique, starting with some OBOS history:

In 1970, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the seminal guide to women’s health, described the cosmetic changes that can happen during and after pregnancy simply as phenomena. But now narrowing beauty norms are recasting the transformations of motherhood as stigma.

These unforgiving standards are the offspring of pop culture and technology, a union that treats biological changes as if they were as optional as hair color. Gossip magazines excoriate celebrity moms who don’t immediately lose their “baby weight.” Even Cookie, a luxury parenting magazine, recently ran an article that described postpregnancy breasts as “the ultimate indignity” and promoted implant surgery; a photo of droopy water-filled balloons accompanied the article.

Many women struggle with the impact of aging and pregnancy on their bodies. But the marketing of the “mommy makeover” seeks to pathologize the postpartum body, characterizing pregnancy and childbirth as maladies with disfiguring aftereffects that can be repaired with the help of scalpels and cannulae.

“The message is that, after having children, women’s bodies change for the worse,” said Diana Zuckerman, the president of the National Research Center for Women and Families, a nonprofit group in Washington. If marketing could turn the postpregnancy body “into a socially unacceptable thing, think of how big your audience would be and how many surgeries you could sell them,” she said.

Or as Judy Norsigian, executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves, tells the Times, “Some women go back to a pretty flat stomach and some don’t, some go back to their pre-baby weight and some don’t. The question is, does that need to be treated with a surgical makeover?”

The story concludes with what I thought was a great quote:

On the blog StrollerDerby, Karen Murphy, a mother of four, lambasted mommy surgery.

“Those badges of motherhood have turned into badges of shame and, if you’re the one caught without a tummy tuck, then you won’t get invited to the party,” she wrote. “It peeves me no end that something as drastic as surgery, as this blatant nonacceptance of one’s own body in whatever shape it happens to be in, has become so pervasive.”

Read Murphy’s full blog post, though, and you’ll see her feelings toward the surgery are a little more complicated. While her ambivalence and frustration is totally understandable, I think the Times, by not quoting Murphy more fully, over-simplifies the point.

A side note: The caption accompanying the photo at the top of the story says Sharlotte Birkland “had postpregnancy surgery in March.” Yet according to the story, she’s 39 and has a 20-year-old son. Wouldn’t her case be, well, just plastic surgery?

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, notes the Times, “reported a rise in cosmetic surgery among women of child-bearing age (not all of whom are necessarily mothers). Last year, doctors nationwide performed more than 325,000 ‘mommy makeover procedures’ on women ages 20 to 39, up 11 percent from 2005, the group said.”

So it seems a little tricky to break out how many “mommy makeovers” are being done vs. how many women in the “mommy demographic” are now opting for multiple procedures.

Plus: The Times, in a separate short piece, looks at vaginal rejuvenation surgeries, such as labioplasty and vaginoplasty, which were recently criticized by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for providing no benefits and leading to complications such as infection, scarring and pain during sex.

“These procedures are not medically indicated, and the safety and effectiveness of these procedures have not been documented,” ACOG said in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

New York Just Says No: Kudos to New York for joining at least 10 other reality-based states that have just said no to federal grants for abstinence-only sex education. The decision was announced Thursday by the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, reports The New York Times.

In a statement posted on the Health Department’s Web site, Dr. Daines said, “The Bush administration’s abstinence-only program is an example of a failed national health care policy directive.” He added that the policy was “based on ideology rather than on sound scientific-based evidence that must be the cornerstone of good public health care policy.”

The state had also spent $2.6 million annually to fund the same programs over the last decade. That money will now be spent on other existing programs for sex education, Dr. Daines said in an interview.

Beware of Fat People: Referring to claim published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine that fat is similar to a contagious virus “spread from person to person like a fashion or a germ,” especially among friends — Lakshmi Chaudry writes in The Nation:

“The argument just didn’t sound right to me when I first heard it — and certainly didn’t co-relate to any reality I could detect in my varied body-shape/weight circle of friends. So I was delighted to read this blistering take-down in TCS Daily penned by Jonathan Robison, who exposes the research for what it is: junk science that can’t tell the difference between cause and correlation.”

Egypt’s Movement to Stop Genital Mutilation: After two girls (ages 12 and 13) died in Egypt this summer following surgeries to remove the clitoris (female circumcision to some, genital mutilation to critics), a nationwide campaign is underway to stop the practice. The New York Times reports that is has become “one of the most powerful social movements in Egypt in decades, uniting an unlikely alliance of government forces, official religious leaders and street-level activists.”

But it’s an uphill battle. A recent government survey found that “the practice of female circumcision is virtually universal among women of reproductive age in Egypt.” Michael Slackman writes:

The force behind this unlikely collaboration between government, nongovernment organizations, religious leaders and the news media is a no-nonsense 84-year-old anthropologist named Marie Assaad, who has been fighting against genital cutting since the 1950s.

“I never thought I would live to see this day,” she said, reading about the subject in a widely circulated daily newspaper.

Plus: In an op-ed published in the Modesto Bee, Unicef Executive Director Anne M. Veneman praises the work of Tostan, a Senegal-based organization that has helped to reduce the rate of genital mutilation by working “with communities in local languages to help provide women with a voice in the decision-making.”

Coffee is Good/Not Good for Me: I would have thought that after last Sunday’s lengthy New York Times Magazine cover story on the trouble with epidemiological studies, which Rachel discussed closely here, there’d be no more to say on the matter this week. But that was before I saw the L.A. Times health feature by Andreas von Bubnoff on the same issue. The main story, Scientists Do the Numbers, was paired with related stories on health studies that have come up with contradictory findings; a look at whether there’s a rush to publish medical studies; and tips to help readers assess research.

Making Mammograms Accessible to All: “Despite widespread education that early detection saves lives, women with physical and mental disabilities undergo fewer clinical breast exams and fewer mammograms than nondisabled women, nationally and in Oregon and southwest Washington. One national study found an 11 percent gap,” reports The Oregonian.

Dot Nary, a doctoral trainee at the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas who has written for radiation professionals about having mammograms as a wheelchair user, tells the Oregonian that it’s critical for technologists to consider how to better care for people of different abilities. Medical care is so standardized — “those of us who don’t have standard bodies have trouble.”

That’s Wack!: “Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the groundbreaking exhibit that opened earlier this year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is now at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Barbara Pollack of the Washington Post writes:

It is thrilling to see Louise Bourgeois’s “Unconscious Landscape,” a pile of breast-like forms cast in bronze. Or Elaine Sturtevant’s film “Duchamp Nu Descendant un Escalier,” her take on Duchamp’s famous painting, “Nude Descending a Staircase.” Take time to watch all of Yoko Ono’s early videos, especially “Rape,” a 1969 film in which a camera crew tracks and harasses a young German woman. And don’t miss Yvonne Rainer’s “Film About a Woman Who …,” a 1974 work that was a landmark in the field of feminist film criticism.

In fact, this show has lots of works that are often reproduced in art history textbooks but are too rarely seen in museums. [...]

By bringing together all of these artworks for the first time, “Wack!” does much more than make history. It gives another generation a chance to see art that was not made for a marketplace or even with the hope of having an audience, but with a determination and belief that art can change the way we live. That kind of optimism seems awfully old-fashioned, given the current cynicism in the art market. But who knows? Maybe this time around, feminist art will exert its free-wheeling influence once again.

A Year of Notable Setbacks: Columnist Ellen Goodman celebrates Women’s Equality Day — the anniversary of Aug. 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote became law — with the Equal Rites Awards, her annual tribute to “those who have labored over the last 12 months to set back the cause of women.” Among the many highlights:

Patriarch of the Year Prize. It goes with disappointment to US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose opinion restricting abortions rested on the retro notion that women needed to be protected from “regret,” “grief,” and “sorrow,” even if it meant protecting them from their rights. We send the paternalistic justice a hook to bring him back to the 21st century.

and …

The Our Bodies/Our Daughters Award goes to Mattel. The folks who brought you Barbie are collaborating on a new line of make-up — for 6- to 9-year-olds. For this we award them and all their ilk a special cosmetic for the next year: egg on their face.

Plus: Gloria Feldt discovers it’s easier to find a card celebrating National Toilet Paper Day than women’s suffrage.

Pour Me Another Cup: “The caffeine in three cups of coffee or tea a day may help maintain mental sharpness in older women, but caffeine consumption appears to have no effect in men,” reports The New York Times. The study appears in the journal Neurology.

The Skinny on Hollywood: Rachel Abramowitz begins this L.A. Times story with a search for body fat in Hollywood. “It’s the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, and judging by the standards of the youth-obsessed network’s magenta carpet, blubber, let alone curves, or even softness is out of fashion. Girls — and I mean girls, given their lack of womanly heft, glide by.”

It’s a good story, but the photos meant to portray the shrinking body size of Hollywood stars manages to fetishize them at the same time — yet another indication that the incredible shrinking woman is something to envy.

“‘Glamour’ Editor To Lady Lawyers: Being Black Is Kinda A Corporate ‘Don’t'”: Just go read Jezebel — it’s all there.

New Primer on Health Care Costs: The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a primer on health care costs (PDF) that examines “the rapid growth in the nation’s health care costs since 1970, when the average growth in health spending exceeded the growth of the economy as a whole by an average of 2.5 percentage points.”

“It also examines the impact of health care costs on families, with insurance premiums rising 87% between 2000 and 2006, more than four times the growth in wages,” continues KFF. “The primer describes the types and sources of health care spending and the demographic factors associated with higher or lower levels of spending. It also discusses other factors that influence health care spending growth, including the use of new medical technology, population changes, and changes in disease prevalence.”

Human Trafficking and HIV: A United Nations report released Wednesday notes that tens of thousands of women forced to work as sex slaves in Asia are at risk of contracting HIV and spreading the virus, reports the AP. If nothing is done to stop human trafficking in the region, “there is just going to be an explosion” of infections, said Caitlin Wiesen of the United Nations Development Program. More from Reuters.

More Doctors Banning Vaginal Births After C-Sections: NPR’s “All Things Considered” last week covered the increase in the number of cesarean births, in part because more and more medical centers have policies against vaginal birth if the mother has already had a c-section.

Plus: Rachel points to CNN’s list of five ways to avoid a c-section.

Monkeys Use “Baby Talk” to Interact With Infants: And you thought only cutesy humans communicated this way. Researchers have found female rhesus monkeys on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico use special vocalizations while interacting with infants, too. When a baby wanders away from its mother, the other female monkeys use the vocalizations, suggesting they are trying to get the infant’s attention.

“The acoustic structure of particular monkey vocalizations called girneys may be adaptively designed to attract young infants and engage their attention, similar to how the acoustic structure of human motherese, or baby talk, allows adults to visually or socially engage with infants,” said Dario Maestripieri, associate professor in comparative human development at the University of Chicago. The study, “Intended Receivers and Functional Significance of Grunt and Girney Vocalizations in Free-Ranging Rhesus Macaques,” appears in the journal Ethology.

Lethal Injections Offer Legal Shield, But Doctors Debate Safety: “In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers in Boston and around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures,” writes Carey Goldberg at the Boston Globe. “That clinical shift in late-term abortions goes deeply against the grain, some doctors say: It poses a slight risk to the woman and offers her no medical benefit.”

Another side-effect of the decision is the impact on medical education. Dr. Mark Nichols, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University, told the Boston Globe there is great concern among faculty and staff that anyone watching a late-term abortion could potentially misinterpret the procedure and file a criminal complaint. Medical and nursing students, therefore, are no longer invited to watch. The federal ban, writes Goldberg, “is broadly written, does not specify an age for the fetus, and carries a two-year prison sentence.”

Plus: Read Adam Liptak’s column (TimesSelect) about a South Dakota law that quite simply puts the government’s words in a doctor’s mouth. “South Dakota’s solution — to mandate a set of disclosures — stops short of Justice Kennedy’s, which was to uphold a ban on an abortion procedure on the apparent theory that women cannot sort things out for themselves even with full information,” writes Liptak. “But there is, according to the federal courts that have so far blocked the South Dakota law, a constitutional flaw in how the state seeks to go about informing women of its views. The problem with the law, the courts said, is that it would hijack the doctor-patient relationship.”

The Gay Presidential Debate: E.J. Graff has the scoop on how the answers provided by the Democratic presidential candidates who attended the LOGO/Human Rights Campaign debate went over with viewers at the predominantly gay Club Cafe in Boston.

Reproductive Health Pop Culture Sampler: RH Reality Check has put together another good collection of posts, this time looking at the treatment of reproductive health in books, television and film. Check out Andi Zeisler’s reflection on “The Book of Phoebe,” a young adult novel by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith; Joanna Lipper shares the story of how she made a documentary about teenage moms; and Andrea Lynch offers praise for “Sex and the City” and lists the “Top Ten Movies that Deal Honestly with Abortion, Unintended Pregnancy, Sex Ed, and Related Issues.”

Editorial on the Failure of Abstinence Ed: “Congress has spent $1.5 billion in the last 10 years on programs that deliver a single message: Abstain from sex until you marry. That’s a good message for young people about how to stay healthy and safe. Taken alone, though, it doesn’t appear to be a terribly effective message,” begins this Chicago Tribune editorial.

Mo’Nique’s Real Appeal: “Now, after making her way from loud-mouthed, often profane stand-up comedian who embraced the subjects of sex and her size to playing Nikki Parker on the UPN show “The Parkers” from 1999 to 2004, Mo’Nique Imes Hicks presides over a small but growing empire,” reports The New York Times. “Like Oprah Winfrey, Mo’Nique positions herself as an Everywoman, trying to inspire women through her example. She believes fat women need to exercise and stay healthy (as she does), implores black women to embrace psychotherapy as needed (as she did) and asks those moaning about their weight to figure out what is going on in their heads so they can take control of their lives (as she has).”

The Numbers Aren’t Great, But It’s Progress: “According to preliminary figures, 87 women are entering a freshman class of 206 students in September. That 37% share is Caltech’s highest since it began admitting undergraduate women in 1970, when pioneering females comprised 14% of the entering class. (Female doctoral candidates first arrived in the 1950s.),” according to the L.A. Times. Also read Samhita’s post on a Computer World article about the experiences of four successful women in the IT profession.

Growth of Prostitution in China: “No longer limited to well-known bars or a growing number of karaoke parlors, prostitutes are everywhere in China today, branching out onto college campuses, moving into private residential compounds and approaching customers on mobile phone networks,” reports the Washington Post. “There was no open prostitution 25 years ago,” said Jing Jun, a sociology and AIDS policy professor at Tsinghua University. “Among government officials, Chinese social scientists, health professionals, they are coming around to see that prostitution is not fundamentally connected to a lack of values but a lack of jobs, choices, opportunities and education.”

Abortion Legalized in Portugal: Until last month, abortion was not only illegal in Portugal, but women who had abortions could be criminally prosecuted, along with their doctors. Now abortion is available without restriction up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, but women may still have trouble finding someone to perform the procedure, reports the L.A. Times. “Even with the law, numerous doctors are refusing to perform the procedure and are declaring themselves ‘conscientious objectors.’ Several public hospitals said they would not be able to offer abortions, despite the legal obligation to do so, because they lacked the doctors or necessary equipment.”

From Reuters:

Women who get cosmetic breast implants are nearly three times as likely to commit suicide as other women, U.S. researchers reported Wednesday.

The study, published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery, reinforces several others that have shown women who have breast enlargements have higher suicide risks.

The study looked at the death certificates of 3,527 Swedish women who had cosmetic breast implant surgery between 1965 and 1993 to to analyze the causes of death among women with breast implants.

“The increased risk of suicide was not apparent until 10 years after implantation,” the researchers wrote.

One of the researches involved in the study, Loren Lipworth of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Reuters that “she believes that some women who get implants may have psychiatric problems to start with, perhaps linked with lower self-esteem or body image disorders.”

The study found no increase in the risk of death from cancer, including breast cancer, but there was an increased risk of death from drug or alcohol abuse.

“Thus, at least 38 deaths (22 percent of all deaths) in this implant cohort were associated with suicide, psychological disorders and/or drug and alcohol abuse/dependence,” the researchers wrote.

The study’s abstract is available here; registration required for the full text.

In 2006, a study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology found that women with implants had a suicide rate 73 percent higher than that of the general population.

Heather Stephenson, in a commentary for Women’s eNews, has some good words of advice — and a plan for activism — as we enter the primetime of the summer sun-tanning season.

She believes “a middle path between worshipping the sun and staying indoors altogether does exist” — and she gives plenty of practical advice for negotiating the pros and cons of sunscreens.

But Stephenson also realizes that what prevents women from enjoying this time of year has as much to do with body image as with health concerns. With this in mind, she praises the work of the Dressing Room Project, through which young women offer encouragement to other women “when most women need it: as they’re trying on clothes.”

Stephenson explains:

Female teens involved in the project write messages of affirmation on colorful small cards and post them around the edges of dressing-room mirrors. My favorite says, “Worry about the size of your heart, not the size of your body.”

Like missives from a secret sisterhood, these positive messages catch your eye with their perky colors and interrupt negative self-talk before it starts.

The project’s website includes cards you can view download and other resources — just in time for the hottest days of the year.

Viva La BlogHer: Great posts from the BlogHer ’07 conference up at Viva La Feminista. And Women in Media & News points to video of closing keynote speaker Elizabeth Edwards discussing media reform.

Welcome NYC Unrated and Unfiltered: Planned Parenthood of New York City just launched a new blog with a snazzy name. Check it out.

A Super-Size Troupe Attracts Super-Size Praise: “Formed a decade ago by Juan Miguel Mas, this company of obese dancers has become a cultural phenomenon in Cuba, breaking stereotypes here of dance, redefining the aesthetics of beauty and, along the way, raising the self-esteem of heavyset people,” writes James C. McKinley Jr. in The New York Times. “While the troupe is not the first to employ larger dancers, its popularity comes as a surprise in a country known for its muscular, lean dancers in every genre from classical ballet to salsa.”

Recommended Reading: “Reading ‘The Invisible Cure’ is like traveling into remote and hard-to-comprehend territory with an unblinking and sure-footed guide,” writes John Donnelly, in a remarkably enticing review of Helen Epstein’s book about the fight against AIDS in Africa. “Epstein had unearthed a rare copy of a detailed study on the sexual behavior of Ugandans in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a period that coincided with the country’s historic drop in H.I.V. rates. In short, Epstein knew, the research done by Maxine Ankrah, an African-American academic, would give invaluable insights into what had halted the epidemic — insights that could then be applied to other countries with high rates of H.I.V. and AIDS.”

Read the review here, or skip right to chapter one.

Speaking Terms: The Guardian reports on language lessons in the UK — sex workers in London are teaching English to migrants working in the sex industry. “I do not do anything without a condom” is required learning. “Our aim is to give women the skills to get out of certain situations they may not want to be in. So much of sex work involves language, and not having language stops people from negotiating with bosses and clients,” said a founder of the x:talk project, which is supported by the International Union of Sex Workers and is funded by the Feminist Review Trust.

Hey, Elaine!: The Today Sponge contraceptive is back on the market. “The new package is meant to have a more modern look: instead of a pink flower and a conservative-looking typeface, the box has drawings of hip-looking women, playful typography, and colors that Synova officials call ‘fuchsia and wine,’ writes Jane L. Levere at The New York Times. But keep this in mind:

Lawrence B. Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that does research and policy analysis on reproductive health, said Synova’s new campaign will bring its method of birth control “to the attention of a lot of women, and help place it in context along with other methods that have been advertised lately,” like the Ortho Evra contraceptive patch.

But health professionals agree that one of the Today Sponge’s biggest problems is its efficacy: research by Princeton University found that 16 percent of American women who had never given birth and may have used the sponge incorrectly or inconsistently became pregnant within a year, while 32 percent of women who had given birth and used the sponge this way became pregnant. The pregnancy rate for women who relied on condoms for birth control and may have used them incorrectly or inconsistently was 15 percent, while the rate for women using birth control pills in this way was 8 percent.

“For all the sponge’s cultural popularity, it isn’t as effective as many other methods,” said Dr. Katharine O’Connell, an assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology and a family planning specialist at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Why Do Men Kill Their Wives?: A Boston Globe Magazine story wonders if murder is a substitute for divorce.

Potentially Hazardous Home Chemicals: Women’s Voices for the Earth, a Montana-based nonprofit working to eliminate or reduce toxic chemicals in the home, released a report(PDF) last week that highlights health risks associated with cleaning products. Some products contain chemicals that are linked to fertility disorders in lab animals, according to the group. Here’s coverage from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Amnesty International Set to Affirm New Abortion Policy: “Despite an outcry from Roman Catholic and conservative leaders worldwide, Amnesty International seems likely to affirm a new policy supporting greater access to abortion when its top decision-making body meets next month,” reports The AP. Here’s Amnesty’s statement from June, defending access to abortion for women at risk.

Pioneer Feminist Theologian Dies: The Rev. Letty Russell, considered “a foremother of feminist theology,” and one of the first women hired to the faculty of Yale Divinity School, died July 12 at her home in Guilford, Conn. The cause was cancer, reports the L.A. Times. Nancy Richardson, a senior lecturer at Harvard Divinity School and a longtime friend, said, “She was teaching [feminist theology] before it had a name.”

“Feminist scholarship was not looked on as scholarship in seminaries,” Richardson said. “To be in academia and be a feminist at the same time wasn’t easy.”

A Slow Recovery, Slowed Down Even More: Part four of a NYT series on the recovery of New Orleans two years after Hurricane Katrina looks at the impact of closed hospitals. “Doctors’ offices sit empty behind five-foot-high water marks, and nearby clinics wait to be demolished. In back of one medical building, a gaping refrigerator still holds jars of mayonnaise and Mt. Olive Dill Relish,” writes Leslie Eaton. “Harder to see, but just as tangible, people here say, are the other ripple effects of the flood and the closed hospital: workers displaced, houses for sale and, of course, patients forced to seek health care many miles away. If they have returned to New Orleans at all, that is, given the grave wounds to the health care system.”

N.H. Becomes First State to Repeal Parental Notification Law: New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch signed legislation last week repealing a law requiring that a parent be notified before a minor has an abortion. “The 2003 law never took effect because of a court challenge, and the repeal took effect immediately,” reports the Washington Post. “I strongly believe parents should be involved in these decisions, providing important support and guidance. Unfortunately that is not possible in every case,” Lynch said.

HIV Testing and More: RH Reality Check has published a package of stories about HIV testing. Plus, The Choice of Sex Selection marks the first post in a series looking at sex selection in India.

Sing it Loud: More than 1,000 activists attended SisterSong’s national conference in Chicago last month on women of color, sexuality and safety. “At a time when HIV and other sexually transmitted infections disproportionately affect African American and Latina women, the gathering stressed the importance of talking openly about sex instead of allowing societal taboos to prevent conversations about risks and safety,” writes Jeff Fleischer at Women’s eNews.

“Everyone is telling us what not to do, but who’s telling us what to do?” says Loretta Ross, the national coordinator for Atlanta-based SisterSong, a collective of some 80 organizations focused on reproductive health for women of color. “‘Just say no’ ain’t worked for drugs, sex or politicians.”

My Mother’s Symptoms: The American Cancer Society and other groups recently identified a set of symptoms that might point to ovarian cancer. The symptoms were all too familiar to Agnes Krup, who writes at Women’s Voices for Change about losing her mother to ovarian cancer 20 years ago.

Sick Children, Working Moms: “Guilt-ridden mothers share stories of sending ailing kids to day care or school out of fear that staying home with them would result in discipline on the job,” writes Ellen Bravo at The Nation. “These stories don’t surprise me. But what was startling was hearing how many kids drag themselves to school sick to keep a parent from losing pay or getting fired.”

How to Pee Standing Up: Rachel at Women’s Health News does it so we don’t have to. Here’s her review of the P-Mate, a portable urinating device.

OUCH: Tara C. Smith of Aetiology reports on an article in the August issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases about what can happen when a bikini wax goes bad — and, as Smith notes, “it’s every bit as bad as you think.” it’s quite a revealing piece (no pun intended). “The paper,” writes Smith, “is as much about the psychology of beauty and the lengths one will put themself through as it is a report of the infection.”

Walk With Your Work: I’m pretty much tethered to my computer desk/laptop, so this walk-and-work set-up, as reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, sounds kind of cool. Or it’s a reminder I should really get outside more. (Via Spine-Health)

And Another Thing: That would be the name of Katha Pollitt’s new blog at The Nation. Good times ahead …

Like the title? I stole it from Prescription Access Litigation, which recently announced that its latest Bitter Pill Award goes to GlaxoSmithKline, for the marketing of the first FDA-approved over-the-counter diet drug alli (pronounced “ally,” get it? this pill is on your side).

PAL is a national coalition of over 130 consumer advocacy organizations (including Our Bodies Ourselves) that criticizes direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. Here’s their take on alli:

Alli is an Over-the-Counter (OTC) version of a previously prescription-only drug, Xenical. PAL believes that, by aggressively marketing alli and eliminating the need for a doctor’s supervision, GSK will cause this drug to be used inappropriately and even abused. PAL is particularly concerned that the drug will be used by teenagers and people with eating disorders. Since anyone can walk into a pharmacy and buy this drug, there are no controls in place to prevent this.

Alli is the most recent example of a drug to shift from requiring a doctor’s prescription to being available to anyone who walks into a pharmacy. While there are prescription drugs with long safety records that can be used Over-the-Counter by patients appropriately without a doctor’s supervision, alli is not one of them. Rather, the switch to OTC appears geared towards increasing the sales of a drug that has minimal effectiveness, disgusting and possibly dangerous side effects and uncertain risks. Prescription sales of Xenical have been steadily declining over the past 5 years, down from $202 million in 2000 to $86.6 million in 2005, according to IMS Health. A recent Zogby/UPI poll found that 29% of Americans said they would likely try an over-the-counter weight-loss pill.

Now about those side effects and risks … the L.A. Times ran a story on Friday that portrayed the “feeding frenzy” sparked by the new drug (their headline, really). Carla Hall writes :

It works in the digestive system by blocking the absorption of about 25% of fat that is consumed.

In a theoretical 3,000 calorie-a-day diet with about 100 grams of fat, the drug would eliminate about 225 calories.

But it can also result in what the manufacturer describes as loose stools and gas with an oily discharge. “It’s probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work,” the drug’s official website says. (The drug maker’s literature and website say side effects can be minimized with a low-fat, reduced-calorie diet.)

But the women buying alli Thursday were unfazed by the warnings.

At a San Fernando Valley Walgreens that had sold 10 boxes — with one man among the buyers — no one was asking the pharmacist about side effects. ” ‘Will it work?’ That’s the only question they’re asking,” said the store’s pharmacy manager, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

And the answer to that question is that while the manufacturer claims dieters can lose up to 50 percent more weight with the drug than with dieting alone, that’s only if the dieter maintains a low-fat, reduced-calorie diet (and keep in mind for most dieters we’re talking an additional five pounds give or take). And according to PAL, the “additional weight loss that results is quite minimal, with two studies showing that patients who took orlistat, the active ingredient of alli, for four years, only lost 2.8% more weight than patients taking a placebo.”

GlaxoSmithKline is even hoping that the nasty side effects — which get worse if fatty foods are ingested — will act as a disincentive, leading users to eat less out of fear of leaky, oily discharge.

The L.A. Times notes that while alli is intended for overweight people 18 and older, the controls are unclear:

At some stores, it could simply be picked up off the shelf and taken to a cashier for purchase. But at a Walgreens in the San Fernando Valley, the drug was being held behind the pharmacy counter, according to the pharmacy manager. As sales were rung up, “the register prompts us to check for I.D. for a birth date,” said the pharmacy manager, who added that she would not sell it to someone under 18.

What’s absolutely clear is that this drug is so far proving to be quite popular, particularly (but not surprisingly) with women, according to pharmacists interviewed by the L.A. Times.

“And they’re not fat,” said Roe Love, a pharmacist and store manager of a Walgreens in Santa Monica.

The Kid’s All Right — But Those Grandparents …: Writing about the birth of Samuel David Cheney, the son of Mary Cheney and Heather Poe, Robert-Jay Green, executive director of the Rockway Institute, a national center for LGBT research and public policy, looks at recent studies that show children of lesbian and gay parents are just as emotionally well-adjusted as children who grow up within a traditional mom-and-dad family structure.

No comment, however, on the dysfunctional and maladjusted White House PR machine, which left both mommies out of the official new-baby photograph, instead releasing a photo of the grandparents — Dick and Liz Cheney — with the infant. Props to Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post who wrote, “I can’t bring myself to wield Mary Cheney’s newborn son as a weapon in the culture wars, but it’s tempting.”

Website Pays for Breast Implants: Well, not the website exactly, although that’s the title of this NBC story — the payments actually come from men who can go through women’s online profiles and choose who to donate to. “It works similar to any other social networking Web site like Facebook or Myspace. A guy signs up and a girl signs up they each create their own profile. They got their own bio. They got photos and basically you start trying to meet people on the Web site,” Jason Grunstra, founder of MyFreeImpants.com, said. After-photos are optional. Eck.

Plus: Bigger is not better.

Liberating Iraqi Women: Andrea Lynch at RH Reality Check has a great post on an article penned by “veteran feminist Lt. Col. Oliver North,” who argues that “if Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were really interested in promoting women’s rights, she would be vigorously promoting the U.S. occupation of Iraq, since ‘the principal protectors of Muslim women today [are] the Armed Forces of the United States.’”

North asserts: “Thanks to young Americans wearing flak jackets and helmets, hundreds of schools have been built for Muslim girls, millions of women have the right to vote, scores of female health care clinics have been opened, and hundreds of thousands of women now work, have their own bank accounts, use cell-phones — even serve in elected office.” But this New York Times story paints a less-rosy picture.

Good News, Bad News: Ann at Feministing neatly sums up the House’s attitude toward family planning programs and abstinence-only education.

Ethnic Plastic Surgery: Describing Washington’s Cultura Medical Spa, which bills itself as “a place where it’s appropriate to treat people based on the color of their skin,” Sandra G. Boodman of the Washington Post writes: “Two-thirds of the center’s patients are nonwhite, many of them black women who in increasing numbers are seeking such procedures as nose jobs and laser hair removal that until recently were largely the province of well-heeled white women. Many of these patients, doctors say, are also seeking treatments that seek to enhance — not obscure — their racial or ethnic characteristics.”

Show Us the Money: Susan E. Reed argues in a New York Times op-ed that “Congress should pass legislation mandating that all workplaces create this kind of transparency by requiring companies to post salaries. It makes sense, especially in light of the court’s decision last week requiring employees to file pay discrimination complaints under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act within 180 days of the last pay adjustment.”

The 5-4 decision came in a case involving a female supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., who was paid less than any of her male colleagues but didn’t learn about the difference until late in her almost 20-year career.

Life as a Feminist: The Asbury Park Press recently profiled former area resident Mary Vasiliades, a 76-year-old novelist, playwright and former journalist who is featured in Barbara’s Love’s “Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975.” Vasiliades was part of a group of women who sneaked onto the Statue of Liberty on Aug. 10, 1970 and unfurled a banner that read, “Women of the World Unite.”

Love said of Vasiliades: “She organized groups and events all over New York City so it was impossible not to know her. She was everywhere. Mary fit the same criteria that all women needed to be mentioned in the book: She was a change-maker. She did things that affected the landscape of the country for women and girls.”

“Feminists Who Changed America” chronicles the achievements of more than 2,000 feminist pioneers, including many of the original founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective.

Woman Sues eHarmony for Discrimination: “A Northern California woman sued the online dating service eHarmony on Thursday, alleging it discriminates against gays, lesbians and bisexuals,” according to the AP. “The lawsuit claims that by only offering to find a compatible match for men seeking women or women seeking men, the company was violating state law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Sexual Harassment Training: Sexual harassment training does not invite lawsuits, according to a study by Caren M. Goldberg, a management professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business. “Some organizations have avoided implementing sexual harassment training programs for fear that providing it might increase lawsuits from otherwise unaware victims,” Goldberg said. “But if an employer is sued, proof that sexual harassment training was offered may be one the best defenses. This study indicates that the presumed downside is much ado about nothing.”

Study Finds Less Radiation Effective on Breast Cancer: “Less radiation may be just as good as the standard dose in treating women with early breast cancer, according to a study presented Sunday in Chicago at the world’s biggest cancer meeting,” writes Judy Peres in the Chicago Tribune. “The British study, the biggest to look at the question, found that fewer, larger doses of radiation were as effective at preventing recurrence and did not cause any more side effects. If the results are borne out by similar ongoing studies in the U.S., they could offer a welcome alternative to many American women who now must take six to seven weeks out of their lives to undergo post-surgical radiation.”

Other research presented at the 43rd Annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting:

- According to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, breast cancer survival rates for black women have not improved and the difference in life expectancy between white and black women continues to widen.

- According to researchers at Loyola University Health System, a 21-gene test of a patient’s breast cancer tumor — known as the The Oncotype DX™ Recurrence Score — may change doctor and patient treatment decisions, including the need for chemotherapy.

Sometimes the problem just seems to be always hanging over your head — on a billboard, perhaps.

Near the upscale Chicago suburb of Glenview, residents are outraged by the presence of a 10-foot-by-36-foot billboard advertisement for a local spa showing a supposedly flawless model lying on the beach with text identifying potential “problem” areas such as “cellulite and saddlebags” and “facial lines and wrinkles” along with “solutions” like “botox” and “lipodissolve.”

“I was shocked,” said Regina Thibeau. “I was offended as a woman, angered as a mother and embarrassed as a resident of Glenview.”

Even though more than 300 people have signed a petition, the billboard is there to stay, according to the salon owner Pascal Ibgui, who leased the advertising space through July along with his plastic surgeon partner, Steven Bloch.

Ibgui, a French native, told the Chicago Tribune that he believes the protests reflect an American prudishness, which he refuses to enable by taking the billboard down. Economics, of course, also plays a role:

In a recent direct mail campaign, Ibgui and Bloch sent cards to 25,000 households on the North Shore featuring the same picture as the billboard. The mailings brought in so much business that the salon and spa decided to take it to a bigger medium, Ibgui said.

He said the billboard caters, in part, to his “huge” male clientele.

“I don’t want to sound like a chauvinistic pig, but this is a man’s world,” he said.

Well, at least Igbui recognizes patriarchy at work — and unwittingly admits the connection between male power and our culture’s obsession with a very narrow definition of female beauty.

Below is the billboard’s close-up. The Trib has a larger photo here.

In an analysis published in BMJ journal on how healthcare providers should respond to requests for cosmetic genital surgery, co-authors Lih Mei Liao, a clinical psychologist, and Sarah M Creighton, a gynecologist, argue that alternative solutions to women’s concerns about the appearance of their genitals should be developed.

“More and more women are said to be troubled by the shape, size, or proportions of their vulvas, so that elective genitoplasty is apparently a ‘booming business,’” they write. “Advertisements for cosmetic genitoplasty are common, often including before and after images and life changing narratives.”

The authors are both affiliated with the UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health. The study’s abstract and introduction are available here.

According to this story about the BMJ article, some patients complained that the size of their vulvas interfered with their ability to wear tight clothing or ride a bike comfortably, though men who have similar problems are more likely to seek alternative solutions to surgery.

Patients consistently wanted their vulvas to be flat with no protrusion beyond the labia majora, even though there is nothing unusual about protrusion of the labia minora or clitoris beyond the labia majora, say the authors. Some women brought along images to illustrate the desired appearance, usually from advertisements or pornography that may have been digitally altered.

The increased demand for cosmetic genitoplasty may reflect a narrowing social definition of normal, or a confusion of what is normal and what is idealized, they write. And the provision of genitoplasty could narrow acceptable ranges further and increase the demand for surgery even more.

Here’s a story from Women’s eNews about women seeking vaginal plastic surgery. It’s a couple of years old, but I remembered it because some of the quotes are so disturbing — both from doctors performing the surgery and women seeking reconstruction to conform to some sort of beauty ideal or because of pressure from their partners.

Minority Women in L.A. County Have Higher Rates of Chronic Disease: “Minority women living in Los Angeles County suffer disproportionate rates of chronic disease, according to a study released Wednesday by public health officials that examined the relationship between ethnicity and women’s health,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Susannah Rosenblatt writes:

African American women had the highest mortality rate of any group, with more than half at risk for developing heart disease, compared with 38% of Latinas, 36% of whites and 27% of Asians and Pacific Islanders, according to the report. African American women also smoked more and breast-fed less than other women, the report found.

“What always is stunning, whether you expect it or not, is how large the disparities are,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county’s public health director.

Fielding pointed to the importance of factors such as poverty, health insurance, education and neighborhood violence in determining women’s health. Nearly half of county women live in poverty, the study found.

Algeria’s Women Quietly Advance in Careers and Society: “In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world,” reports The New York Times.

Blame Katha!: “According to [Christina Hoff] Sommers’s ‘The Subjection of Islamic Women and the Fecklessness of American Feminism’ the major obstacles in the path of Muslim women’s progress are Eve Ensler, Barbara Ehrenreich, the National Organization for Women and me,” writes Katha Pollitt.

Feminism and the Strong Black Woman: Writing at BlogHer, Carmen VanKerckhove notes that she’s been following the media’s handling of race in its coverage of Barack Obama’s presidential bid, “but right now I’m particularly riveted by the media coverage of his wife, Michelle Obama. Race, gender, and feminism are intersecting in fascinating ways.” Read on for some great highlights, including Debra Dickerson’s essay at Salon.

No Body’s Perfect: “You’ve probably heard about the desire for perfection, the role of parents, the influence of media messages and the diet industry, and the links between eating, sexuality and body image. Yet, there’s something especially striking about Martin’s book: It illustrates how little progress we’ve made,” Jill Thomas writes in this look at Courtney Martin‘s “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.”

Gender Match: Tennis star Monica Seles visited Providence, R.I., recently and talked about gender and sports, including her grandmother’s concern that she was developing callouses. “Even in my own family, playing sports was not allowed. I remember how many times my father, who was my mentor and my coach, fought with my grandmother, who really believed that girls shouldn’t play any sports. She should just be playing with her friends or playing with dolls,” said Seles. “I was 8 or 9 and winning tournaments under-12. Her concern wasn’t that, ‘Gosh, I might have a granddaughter who could one day be a tennis player,’ but it’s more about ‘What is this going to do down the road for her?’”

Sex Toys: What Would Reagan Do?: I love it for the title alone, but syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts has written a good column about how the conservative movement has changed quite a bit since the days of Ronald Reagan. The column’s spark is Sherri Williams, who is hoping the Supreme Court will hear her sex toys case. “Otherwise, a Valentine’s Day ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will stand, and a ban on the purchase of sex toys in Alabama — enacted in 1998 but not enforced pending the outcome of litigation — will go into effect,” writes PItts.

Female Shark Reproduced Without Male DNA, Scientists Say: “A hammerhead shark that gave birth in a Nebraska aquarium reproduced without mating, a genetic analysis shows,” reports The New York Times. “This form of asexual reproduction, called parthenogenesis, has been found in other vertebrate species, including some snakes and lizards. But this is the first time it has been documented in a shark.”

The Pill, Truth and “Lies, Lies, Lies“: The big news in birth control options this week was the FDA’s approval of Wyeth’s oral contraceptive Lybrel, which can be taken continuously, thus eliminating monthly menstrual periods for the duration of time a woman stays on the pill.

The Well-Timed Period has an excellent post that looks at misinformed and condescending media coverage about menstruation and contraception.

For more factual information, take a look at the National Women’s Health Network’s fact sheet on menstrual suppression.

FDA approval was expected — and really these pills are not different than taking any other birth control pill continuously and skipping the placebos — but to hear Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, talk about it, you’d think it portends the end of the human race.

Check out the partial transcript at Think Progress of Unruh’s appearance on Fox News’ “Your World With Neil Cavuto.” Or watch for yourself below. Kudos to NARAL’s Mary Alice Karr for staying firm, articulate and unflustered in the face of Cavuto’s less-than-informed questions and Unruh’s whacked-out accusations of a “war on children.”