Earlier this week, we wrote about the groundbreaking “Friday Nights Lights” episode that dealt more honestly with abortion than most television shows in the past 30 years. We’re pleased to include this reflection by Gloria Feldt, activist, author, blogger and past president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. We hope you’ll follow through on her suggestions to thank NBC for allowing this episode to air.

On a personal note, it pleases me no end that this truth-telling episode appeared on “Friday Night Lights.” The show is based on Buzz Bissinger’s book of that same name, a sociology of the very West Texas town (Odessa, Texas) where I lived for 20 years and the high school (Permian) from which my three children graduated.

Not only do I know Dillon/Odessa and its hardscrabble culture all too well; it was where I moved as a 15-year-old pregnant teen with my new husband. We hailed from an even smaller West Texas town, where our football team was truly the only game around (my high school classmates still play the 8-millimeter film of our state championship game at every reunion, if that gives you a clue). At least Odessa has supermarkets and movie theaters!

Odessa was also where my growing understanding of the complexity of childbearing decisions came full circle — and why, though I loved my children more than anything, I came to realize I would have been a much better parent if I’d waited 10 or 20 years to have them.

My 30-year career with Planned Parenthood began when I became executive director of the fledgling affiliate there in 1974 — an affiliate now headed by a woman who was in my older daughter’s Permian High graduating class.

Sadly, I know from stories I still get from young women that the same time-warped pattern repeats itself: Teen girl wants to please football player boyfriend and gets pregnant. The good news is that these stories now — regardless of what the girl decided to do about the pregnancy — are much more likely to end in a statement of appreciation for having had choices in the first place.

This particular episode of FNL is a testament to the fact that regardless of the reactionary, shaming culture and a media with a rightward tilt, real life women will find a way to save their own lives — even in unlikely places like the fictional Dillon and the very real Odessa.

I’ve sent NBC a note of appreciation and urge all of you to do same. We’re good at reacting when we don’t like something, but less so when there’s a show worthy of applause. Here’s where you can go to send a comment: http://www.nbc.com/contact/general/

The series is executive produced by Peter Berg (the film “Friday Night Lights,” “Hancock”), who also wrote and directed the pilot. Joining Berg as executive producers are Jason Katims (“Roswell”), Brian Grazer (“Frost/Nixon,” “The Da Vinci Code”), David Nevins (“Arrested Development”), Sarah Aubrey (“The Kingdom”) and Jeffrey Reiner (“Caprica”). “Friday Night Lights” is a production of Universal Media Studios, Imagine Entertainment and Film 44, in case you want to target a specific individual.

The tube has long had tunnel vision when it has come to portraying women. Recently, though, television shows have been broadening their point of view by addressing previously taboo subjects — abortion and body image — with surprising maturity and subtlety.

“Friday Night Lights,” one of my long-time favorite series, has paid attention to women’s health since its inception, from its diverse portrayal of teenager’s sexual lives to its confrontation of sexual violence. And, yes, it even book-dropped “Our Bodies, Ourselves” at the end of its first season.

But it truly out-did itself (and almost every other work in the history of television — or film) with an episode that aired last week on NBC that traced one character’s decision to have an abortion.

Fifteen-year-old Becky (Madison Burge), pregnant after one sexual encounter with a high school football player, turns to Tami Taylor (Connie Britton), a high school principal (but not at Becky’s school) and trained guidance counselor, to help her sort through her feelings of whether she can manage a baby at her age:

Becky: I have an appointment for my abortion tomorrow. Why do I feel so weird?

Tami: Because it’s a hard decision. Have you thought about what you want?

Becky: We don’t have any money. I’m in the 10th grade. It was my first time. I threw it away, and I don’t want to throw my life away. It’s just really obvious that my mom wants me to have this abortion because I was her mistake and she has just struggled and hurt and everyday she wanted better. And I knew better. I was just thinking forget about what she wants, what do I want? Maybe I could take care of this baby. And maybe I would be good at it and I could love it and be there for it. Then I think about how awful it would be if I had a baby and I spent the rest of my life resenting him or her. Do you think I’m going to hell if I had an abortion?

Tami: No honey, I don’t.

Becky: What would you tell your daughter?

Tami: I would tell her to think about her life, think about what’s important to her and what she wants and I would tell her she’s in a real tough spot and then I would support whatever decision she made.

Becky: I can’t take care of a baby … I can’t.

Writing in The New York Times, Ginia Bellafante discusses the significance of the episode:

With those words Becky decides to have an abortion. This took place on Friday’s episode of “Friday Night Lights” and was remarkable — abortions have been rare on serial television since the early ’70s. But the effect was particularly resonant this week. On Monday Bristol Palin, America’s most famous teenage mother, briefly appeared as herself on the ABC Family soap opera “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” bringing greater attention to a popular series that for three seasons has performed didactic and soulless cheerleading for anti-abortion sentiments.

Bellafante goes on to describe numerous instances in which television has “leaned to the right on the subject of unwanted pregnancy,” including a  shocking (even for a soap opera) turn of events on “All My Children”:

In the most bizarre instance of revisionism on the issue, four years ago “All My Children” reversed Erica Kane’s 1973 abortion, a milestone in television history when it occurred 11 months after the passage of Roe v. Wade. A character named Josh Madden learned that although Erica had initially conceived him, he had been kidnapped as an embryo and transferred to the womb of another woman by the obviously deranged doctor who had raised him. Fans were outraged, on one level because the story line was ludicrous, even by the measure of daytime television, and on another because the twist had gone a long way toward eradicating the show’s progressive politics, and, in some sense, an entire era.

What makes the portrayal on “Friday Night Lights” even more surprising is we see the hardships of obtaining an abortion — from coming up with the money for the procedure to the time and money lost when faced with a mandatory waiting period.

And unlike an abortion episode from the short-lived WB series “Jack & Bobby” (see Jenn Pozner’s summary), FNL doesn’t dwell on issues of divided teens/parents. Becky’s mother, Cheryl (played brilliantly by Alicia Witt), supports the decision, though she’s emotionally unavailable to her daughter. The boy’s parents, though, want Becky to have the baby, noting that Mary and Joseph toughed it out — to which their son, Luke, retorts: “Becky and me are not Mary and Joseph.”

Having seen this season of FNL during its earlier broadcast on DirecTV, I don’t want to offer any spoilers, but know there will be fall-out from Becky’s decision. Meanwhile, another character is pregnant and lacks health insurance. Her storyline is also compelling and is yet one more reason you should be watching this intelligent show.

In other TV news, Los Angeles Times TV critic Mary McNamara also sees something virtually unprecedented in the recent portrayals of fat people on television who, at least three new shows have discovered, “are human after all, with a panoply of dreams, desires, foibles and stories that often have nothing to do with their weight”:

Lifetime’s “Drop Dead Diva” broke the ice last year. Lit up by newcomer Brooke Elliott, the show wrangled its iffy conceit — an afterlife mix-up leaves a thin girl trapped in a fat girl’s body — into a surprisingly edgy comedy. This summer, ABC Family debuted “Huge,” a vehicle for “Hairspray” star Nikki Blonsky, which was no doubt the cause for much rejoicing among plus-sized thespians. Set at a fat camp, “Huge” is essentially a teen drama — with the requisite rebel, pretty girl, shy boy, tough jock, etc. — but one that also explores the complexities of childhood obesity with a clear eye and dark humor.

And this fall, pound-power comes to the networks. In CBS’ romantic comedy “Mike and Molly,” Melissa McCarthy and Billy Gardell play a fourth-grade teacher and a Boston cop, respectively, who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. All three of these shows take on the emotional, social and physical difficulties of being overweight, but none of them get bogged down in the slippery excess of parody or pathos that so often accompanies current tales from the top of the scale.

McNamara also makes an important clarification: “When I said television has discovered that fat people are human, I mean it’s discovered that fat women and children are human. Men have always been allowed to be fat on TV.”

She gives props to the one great exception — “Roseanne” — in which Roseanne Barr herself was remarkable for rarely remarking on any of these issues at all.

When Los Angeles-based artist Joanne Mitchell wrote to us with news of the removal of a gender-oriented work from the Bucharest International Biennale, we asked her to share the information with readers. Joanne’s piece “Our bodies, ourselves – the book, I mean” will be showcased as part of the organization’s 40th-anniversary celebration in 2011.

By Joanne Mitchell

The Bucharest International Biennale opened last week without “Tit for Twat,” a 20-year long, ongoing project made by a former teacher of mine, the artist Kaucyila Brooke.

“Tit for Twat” is a three-part epic that takes the form of photo montage, and re-imagines the creation story from the perspective of two lesbian protagonists (view it here). It is intelligent, challenging work, sweetly sprinkled with just the right touch of humor – exactly the caliber of work I aspire to make as a lesbian-feminist artist.

The work was supposed to have been installed as part of the Biennale at Bucharest’s Institute of Geology but was shockingly pulled at the last minute by the director of that institution.

Kaucyila has consistently challenged conventional thinking on gender and sexuality throughout her long and distinguished career as an artist and as a teacher at California Institute of the Arts. It is troubling that her work is being kept from view during this international event.

Kaucyila was influential in support of my project “Our bodies, ourselves – the book, I mean” while I was a student of hers at CalArts. She contributed a wonderfully engaging story about her experience with “Our Bodies, Ourselves” that I present in a video installation. My project tracks the history of the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and offers viewers an opportunity to engage critically with the history and trajectory of the women’s movement. I will be presenting the project as part of the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Our Bodies Ourselves in Boston in 2011.

Here are some statements on Kaucyila’s behalf:

Kaucyila Brooke’s “Tit for Twat” is a challenging piece of artistic literature about some of the most important topics affecting our humanity. It is a deeply thought out and literate investigation into the stability of gender categories and our deep mythopoetic narratives of origin. Some viewers will not like it, some will outright disagree. But these dissenters and others will all find wholly new dimensions of thinking about humanity’s fixed categories of being.

None of that can happen in the face of censorship, a form of silencing cloaked in cowardly evasiveness. The Arts are one of the very few global cultural spaces where repressions of difference may — and indeed must be — freely explored for humanity to find ways to move on, allowing discovery, discussion (however contentious), and progress towards a more tolerant world. It is a grievous blow to that future tolerance that the Bucharest Biennial has allowed Art’s precious freedom to be compromised in the interest of pathetic inoffensiveness.

- Ellen Birrell, Artist, Publisher and Editor, X-TRA, a Quarterly Journal of the Arts

Jacques Rancière claims “a new form of political subjectivity that would accept the point that we start from equality, from the idea that there is a universal competence – that there is a universal capacity that is involved in all those experiments and that we are trying to expand – to expand the field and the capacities of that competence.”

In “Tit for Twat” by Kaucyila Brooke, Madam and Eve are standing on the edge of human evolution, curiously embarking on a journey through space, time and history. Intellectually fascinated by the idea of “nature,” they decide to visit various historic gardens, to question the biblical assumption of heterosexuality (Adam and Eve), and to deal with their relation towards other theories of origin. Especially in a Catholic country, the piece is highly provocative but don’t we need provocative works in order to discuss future ways of living?

In our times of passage, a time that implies a certain chaos, structures are going to disappear and the new is not yet at the horizon. Especially in uncertain times, we have to open our minds, we have to be able to ask questions, we have to show critical works and we have to discuss them — but not to exclude them. No religious or political authority can provide us with a clear definition of meaning, or communicate a socially sanctioned aspiration for the collective implementation of a utopia or a promise of redemption.

Therefore, the act of censoring works (without even discussing it) is against society, is against all that contemporary art stands for today and questions the intent of the Bucharest Biennial as a whole. Believe in your audience and give them the opportunity to decide for themselves.

- Bettina Steinbrügge, Co-curator of Forum Expanded/Berlin International Film Festival, Associate curator of La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse

“Tit for Twat” will not be seen at the Biennale, but you can view images and text from dialogue balloons online at http://www.kaucyilabrooke.com. Please share this with anyone interested in feminist art and censorship.

Putting HCR in Context: The Guttmacher Institute looks at the pros and cons of health care reform as it relates to reproductive health, including sex education, Medicaid expansion and funding for public health programs.

The research institute notes that insurance companies not only would have to “jump through numerous, unprecedented hoops to estimate the cost of abortion coverage and ensure that the abortion payments never mix with other funds,” but “they also are likely to face extensive public scrutiny and protest around their action.”

All told, according to an analysis by George Washington University’s Sara Rosenbaum, “the more logical response” for private insurers marketing plans within the exchanges — and eventually in the broader market as well — “would be not to sell products that cover abortion services.”

Plus: Drawing from its Congressional record, NARAL flags Republicans who have voted against reproductive rights and who also warned HRC would lead to government intrusion on private medical decisions.

Lasting Consequences: Katha Pollitt talks with Carol Joffe, author of “Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us,” about the effect of HRC on women’s reproductive rights and health. Joffe discusses the good, the bad and the ugly — which refers to the marginalization of abortion.

President Obama and Democratic Congresswomen repeatedly said, “This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill.” I understand why they said it. They felt this was the only way to get the bill through and perhaps they were right. But abortion is health care! One out of three women has an abortion during her reproductive years. One of the best ways to reduce the stigma around abortion is to normalize the procedure within mainstream health care settings. The mantra “this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill” reinforces exactly the opposite message.

Plus: In a separate piece written earlier this month, Katha Pollitt offers concrete suggestions on how the Democratic Party and the Obama administration can repay supporters of women’s rights for cooperating on HRC, including taking steps to improve maternal care and outcomes, and full funding for Title X and the Violence Against Women Act. I love the ending:

Speaking of violence against women, Dems, would you look in the effing mirror? New York’s Hiram Monserrate and David Paterson? Scott Lee Cohen in Illinois? That these men and others like them could get as far as they did says the culture of the party is tone-deaf when it comes to abuse and its warning signs. The only way to detoxify politics of tolerance for violence is to have lots more women in office. If India can pass a law requiring Parliament to be one-third women, surely the Democratic Party can figure out how to achieve equal numbers of women here. Pro-choice women. Feminist women.

Start by backing the grassroots campaign of former teacher and county commissioner Connie Saltonstall, who has announced her intention to challenge Bart Stupak in the August primary. “He has a right to his personal, religious views,” says Saltonstall, “but to deprive his constituents of needed healthcare reform because of those views is reprehensible.” Now there’s a woman with gumption and a gift for stating things clearly.

In Other News …

Revisions to On-Air Abortion Language: NPR reporters will no longer use the terms pro-choice and pro-life to describe both sides of the abortion rights debate. Instead, according to an internal memo:

On the air, we should use “abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)” and “abortion rights opponent(s)” or derivations thereof (for example: “advocates of abortion rights”). It is acceptable to use the phrase “anti-abortion”, but do not use the term “pro-abortion rights”.

Digital News will continue to use the AP style book for online content, which mirrors the revised NPR policy.

Do not use “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in copy except when used in the name of a group. Of course, when the terms are used in an actuality they should remain.” [An actuality is a clip of tape of someone talking. So if a source uses those terms, NPR will not edit them out.]

Georgia Senate Passes Abortion Bill: The latest assault on women’s reproductive health in Georgia is SB 529, a Senate bill that makes it possible to bring criminal charges against doctors, boyfriends, pimps and even parents if they encourage a woman to have an abortion. The bill’s supporters frame it as a way to protect women — especially women of color — but women’s health advocates say the true motivation is to criminalize abortion.

“This bill was created under the false assumption that abortion doctors solicit women of color, particularly, black women,” said Democratic State Sen. Donzella James. “This bill calls into question all who make a deeply private and personal medical decision. Every woman, regardless of ethnic background, should have the ability to make personal decisions. Not the people in this room. It is between, she, her family and God.”

Heidi Williamson of Sister Song has more. “Publicly, white Republican men claim to care about pregnant black women who are allegedly being targeted by the abortion industry. Privately, those same men scramble to ‘opt Georgia out’ of national healthcare reform and find the perfect wedge issue for the mid-term elections to build the Republican base in African-American communities,” she writes.

We previously discussed an anti-abortion billboard campaign in Georgia targeting black women  that proclaims black children are an endangered species. Women’s eNews reports that the campaign may soon go national. For more on the difference in abortion rates among women, see this Guttmacher Institute policy report, which notes that black and Hispanic women have higher abortion rates than white women because they have higher rates of unintended pregnancy.

What’s Up With Lilith Fair?: After announcing that it would donate a dollar from every ticket sold to a women’s organization in each of the 36 host cities, Lilith Fair is coming under fire for including organizations that don’t support a full range of reproductive services.

Apparently, the only vetting Lilith did was to look online for women-focused organizations with federal tax ID numbers. Jessica Hopper interviewed Nettwerk CEO and Lilith cofounder Terry McBride about the selection process and received a less-than-informed response.

“The seeding at the start was done with a basic digital search in each market of woman’s charities,” he said. “It’s not perfect. Nor could it be, as we simply don’t have the local expertise even within our own city of Vancouver.”

Really? Lilith couldn’t have contacted local women’s health advocates, or put a few interns on the project? Perhaps the festival should include a booth for organizers on research skills.

There’s always a chance for improvement. Facebook fans will vote on the selected organizations, and the top three vote-getters in each city will be forwarded to Lilith founders — Sarah McLachlan, Terry McBride, Dan Fraser and Marty Diamond — who will hand pick the winners. And organizations not currently featured can self-submit for consideration. Read more at the Chicago Reader.

On How a Bill Becomes a Law: The bill that will likely become the reconciliation bill on healthcare has been posted (PDF). Ezra Klein explains what it means.

Democratic leaders say a bill will pass this week.  House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pledges obstruction, saying Republicans will do “everything we can to make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill.”

Jen Nedeau covers the multiple threats to women’s health and reproductive rights that must be addressed, including the House anti-abortion language. You know it as the Stupak/Pitts admendment. But Richard Doerflinger, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ point man on abortion, should have had his name in there, too. Meanwhile, Jessica Arons tries to see the world through the lens of Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.).

In an editorial in Monday’s paper, The New York Times urges anti-abortion Democrats to accept the Senate’s restrictive provisions, the lesser of two evils.

Too Many Tests, Too Much Treatment: “A spate of recent reports suggests that many Americans are being overtreated. Maybe even President Barack Obama, champion of an overhaul and cost-cutting of the health care system,” reports Lindsey Tanner of the Associated Press.

“More care is not necessarily better care,” wrote cardiologist Dr. Rita Redberg, editor of Archives of Internal Medicine, commenting on Obama’srecent physical, which included prostate cancer screening and a virtual colonoscopy. The PSA isn’t recommended at any age and a colonoscopyisn’t recommended under age 50.

Over-testing may be due to a combination of what is known as “defensive medicine” — doctors ordering tests and procedures because they’re trying  protect themselves against lawsuits (or because they’ll be compensated by a fee-for-service system) — and patients insisting on tests and treatments that they’ve heard about or know is commonly prescribed. But the thinking around more care = better care may be shifting.

“This week alone,” writes Tanner, “a New England Journal of Medicine study suggested that too many patients are getting angiograms – invasive imaging tests for heart disease — who don’t really need them; and specialists convened by the National Institutes of Health said doctors are too often demanding repeat cesarean deliveries for pregnant women after a first C-section.”

Stopping the Campus Rape Crisis: Jaclyn Friedman, executive editor of Women, Action and the Media and co-editor of “Yes Means Yes,” wrote a must-read op-ed in the Washington Post on ending the silence around sexual assault on college campuses.

First, colleges can eliminate the “miscommunication” excuse that many rapists use by creating an on-campus standard that requires any party to a sexual interaction to make sure their partner is actively enthusiastic about what’s happening — not just not objecting. They can create judicial boards equipped to seriously investigate rape accusations, instead of throwing their hands up at the first sign that the accused’s testimony contradicts the accuser’s. They can defend the safety of the entire campus by permanently expelling those found guilty of sexual assault. And they can be transparent about every step of the process.

Plus: The Center for Public Integrity recently released “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice,” an in-depth report filled with useful data, articles and resources.

Recognition for Midwives: Granny midwife Margaret Charles Smith was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame at Judson College this month. Smith attended nearly 3,000 births between 1949, when she received her midwife permit, and 1981, when she attended her last birth. Her life story is told in a book Smith co-wrote with Linda Janet Holmes, “Listen to Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife.”

Plus: Rachel previously noted that the National Library of Medicine is featuring an exhibition on African American midwives. ”Nothing To Work With But Cleanliness: African American ‘Grannies,’ Midwives & Health Reform” tells the story of “granny” midwives and the state and local training programs that educated them and succeeding generations of midwives. View a wonderful set of photos from the exhibition on Flickr.

Utah’s Controversial Law Charges Women and Girls With Murder for Miscarriages: Writing at AlterNet, Rose Aguilar breaks down the problems with Utah’s new law that makes it a criminal offense for having miscarriages caused by “intentional or knowing” acts.

“What happens to women who are in abusive relationships?” asks Planned Parenthood’s Melissa Bird. “What happens if a woman threatens to leave the abuser, falls down the stairs and loses the baby? What if the abuser beats the woman and causes a miscarriage? Could he turn her in? Who would the prosecutor believe? What happens if a drug addict who’s trying to get clean loses her baby? Will she be brought up on murder charges?”

Some critics point out the legislators erred in not considering the lack of access that young people have to comprehensive sex education, and the overall lack of contraception and health services, especially in remote parts of the state.

The Girls Who Kicked in Rock’s Door: Not exactly health related (unless you’re like me and consider loud music essential for well-being), but I am completely intrigued by the “The Runaways,” the new film about the 1970s all-girl rock band, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart. Sia Michel writes about the story behind the film and its director, Floria Sigismondi.

We’ve heard from several readers who caught a glimpse of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” on a recent episode of “Gossip Girl.” (No, not that episode.)

We tried to embed the scene, but permissions just won’t let it happen. Fortunately Television Without Pity has the full (really full) re-cap, including the dialogue referencing OBOS.  New York magazine was as surprised as we were to find OBOS included …

New York Times columnist Gail Collins appeared on The Colbert Report earlier this week to discuss her new book, “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.”

in 1960, women were prohibited from serving on juries and it was perfectly legal to not hire women because of their sex. The book opens with the story of a woman who was kicked out of traffic court for daring to wear pants (and she was there to pay her boss’s ticket).

One of today’s biggest problems, said Collins, is that “half the workforce is female now, and we still haven’t figured out who’s supposed to take care of the kids.”

Colbert appeared shocked. “The women take care of the kids,” he said.

The reason, he added, is simply biological.

“I cannot produce milk. I’ve tried. It’s painful and it doesn’t work.”

Enjoy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I did.

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

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

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

It appears that much work still needs to be done.

Clinton Prioritizes Women’s Rights: “Clinton intends to press governments on abuses of women’s rights and make women more central in U.S. aid programs,” writes Mary Beth Sheridan at the Washington Post. “But her efforts go beyond the marble halls of government and show how she is redefining the role of secretary of state. Her trips are packed with town-hall meetings and visits to micro-credit projects and women’s dinners. Ever the politician, Clinton is using her star power to boost women who could be her allies.”

“It’s just a constant effort to elevate people who, in their societies, may not even be known by their own leaders,” Clinton told WaPo. “My coming gives them a platform, which then gives us the chance to try and change the priorities of the governments.”

Whole Foods Fight: I’ll be posting a more studious healthcare round-up, but for the moment: The New York Times Opinionator blog did a nice job pulling together comments from around the web about the anti-government healthcare reform op-ed written by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey that has some shoppers calling for a boycott.

One commenter recalls a food boycott from years ago that was more win-win: “I *loved* the Domino’s boycott way back when. Pro-choice cred PLUS I don’t have to eat cardboard pizza!”

Our Genders, Our Rights: The summer edition of On The Issues Magazine discusses a topic that the editors describe as “both utterly fundamental and wildly revolutionary: gender norms and gender identity.”

Among the many offerings: “How a Feminist Found Her Sexism,” by Helen Boyd (with image at left by Gavin Rouille); “Trans Health Care Is A Life and Death Matter,” by Eleanor J. Bader; and “Virtual Switching, or Playing Games?” by Georgia Kral.

The Gender Politics of “Mad Men”: Cheers to Feministing for making Mondays that much better with a weekly feminist analysis of the popular AMC series “Mad Men,” and to RH Reality Check for hosting an ongoing “Mad Men” salon. And don’t miss Crystal Merritt’s insider perspective, as an ad woman and feminist.

New Column, Great Advice: Jaclyn Friedman is one of our favorite people for many reasons. She runs the annual Women, Action & Media conference as part of her role at Center for New Words; she co-edited, with Jessica Valenti, “Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape“; and now she’s writing a weekly column for Amplify Your Voice, a project of Advocates for Youth.

Read Friedman’s “Open Letter to Miley Cyrus,” which should be shared with all 16-year-olds.

Ovarian Cancer Surgery and Fertility: According to a new study published in the journal Cancer, five-year survival rates for stage 1 ovarian cancer patients were the same for patients who had both ovaries removed and women who had only the cancerous ovary removed, reports the L.A. Times. Though ovarian cancer occurs most often in postmenopausal women, up to 17% of ovarian cancers occur in women 40 or younger and that rate is believed to be rising.

Plus: Chicago Tribune health columnist Julie Deardoff writes: ”One of every 1,000 pregnant women in the U.S. has cancer, a relatively rare but stark convergence of life and death. For these women, treatment is possible. But it comes with a host of terrifying decisions for the family.”  The story focuses on Sarah Joanis, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 26.

“Menopause, the Musical”: “This isn’t retro; it’s just old,” Anita Gates writes in The New York Times of the eight-year-old musical that, despite corny songs and stereotypes, has been produced in 14 countries and in more than 200 American cities. “Who calls menopause the change of life? Edith Bunker, maybe, on the 1970s sitcom ‘All in the Family.’ And she would have been in her 80s by now. Women who read ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ in their youth don’t use euphemisms.”

The musical is underway at the South Orange Performing Arts Center, and while Gates is clearly not enamored with the premise, she is a fan of the current staging and cast: ”And thanks to a shift from self-deprecation to self-actualization (and a few nice costume changes), by the end, against all odds, the show is actually exhilarating.”

More swooning over Stephen Colbert ensued last night when “Our Bodies Ourselves” popped up on the screen during a feature on women’s health.

The topic? How Wyeth pharmaceutical company hired ghostwriters to write scientific papers that emphasized the benefits of taking hormone replacement therapy and de-emphasized the risks. More than 8,000 lawsuits have been filed against Wyeth by women who claim that the company’s hormone drugs caused them to develop illnesses.

The New York Times broke the news earlier this month. Natasha Singer writes:

That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.

The articles did not disclose Wyeth’s role in initiating and paying for the work. Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.

Here’s the video of last night’s “The Colbert Report” segment “Cheating Death With Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA.” The women’s health feature starts around 4:50.

Colbert offers this hilarious disclaimer about his credentials: He’s a doctor of fine arts, not a MD — “When I deliver a baby, it comes out through a Georgia O’Keefe painting” (must see). Then he launches into the Wyeth story:

Recently the scientific community was shocked to learn that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals hired ghostwriters to author 26 papers downplaying the risks of taking hormones for menopausal women.

This is shameful. Menopausal women?

What about pre and post menopausal women? We need to fabricate studies to make them take hormones, too, so every woman can enjoy the increased risks of heart disease, stroke and dementia. It’s what connects them as sisters. They can call it “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Hospital Gown.”

The story of these ghostwriters alerted ["Cheating Death" sponsor Prescott Pharmaceuticals] to one group of women that hasn’t yet been offered the benefits of hormone therapy: dead women.

Which is why Prescott pharmaceuticals is proud to present Vaxa-Geist — the first hormone replacement therapy for lady ghosts.

Why do you think they’re haunting us? They’re moody.

This hormone works great for ghosts of all ages, from little girl ghosts to old librarian ghosts to 3,000-year-old biblical ghosts. Talk about a hot flash.

Side effects of Vaxa-Geist may include hair blood, internal coolating and barry manilobes.

That’s it for cheating death …

OK, so maybe a little forced for Colbert. But still. It’s very cool to see the preeminent political satirist take on the exploitative manipulation of women’s health — and the fact he shows “Our Bodies Ourselves” while doing it makes me giddy.

Excess Pounds, Longer Life?: It wasn’t so long ago that we heard calorie restriction was linked to longevity. Now it seems the scales have shifted: A new report, published online in the journal Obesity, found that people who are moderately overweight live longer.

“[W]hy is it so hard to believe, even in the face of such evidence, that being fat’s not exactly a death sentence?” asks Washington Post columnist Jennifer LaRue Huget.

On another note, looking at the journal’s website, I wish access wasn’t restricted to an article touted on the homepage as an “important review” of weight discrimination and the stigma of obesity.  The “comprehensive update” features “sections on stigma-reduction research and legal initiatives to combat weight discrimination”; alas, only the citation is available without charge.

Plus: Also see Huget’s column on locally grown food. Miriam at Feministing has more on food politics.

Google AdWords Won’t Advertise Abortion: Lori Adelman of the International Women’s Health Coalition writes that as a result of policy changes, Google AdWords, the search engines’s advertising network, now prohibits ads for abortion services in more than a dozen countries, including Brazil, France, Mexico, Poland, and Taiwan.

“Google’s rationale behind disallowing ads in these particular countries, whose abortion laws range from conservative (Argentina, Brazil ) to more liberal by comparison (France, Italy), is shrouded in mystery: the spokeswoman deftly avoided answering my question about how the countries were chosen,” writes Adelman at Feministing. She includes an email exchange she had with a Google representative.

IWHC has an action alert over at its blog that encourages emailing Google.

Plus: Frances Kissling, a visiting scholar at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, wrote a provocative piece at Salon last month that asks whether it’s ever appropriate to say “no” to a woman seeking an abortion.

Nurse Stereotypes Are Bad for Health: Theresa Brown, an oncology nurse, writes about how popular culture misrepresents nurses and the work that they do. She recommends a new book — “Saving Lives: Why the Media’s Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk,” by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers.

“Saving Lives” is an important book because it so clearly delineates how ubiquitous negative portrayals of nursing are in today’s media, particularly three common stereotypes of nurses — the “Naughty Nurse,” the “Angel” and the “Battle Axe.” They argue that these images of nursing degrade the profession by portraying nurses as either vixens, saints or harridans, not college-educated health care workers with life and death responsibilities.

There’s a media advocacy website connected with the book: TruthAboutNursing.org.

Sex, Kids & Reality: Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner’s new book-in-progress — “The Family Bed: Is There Sex After Kids?” — focuses on the sex lives of parents after having children. As research for the book, they’re looking for folks to complete this survey on sex and parenthood.

When Wives Don’t Know: The New York Times Room for Debate Club brought together an all-female panel to discuss modern marriage. The central issue? Political wives who said they didn’t know about their spouses’ infidelities and Ruth Madoff, who said she didn’t know her husband of 50 years was practicing massive fraud.

Sales Outpace Data in Rush for Natural Remedies: “In 2002, when the initial findings of a National Institutes of Health study — known as the Women’s Health Initiative project — suggested that women on conventional hormone therapy were at greater risk for heart disease, cancer, stroke and blood clotting, the market for alternative treatments soared,” writes Camille Sweeney at The New York Times.

“There are now more than 500 products that purport to relieve symptoms associated with menopause, including capsules, tablets, teas, gels and creams. In the United States, the dietary supplement market associated with menopause has grown to $337 million in 2007 (the last year tabulated) from $211 million in 1999, according to the Nutrition Business Journal, a trade publication.”

“Beauty” Aces Talent at Wimbledon: Anyone else watch women’s tennis at Wimbledon last week? Read how looks came under consideration in determining which matches were played in the premiere Centre Court. Slender white women with long hair clearly had the advantage.

What Would Buffy Do?: See what happens when our favorite heroine takes on Edward from “Twilight” in a mash-up not to be missed.

“My re-imagined story was specifically constructed as a response to Edward, and what his behavior represents in our larger social context for both men and women,” creator Jonathan McIntosh explains in a blog post at Women in Media & News. He continues:

More than just a showdown between The Slayer and the Sparkly Vampire, it’s also a humorous visualization of the metaphorical battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century. [...]

In the end the only reasonable response was to have Buffy stake Edward — not because she didn’t find him sexy, not because he was too sensitive or too eager to share his feelings — but simply because he was possessive, manipulative, and stalkery.

MTV’s new documentary series “16 & Pregnant” makes its debut Thursday, June 18, at 10 p.m. (EST).  The episodes are also available online.

I watched some of episode one; Maci, the mom shown here with her boyfriend, Ryan, and their son, Bentley, is amazing. She basically gives up everything to take on this new responsibility, with little help from Ryan. I was a bit surprised, though, to read her update describing her life now in far more upbeat terms. I’m thrilled for her, of course, but I do wonder if some teenage viewers will be conflicted.

Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik highly recommends the series and praises the realism: “Parents who don’t go out of their way to see or record this six-week series of profiles of pregnant teenagers are making a big mistake. If you have no other involvement in your kids’ media lives, make them see this.”

Plus: When it comes to sex-ed, who’s the voice of reason?

NOW’s Future: The 2009 National NOW Conference kicks off June 19 in Indianapolis. At issue is who will replace current NOW President Kim Gandy, who is stepping down after eight years: Latifa Lyles, a 33-year-old black woman who has been one of Gandy’s three vice presidents, or Terry O’Neill, 56, a white activist who was NOW’s vice president for membership from 2001 to 2005.

Feministing’s Jessica Valenti is quoted in this Associated Press story on the election and NOW’s generational divide.

Plus: I don’t think I’ve linked yet to Katha Pollitt’s excellent piece in The Nation on feminism’s false waves. It begins:

Can we please stop talking about feminism as if it is mothers and daughters fighting about clothes? Second wave: you’re going out in that? Third wave: just drink your herbal tea and leave me alone! Media commentators love to reduce everything about women to catfights about sex, so it’s not surprising that this belittling and historically inaccurate way of looking at the women’s movement — angry prudes versus drunken sluts — has recently taken on new life, including among feminists.

Losing Celebrity Weight Battles: When famous dieters like Kirstie Alley or Oprah Winfrey talk about being “disgusted” with their bodies, the comments have an effect beyond selling magazines.

“Kirstie looks the same as me, to the inch, height and weight,” Emily Schaibly Greene, 29, recently told The New York Times. “It took me a long time to get there, but I’m feeling good with how I look. But it’s difficult to keep liking the way I look when I’m reading that it’s gross.”

Lesley Kinzel, who writes for the blog Fatshionista, said, “When you have famous people turning their weight tribulations into mass-media extravaganzas, they’re contributing to a culture where passing comments on strangers’ bodies is considered O.K.”

Plus: Nia Vardalos, who rose to fame after starring in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” says her recent weight loss is all people want to talk about these days, pushing aside her personal and professional achievements. Her column is awesome.

And if you haven’t yet bought “Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere,” go. Author Kate Harding – founder of Shapely Prose and contributor to Broadsheet — is still on the book tour this month and is looking forward to speaking at colleges in the fall. 

Summer Reading List: From Women’s eNews: From sensational memoirs to serious sociology, check out what women are writing about and the prizes they’ve been snapping up so far in 2009. Sarah Seltzer has the goods.

Women’s Health Clinic to Close: The University of Chicago Medical Center is closing its women’s health clinic, an essential community health resource, at the end of the month. Ironically, this is being done under the Medical Center’s Urban Health Initiative; U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush has called for a congressional investigation into whether the Medical Center has engaged in “patient dumping” by steering the poor to other health facilities.

“Medical center executives have said the steep downturn in the economy has forced them to trim $100 million from the hospital’s budget to maintain running a prestigious hospital, research center and medical school. They also have said the Women’s Health Center, which cares for thousands of Medicaid patients, is a money loser,” reported the Chicago Tribune last month, in a story on protests against the closing.

Plus: While looking up information about the closing, I came across a 2008 New York Times story on Michelle Obama, who at that time was on leave from her job as vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Stories like this made me wonder what she could/would have done about the closing:

When the human papillomavirus vaccine, which can prevent cervical cancer, became available, researchers proposed approaching local school principals about enlisting black teenage girls as research subjects.

Obama stopped that. The prospect of white doctors performing a trial with black teenage girls summoned the specter of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the mid-20th century, when white doctors let hundreds of black men go untreated to study the disease.

Too Poor to Make the News: Over on The New York Times op-ed page, Barbara Ehrenreich has written the first in a series on how the recession affects people who don’t neatly fit the downwardly mobile narrative: the already poor.

“This demographic, the working poor, have already been living in an economic depression of their own,” writes Ehrenreich. “From their point of view ‘the economy,’ as a shared condition, is a fiction.” She continues:

The deprivations of the formerly affluent Nouveau Poor are real enough, but the situation of the already poor suggests that they do not necessarily presage a greener, more harmonious future with a flatter distribution of wealth. There are no data yet on the effects of the recession on measures of inequality, but historically the effect of downturns is to increase, not decrease, class polarization.

The recession of the ’80s transformed the working class into the working poor, as manufacturing jobs fled to the third world, forcing American workers into the low-paying service and retail sector. The current recession is knocking the working poor down another notch — from low-wage employment and inadequate housing toward erratic employment and no housing at all. Comfortable people have long imagined that American poverty is far more luxurious than the third world variety, but the difference is rapidly narrowing.

Health Care & the Arts: NPR interviews Anna Deveare Smith about her show “Let Me Down Easy,” which is based on interviews with doctors and patients (previously discussed here). Her newest role: artist in residence at the Center for American Progress, which Smith will use as a perch for studying changes in Washington. Smith also plays a doctor in the new Showtime series “Nurse Jackie.”

Speaking of “Nurse Jackie,” David Bauder of the Associated Press notes that the ethically challenged nurse at the head of the show (wonderfully played by Edie Falco) has appalled some nurses — but is that a bad thing for Showtime? Well, no.

Apologies from California: I meant to post this next one when it first came out, but I still think it’s amusing — San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford would like you to know California is really, really sorry about the whole Prop 8 thing.

Meanwhile, tony Greenwich, Conn., has become wedding central for same-sex New York couples who no longer have to drive as far as Massachussetts. California sure could have used money spent on wedding bliss.

A recent post on the end of “ER” sparked a discussion about medical accuracy and the portrayal of nurses. Two new television series premiering next month are likely to add to the debate.

Edie Falco (Carmela on “The Sopranos”) stars in Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie.” She plays a nurse at a New York City hospital who manages her work and domestic chaos with prescription pain medication. The series debuts Monday, June 8. Here’s a look at the trailer:

Showtime is also playing up wacky hospital stories told by nurses.

The second series is “Hawthorne,” which debuts June 16 on TNT. Jada Pinkett Smith plays a nurse (Christina Hawthorne) who would likely bust nurse Jackie and turn her in for misconduct.

Smith’s chacter is described as “a hero who acts out of good intentions, even if she occasionally violates hospital policy or protocol in the process. But being there for her patients means she isn’t always there for herself and her daughter. She is trying to move on after her husband’s death, but she hasn’t really had time to grieve because of her work duties.”

Instead of featuring nurses telling their most outrageous stories, TNT is taking a feel-good approach, inviting viewers to nominate their nurse heroes and offering the chance to win a trip to visit the L.A. set of “Hawthorne” — nurses only may enter to win.

The network is also playing up “Hawthorne” as the latest in a string of TNT series featuring “strong, complex female characters” — the others being “The Closer,” starring Kyra Sedgwick as a deputy police chief, and “Saving Grace,” which stars Holly Hunter as a police detective.

Hospitals, police dramas … the characters may change, but the themes remain the same.

Bea Arthur, known best for her roles as Maude Findlay in the television situation comedy “Maude” and Dorothy Zbornak in “The Golden Girls,” and for her earlier stage work, died Saturday at the age of 86. The cause was cancer, a family spokesperson said.

“Maude,” an off-shoot of “All in the Family,” aired from  1972 to 1978. Calling it groundbreaking is not hyperbole, as this excerpt from the Museum of Broadcast Communications demonstrates:

Like many of [Norman] Lear’s productions, “Maude” was a character-centered sitcom. Maude Findlay was opinionated like Archie Bunker, but her politics and class position were completely different. Strong-willed, intelligent and articulate, the liberal progressive Maude spoke out on issues raised less openly on Lear’s highly successful “All in the Family.” While questions of race, class and gender politics reverberated throughout both, certain specific issues, like menopause, birth control and abortion were more openly confronted on “Maude.”

In a two-part episode that ran early in the series, the 47-year-old Maude finds out that she’s pregnant and decides, with her husband Walter, that she would have an abortion which, had just been made legal in New York state. Part two of the double episode also dealt with men and birth control as Walter considers getting a vasectomy. Thousands of viewers wrote letters in protest of the episode because of the abortion issue.

“It was a little slice of realism rarely seen today, when the option of abortion is so often pushed again into the virtual back room and rarely mentioned in pop culture; the movie ‘Knocked Up’, for example, uses the euphemism ‘rhymes with smashmortion’ rather than mention this — the most common women’s surgical procedure — by name,” writes Gloria Feldt.

Feldt adds that with her next television hit, “The Golden Girls,” “Arthur had a chance to open up for public discussion yet one more previously off-limits topic: aging, especially the issues women face aging in a youth-oriented culture.”

Jill Miller Zimon has a round-up of links and “Maude” lyrics. This scene from “Maude” gives you an idea of how television once dealt directly with abortion:

The viewers’ response surprised Arthur.

“The reaction really knocked me for a loop,” she told The New York Times in 1978. “I really hadn’t thought about the abortion issue one way or the other. The only thing we concerned ourselves with was: Was the show good? We thought we did it brilliantly; we were so very proud of not copping out with it.”

“I think we made television a little more adult,” Arthur also said. “I really do.”