A “Too-Tall” Medical Tale: Christine Cosgrove, co-author with Susan Cohen of the new book “Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height,” wrote a great piece in the L.A. Times about the history of doctors prescribing DES, a synthetic drug that acts like estrogen, to girls to stunt their growth.

Why? Because decades ago, “if a girl were heading toward 5 feet 8 inches, or, horrors, 5 feet 10 inches, not only would she have trouble finding clothes that fit, she’d have a hard time finding a husband. And in the days when there were few options besides marriage and children for women, well, that left an old maid.”

Thousands of girls, including Cosgrove, took the pills. Some have experienced myriad health problems, and an Australian study found a significant decrease in fertility among those who were treated.

Check out more about the book. Here’s an interview with the authors.

America’s Back — Now What?: Linda Hirshman and Gloria Feldt wrote a commentary on the significance of the U.N Cairo + 15 meeting:

On March 31, State Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration, Margaret Pollack, told delegates to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, meeting in New York, that America was back.

Marking a 180 degree turnaround from Bush administration policies that fought international efforts to enable people to control their own reproductive fate, the U.S. will once again defend the “human rights and fundamental freedoms of women” and support “universal access to sexual and reproductive health.” [...]

The global sigh of relief was palpable. For with all its money and diplomatic resources, the U.S. is the 10,000 gorilla in international reproductive policy. Now the question is, while this is certainly change we can believe in, is it all the change we need?

Film Critics Write Off Rape: Tiger Beatdown has a great analysis of the new Seth Rogen film, “Observe & Report,” and the reviews that give a pass to the rape scene. At least New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis will restore your faith. Rachel points to more links.

Why Women Stay: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has written the must-read post of all must-read posts about why women stay in abusive relationships. As one commenter put it, “If I always had a hilzoy around to explain it, I think I could understand every human phenomenon in the world.”

Johns Hopkins Bans Free Drug Samples, Gifts to Doctors: “Johns Hopkins is the latest big name in health care to try to restrict doctors’ ties to the drug and device industries,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Its new policy ‘on interaction with industry’ bans free drug samples and says doctors can’t participate in consulting gigs in which they’re essentially paid for not doing anything.”

Plus: Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley asked a nonprofit mental health organization about its funding as part of his investigation into drug company influence, reports Bloomberg.

Everybody Hurts Sometimes: “Long lines come up frequently in the American healthcare discussion, the symbol of all that is to be feared about a government-run system,” writes Ezra Klein on the L.A. Times op-ed page.

And it’s true that in Canada and Britain, the two countries most often cited in discussions of what nationalized healthcare might mean, some patients report having to wait months for some elective treatments. Sometimes.

But we’ve got waiting lines too — along with 50 million uninsured and a system that costs more than twice as much per person as that of any other country. We’ve just managed to hide our lines through clever statistical gimmickry.

Debate Over Digital Health Records: The Obama administration maintains health information technology is as an essential, cost-savings component of health care reform and has set a goal for every American to have an electronic health record by 2014. But critics fear the money to implement the system will be wasted if doctors and hospitals can’t share information, reports USA Today.

“We could head for a techno-Katrina,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. “I do not want to do that, where we do a dollar dump, and at the end of the day, we have a lot of microchips floating around.”

Plus: Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology David Blumenthal discusses the health IT provisions of the federal economic stimulus package — collectively called HITECH in the law. Read “Stimulating the Adoption of Health Information Technology.”

Vitamin Sales Up as Economy Falters: “Sales of vitamins and nutritional supplements, which have grown consistently for years, have surged in recent months, rising as the stock market has fallen,” writes Alex Williams in The New York Times. “People are clearly cutting back on many items, from bread and milk to designer jeans and flat-screen televisions, but they are stocking up on pills that they think can spare them expensive doctor visits.”

My Peeps: We end on a colorful note — Tis the season of the peeps. The Washington Post displays its 40 finalists here; don’t miss Peep/Tuck and Thelma and Louise: Peeps on the Run.

Here, first place winner Melissa Harvey discusses her gorgeous interpretation of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” painting.

The winner of the Chicago Tribune contest created an imaginative Wizard of Peeps. And for political junkies, check out this portrayal, at TwinCities.com, of the Minnesota U.S. Senate Trial between Al Franken and Norm Coleman.

Reading List: Anna Clark interviews Michelle Goldberg, author of “The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World,” at Bitch magazine (and happy birthday to Anna’s blog, Isak!).

Kathryn Joyce, author of “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement,”  talks with Religion Dispatches. An excerpt of her book can be read here.

Planting a Future: Melissa Harris Lacewell digs through the meaning of Michelle Obama planting the new White House vegetable garden. More historians, authors and gardeners weigh in at the Washington Post.

Plus: Sharkfu on nutrition, cost and Alice Waters; Mark Bittman on eating healthy, organic or not.

Dealing with the Recession: Over at Writes Like She Talks, Jill Miller Zimon put together a list of articles that provide perspective on the recession, job loss and the economic impact on women. At Women’s eNews, Mimi Abramovitz explains three new rules about jobless benefits in the stimulus package that will help women and correct a major gender bias.

Pregnant? Here’s a Pink Slip: “Last year the number of pregnancy-based discrimination charges filed with the E.E.O.C. was up nearly 50 percent from a decade earlier, to a total of 6,285. That number seems likely to rise even higher this year,” writes Lesley Alerman in The New York Times.

“Some employers are using the economy as a pretense for laying off just one person,” said Elizabeth Grossman, a lawyer for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “And very often that person is pregnant or the oldest employee on staff. The economy may be the legitimate cause — or there may be discrimination.”

Tenn. Senate Passes Abortion Amendment: The Tennessee Senate passed a constitutional amendment that states in part, “nothing in Constitution of Tennessee secures or protects right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion.”

Rachel writes: “Supporters keep insisting that the bill does not make abortion illegal, while not addressing the fact that if this ultimately succeeds (there are several more steps for this Constitutional amendment), it makes room for the numerous restrictions often supported by anti-choice folks — such as waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, required ‘informed consent’ scripts that are not medically accurate, and so on. It also makes room for an abortion ban in the event that national protections vanish.”

Meanwhile, “Illinois could be on the verge of passing one of the most progressive reproductive health bills, the Reproductive Health and Access Act, any state has seen in a long time,” writes Veronica Arreoloa. Here are the groups supporting  the bill. If you’re a resident of Illinois, contact your legislator and voice your support.

Cost of Domestic Abuse: Women who are abused by their partners spent 42 percent more on healthcare per year than non-abused women, according to a long-term study of more than 3,000 women published online in the journal Health Services Research.  The study, summarized in this press release, also found that the increased costs don’t end when the abuse does. Women who suffered physical abuse five or more years earlier still spent 19 percent more per year on health care than women who were never abused.

Recognition for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: “We are living in a new era for persons with disabilities,’ writes Myra Kovary at On the Issues Magazine. The story details the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations and has been signed by 50 nations so far.  The U.S. has yet to sign it, but President Barack Obama has said he will do so.

Facts of Life: Sarah Seltzer praises “the sex talk” on one of my favorite television shows, “Friday Night Lights,” and compares it to a conversation from over a decade ago on “My So-Called Life.”

Overlooking Evidence: “When it comes to breast cancer, why is it so hard to get the most influential media to pay attention to the possibility that, in addition to better-understood risks, unnatural substances entering women’s bodies might also be a factor?” That’s the million-dollar question in this Fair! analysis on the surprising dearth of news coverage on environmental hazards and breast cancer. An excellent report by Miranda Spencer.

Skimping on Care: More than a third of people surveyed have skipped medical check-ups or dental visits over the past year due to concern over health care costs, and 27 percent have put off getting needed health care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s first health care tracking poll of 2009.

Supreme Court: No Legal Shield in Drug Labeling: The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that people injured by drugs can sue the drug manufacturer in state courts, even if the drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

“The ruling could have significant implications beyond drug manufacturing,” writes Adam Liptak at The New York Times. “Many companies have sought tighter federal regulation in recent years in part to shield themselves from litigation.”

The case involved a Vermont woman, a musician, whose arm had to be amputated following an injection of the anti-nausea drug Phenergan. Levine sued the drug maker Wyeth because Wyeth had not changed the label indicating that one method of administering the drug had a small risk of error which caused irreversible gangrene. Nina Totenberg did a good report on the ruling. The NPR link also includes excerpts from the oral arguments heard last November.

Sunshine State Keeps Teens in the Dark: The Healthy Teens Campaign of Florida and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) have released a report on failed abstinence-only sex education programs in Florida’s public schools: “Sex Education in the Sunshine State: How Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Are Keeping Florida’s Youth in the Dark” (pdf).

“[O]ur research has exposed both the state’s appalling indicators of poor outcomes for young people and the equally appalling nature of how abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have become pervasive throughout the state,” writes Adrienne Kimmell at RH Reality Check.

Him/Her/They: Elizabeth Landau at CNN reports on the history of the search for gender-neutral pronouns, an issue that has recently been taken up on Twitter. An interesting story.

On the Issues: Good reads in the On the Issues Magazine cafe, including Diana Whitten‘s look at Women on Waves, a Dutch organization that provides on-ship abortions in international waters for women from countries where it is illegal. Women on Waves recently won an important victory in the European Court of Human Rights. And don’t forget to check out the winter issue, which features stories on topics from ratifying CEDAW to Second Life.

Moving Reproductive Services Off-Site (Six Feet Away): From Women’s eNews: For more than a decade, a hospital merger in New York state was held up by abortion politics. Last week, community activists gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking their hard-fought compromise. Rebecca Harshbarger reports.

Plus: Emily Douglas points to this Albany Times Union op-ed on the implications of a possible merger between two secular hospitals and one religious hospital in Rensselaer County, New York. The merger raises questions about reproductive health care for patients and employee health insurance benefits, since Catholic directives prohibit coverage for contraception.

In Translation: Over at Sociological Images, a blog sponsored by the American Sociological Association, there’s been some debate over the English and Spanish versions of a pamphlet for pregnant women offered by Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser provides a response.

The Economic Future and Women’s Roles: The Chicago Foundation for Women looks at how the stimulus package affects women’s economic security.

Teaching Domestic Violence Victims Safe Use of Technology: Via this press release, I learned about a Washington state program designed to help victims of domestic violence by increasing their knowledge of how to use technology safely.

“Domestic violence is built around control, not anger, and an abusive partner often limits a woman’s access to information and support. Monitoring computer activity is one of many ways to control a spouse,” said Jerry Finn, a University of Washington Tacoma professor of social work who also evaluates the effectiveness of human services programs.

The training covers how to prevent such things as identity theft; concealing browser history; how to be safe in a chat room; how to set up an e-mail account without using a real name; and how to prevent being followed with a GPS device. What a smart idea.

Welcome Particle, Wave, Astarte and …: To apologize for the late Double Dose, I offer some cute overload, via feminist poet and performance artist Diana Tigerlily, who also raises goats.

Meet the newest ones — five in all, if my counting is correct. Makes me think two dogs and two cats may not be enough : )

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

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

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

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

Read more analysis from Vanessa Merton at Feminist Law Professors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jaclyn Friedman, co-editor of “Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape” (and also the organizing force behind WAM!) is heading to the Windy City for two public appearances on Thursday, Feb. 19.

First, Friedman and book contributor Hazel Cedar/Troost will speak at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. Contributor Lee Jacob Riggs will join them Thursday night at Women & Children First bookstore for a reading and discussion about fighting sexual assault while celebrating women’s sexual agency. I’ll be there with bells on.

For a closer look at some of the topics the book covers, check out our interview with contributors Lisa Jervis and Brad Perry.

There are two stops left on the “Yes Means Yes” virtual book tour. Tomorrow, Radical Doula hosts a Q&A with Hazel/Cedar Troos. On Friday, Feministe hosts the grand finale conversation with Rachel Kramer Bussel, Toni Amato, Javacia Harris, Kate Harding, Stacey May Fowles, Hanne Blank & Heather Corinna. You can also keep up with ongoing coversations inspired by the book at the “Yes Means Yes” blog.

Today we’re pleased to present an interview with two outstanding contributors to “Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape,” a collection of essays recently published by Seal Press.

Lisa Jervis, the founding editor and publisher of Bitch magazine, and Brad Perry, sexual violence prevention coordinator at the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, take on popular perceptions of rape and what needs to be done to transform regressive attitudes toward sexual violence — in both the media and among young men.

In “An Old Enemy in a New Outfit: How Date Rape Became Gray Rape and Why it Matters,” Jervis deconstructs the latest blame-the-victim terminology. Perry’s essay, “Hooking Up With Healthy Sexuality: The Lessons Boys Learn (and Don’t Learn) About Sexuality, and Why a Sex-Positive Rape Prevention Program Can Benefit Everyone Involved,” revisits advice Perry received as a teenager and the more enlightened strategies he has encountered in his work.

Ultimately, they grapple with how to create an atmosphere for a healthy and empowering sexual experience for both women and men.

Please add your thoughts on the discussion, or your questions for Lisa or Brad, in the comments. And don’t miss the next stop on the “Yes Means Yes” virtual book tour: a live chat on Feb. 9 at Shakesville with co-editor Jaclyn Friedman.

Our Bodies, Our Blog: What is the allure of so-called “gray rape” for anti-feminists? How does it help serve a conservative agenda?

Lisa Jervis: The construct of gray rape does two things: it minimizes rape, seeks to make it seem like less of a big deal — if it was a “gray area,” can it really be that bad? — and it also justifies victim-blaming and its close friend, slut-shaming. This actually serves anti-feminists in two really different ways, though they’re both pretty much classics of sexism and misogyny.

The minimizing encourages an attitude of, “What are all those angry women complaining about now?”; and almost every feminist issue has been minimized at some point over the history of the struggle for gender equality.

The victim-blaming part is even more disturbing, as it updates and revitalizes one of the biggest obstacles to transforming rape culture. And it’s particularly insidious because of how it cultivates self-doubt and self-blame even more than previous victim-blaming discourses have. And, especially when paired with slut-shaming — which makes women and girls feel bad about the existence of a strong sex drive and any entitlement they might feel to (gasp!) satisfy their desires — it serves as an attempt to keep a tight cultural lid on women’s sexuality. It’s an updated and vastly more complex version of “good girls don’t.”

OBOB: Brad, how has the notion of “gray rape” complicated your teachings?

Brad Perry: In my experience, the attitude about acquaintance rape (which is what the term “gray rape” is usually referring to) amongst most policy makers, many students, and a good chunk of the general public has not changed drastically since it first entered the public’s awareness 20 years ago. There has been some progress in getting people to understand that usurping another person’s sexual autonomy is rape under any circumstances, but old mindsets die hard.

In that context, the gray rape thing just seems like more of the same but with a new name — as Lisa eloquently discusses in her essay. The only way my work has been complicated by the notion of “gray rape” is that now people have a convenient label. I don’t think it’s necessarily changed many people’s minds on whether or not to take acquaintance rape seriously — the people who are going to deny it are usually going to find a reason to do so until something happens to change their mind — but it has given those folks some hip new contemporary language to dismiss acquaintance rape.

We’re a country found by patriarchal religious fanatics who were (among other things) obsessed with denying human sexuality, so it’s not at all surprising to me that we keep revisiting the issue of social control over women’s sexualities. That’s not too say I think we should throw our hands up and say, “Oh, well” — in order to remember how much history we have to overcome so that we don’t lose our minds trying to make progress.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nurse Pulls IUD Out of Patient; Says IUD Are a Type of Abortion: Trying to understand the logic of why someone against abortion would remove a contraceptive device will hurt your head — trust me. But do read the court story nicely summarized by Tracy Clark-Flory. Understandably, the patient is suing nurse practitioner Sylvia Olona and Presbyterian Medical Services Rio Rancho Family Health Center (Albuquerque, N.M.).

Heroes of the Week: Writing at Women’s eNews, Kristin Bender reports on Teens for Safe Cosmetics, which last year endorsed a small body care product line that promises to keep suspicious chemicals off adolescents’ skin. Sales figures through the end of December totaled $150,000, and the group, which has active chapters in the San Francisco Bay area and New York, plans to add more products this year.

The New, Improved Whitehouse.gov: The new White House website is worth a visit. In addition to the information you’d expect to find on President Obama’s cabinet and White House history, this is the first administration to feature a blog. And the agenda includes a women’s section that addresses healthcare, economic security and gender equity.

Medical Debt a Growing Worry: The problem of medical debt is “climbing the income scale, affecting not just the poor or the uninsured,” writes Sandra G. Boodman of Kaiser Health News. These are the latest numbers:

Experts define the underinsured as those forced to spend at least 10 percent of their income on health care, excluding premiums. But the nonprofit Center for Studying Health System Change found recently that financial pressures on families increase sharply when out-of-pocket spending on medical bills exceeds 2.5 percent of family income. New York’s Commonwealth Fund has reported that 72 million adults under age 65 had problems paying medical bills or were paying off medical debt in 2007, up from 58 million in 2005. Many had insurance, and 39 percent said they had exhausted their savings paying for health care.

Additional stories on healthcare costs are available here, here and here — along with tips and resources for managing medical debt.

Plus: The New York Times reports that Medicaid roles are surging due to the recession and employees losing their health coverage along with their jobs. For many states it’s become an unmanageable burden.

Senate Passes Wage Discrimination Bill: The Senate passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this week by a vote of 61-36 (here’s the vote breakdown). When the Senate voted on similar legislation in April, it failed by two votes.

“We’ve had an enormous victory,” said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), a main sponsor. All 16 female senators voted in favor. The legislation now goes back to the House for reconciliation before being sent to President Obama, who is expected to sign the bill.

Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: “In the face of prominent leaders who claim helplessness in the face of biblical tradition, [Christian domestic violence survivor and advocate Jocelyn] Andersen and a small but growing cadre of like-minded abuse survivors are fighting this established conservative wisdom on domestic violence not with secular or feminist domestic violence tactics, but with new theological arguments arguing for abused wives’ rights within a biblically literalist, and in some cases even complementarian, framework,” writes Kathryn Joyce in this piece at Religion Dispatches.

Joyce has a book coming out next month titled “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.”

What Do Women Want?: The New York Times Sunday Magazine tackles the question via this cover story, summed up as: “A new generation of postfeminist sexologists is trying to discover what ignites female desire.” I haven’t read the piece yet, but I skimmed the comments. This response prompted a “hell, yeah.”

Recent stories and new government statistics provide an alarming snapshot of violence against adolescent girls and women.

The 2007 National Crime Victimization Survey, which was made public in December, shows domestic violence increased by 42 percent and sexual violence by 25 percent over 2005 figures.

Human Rights Watch reports that the survey indicates that at least 248,300 individuals were raped or sexually assaulted in 2007. In 2005 the figure was 190,600. The projected number of violent crimes against women committed by intimate partners increased from 389,100 in 2005 to 554,260 in 2007. The survey is conducted every two years.

The survey’s authors say the new numbers reflect more accurate methodology, not an increase in gender-based violence. Regardless, a committed response to the epidemic of violence against women is long overdue.

HRW offers some specific suggestions for the new Obama administration:

• The Obama administration should appoint a special adviser on violence against women in the US;
• Congress should restore full funding to the Office on Violence Against Women;
• The Department of Justice, through the National Institute of Justice, should authorize comprehensive studies that more accurately track sexual and domestic violence in the US, especially among individuals who are least likely to be surveyed by the National Crime Victimization Survey;
• Congress should increase funding for sexual and domestic violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs;
• Congress should amend the federal Debbie Smith Act, a grant program designed to eliminate the rape kit backlog, but that states can and have used for other kinds of DNA backlogs;
• The US should ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to prevent, protect against, and punish violence against women.

In other news, The New York Times on Sunday reported on increased efforts to identify the warning signs of dangerous dating behavior among teenagers and young adults.

“We are identifying teen dating abuse and violence more than ever,” said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis, who does research on abuse in teenage dating relationships.

The story references a number of state initiatives, some prompted by high-profile murders:

Texas recently adopted a law that requires school districts to define dating violence in school safety codes, after the 2003 stabbing death of Ortralla Mosley, 15, in a hallway of her Austin high school and the shooting death of Jennifer Ann Crecente, 18, two years ago. Rhode Island in 2007 adopted the Lindsay Ann Burke Act — prompted by the murder of a young woman by a former boyfriend — requiring school districts to teach students in grades 7 through 12 about dating abuse.

New York recently expanded its domestic violence law to allow victims, including teenagers in dating relationships, to obtain a restraining order against an abuser in family court rather than having to seek help from the criminal justice system. Legislators were moved to act after a survey by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene showed that dating violence had risen by more than 40 percent since 1999, when the department began asking students about the problem.

Although there are no definitive national studies on the prevalence of abuse in adolescent relationships, public health research indicates that the rate of such abusive relationships has hovered around 10 percent. Experts say the abuse appears to be increasing as more harassment, name-calling and ridicule takes place among teenagers on the Internet and by cellphone.

The story also notes that calls to the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline (1-866-331-9474) and visits to its website, loveisrespect.org, doubled in November over the previous month. The help line was launched in November 2007.

Necessary Medicine?: “President-elect Barack Obama placed a heavy bet last week that the recession-wracked country he is about to inherit has finally reached its tipping point on health care,” writes Kevin Sack at The New York Times.

It might seem counterintuitive to gamble that political and economic forces would converge at such a low point after more than half a century of failure. The Treasury has never been so overcommitted, and providing “affordable, accessible health care for every single American,” as Mr. Obama describes his goal, would require substantial resources up front.

But Mr. Obama, like others, sees political opportunity in the country’s economic distress, and he threw in last week with those who argue that the financial crisis has only made it more imperative to remake the health delivery system — that, in fact, economic recovery depends on it.

Plus: Go read “Ready or Not: Obama Transition Team Publishes Reproductive Health Community’s Agenda,” by Emily Douglas at RH Reality Check, and then check out the document on advancing reproductive rights and health at Change.gov. It’s pretty amazing that such an open conversation is taking place.

And, while you’re there, you can sign up to lead a health care discussion in your neighborhood.

U.S. Health Stagnates for Fourth Year in a Row: During the 1990s, health improved at an average rate of 1.5 percent per year, but improvements against national health measurements have remained flat for the last four years, according to the recently released “America’s Health Rankings.” The report cites smoking, obesity and the uninsured are the nation’s three most critical challenges. Vermont ranks as the healthiest state; Louisiana is the least healthiest.

Vatican Issues Instruction on Bioethics: “The Vatican issued its most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in more than 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research,” reports The New York Times. The picture is worth 1,000 Hail Mary’s (click on the pic to see the full-size image at the NYT).

Kelly Hills has read the full document and shares her thoughts at Women’s Bioethics Blog:

Reading the Dignitatis Personae is an exercise in patience and self-control; it’s hard to resist the urge to go wake someone up to have someone to discuss such wince-inducing logic as this: This ethical principle, [ed- that life begins at conceptions] which reason is capable of recognizing as true and in conformity with the natural moral law, should be the basis for all legislation in this area.

I can tell you with full certainty that such ‘reasoning’ (a term I use loosely) would fail a philosophy 101 test. But if you can get through the document, you’ll learn that the fresh-off-the-newstands update to Catholicism forbids any reproductive act that does not result in fertilization and implantation happening as a result of the sexual act between a married couple. Or put more simply: if the technology assists in intra-uterine conception, YAY! If conception occurs outside the uterus, BOO!

Read the full analysis here.

Why Can’t a Kiss Just be a Kiss: “We live comfortably, if strangely, in a pseudo-Sapphic era in which seemingly every college woman with a MySpace page has kissed another girl for the camera; but for men who kiss men, it’s still the final frontier,” writes Hank Steuver in the Washington Post. A good look at some recent films, including “Milk.”

OBOS Reference of the Week: A Harvard grad (’82) remarks at a sex talk put on by Harvard’s Peer Contraceptive Counselors: “This wouldn’t have happened 10 to 15 years ago. Except for ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves” — we would steal our girlfriends’ copies.”

Beyond 16 Days: Feminist Peace Network wraps up 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence with a look at some excellent campaigns, including Madre’s 16 Days/16 Entries (read them in the violence against women section).

Hidden Victims of Abuse: “Women in the United States with disabilities are significantly more likely to suffer from domestic violence than are other women,” writes Annemarie Taddeucci at Women’s eNews, adding that “many battered women’s resources are not accessible to people with disabilities. Safe havens and the legal system may not be equipped to deal with a victim who is deaf or cognitively impaired, for example.”

The Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women will meet in Nashville, Tenn., Dec. 16-17 to discuss improving coordination between disability-service providers and institutions involved with domestic violence, including battered women’s shelters, the police and the courts.

Wombs for Rent: Jill at Feministe probes the complexities of Alex Kuczynski’s magazine story about surrogacy, “Her Body, My Baby. Many of the commenters offer similarly thoughtful responses. Also see this response by NYT public editor Clark Hoyt.

Because It’s That Time of Year …: Time Magazine is featuring the Top 10 of Everything 2008, including the Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs. Or you could just skip right to the Top 10 Awkward Moments or Top 10 Fleeting Celebrities.

Her Body, My Baby: Here’s an article sure to spark some discussion about class, privilege and maternal desire. Writing in the Sunday New York Times, Alex Kuczynski explains why – and how — she chose a surrogate mother and describes the relationship that developed between them.

Feminist Lens on Adoption: More on reproductive rights and who has access to those rights … Katie Leo, who was adopted from Korea, writes in Minnesota Women’s Press that her personal story and research on adoption inform her perspective on international adoption: “Could I call myself a feminist and social justice advocate and still adopt? I realized that for me, the answer was no.”

What is Terror for Women?: The fall issue of On the Issues magazine is about violence against women in all its forms. Included are stories on how anti-immigrant fervor translates to terror for women; the violence and stigma that continue to drain abortion patients and providers; and the dangers of giving birth in Somaliland, where maternal mortality rates are high and access to safe care is limited.

There are some inspirational stories as well. Ariel Doughtery looks at how women are using media to tell their own stories and as a vehicle for finding peace and reconciliation.

“To counteract these war horrors, media women armed with video cameras and other media tools have taken up the struggle to bring the women’s stories to larger audiences. They serve as a means of healing, and also as witnesses to the crimes against women,” writes Doughtery.

Plus: Jessica E. Slavin has thoughts about violence against trafficked women, specifically the weaknesses in, and under-utilization of, the T visa program, which was created to provide protection for victims of human trafficking.

Woman Sues Radio Station After “Prize Date” Assaults Her: “A Lake County woman who won a date with a man a radio station called a ‘great’ catch is suing the station for promoting the man, who had a criminal history and allegedly sexually assaulted her on the date she won,” reports the Chicago Tribune. Here’s more from the Daily Herald.

According to the civil suit, Travis Harvey, 46, drugged and raped the 23-year-old woman. Harvey didn’t confess to the rape, but last week pleaded guilty to a criminal sexual abuse charge last week in connection with the assault. He received 24 months probation. According to the woman’s attorney, she didn’t seek medical attention right away so there was no physical evidence to pursue more serious charges.

It’s amazing that the radio station didn’t do a basic background check of Harvey, who had prior felony and misdemeanor convictions for violating domestic violence orders of protection, according to the civil suit. As one friend put it, it’s also amazing that Harvey initiated the contest himself by emailing the station for help getting a date. Hope no one else gets the idea.

A Closer Look at the Healthiest Cities: CDC survey results put Burlington, Vt., at the top of the list of healthiest cities, but a number of other cities are statistically tied for the honor. This L.A. Times story looks at the rankings, as well as the regions where pressure to be thin is tied to looking good (think California) and where there’s a culture of being active (think Boulder, Colo.).

Rate of New Cancer Cases Declines: The rate of new cancer cases is on the decline among Americans for the first time. Less smoking and an increased use of preventative measures is credited.

The findings come from the annual report on cancer produced by the American Cancer Society in conjunction with the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. Here’s an excerpt from NPR’s coverage:

Part of the decrease in cancer incidence is due to the fact that lung cancer rates among women have leveled off in recent years. Lung cancer incidence among men has been decreasing for several years.

“Everybody’s been waiting for the lung cancer incidence and death rates in women to begin to go down,” says Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society.

Experts see signs that this is beginning to take place. It might have happened earlier, Thun says, except for something that occurred more than three decades ago: the advent of cigarette brands targeted to young women.

“The big marketing of Virginia Slims that caught the people who were passing through adolescence in the ’60s really boosted smoking rates in that age group,” Thun says.

The decline in the number of  menopausal women taking hormone replacement therapy is partly responsible for the decline in the number of new breast cancer cases. A leveling off the number of mammograms may also be contributing to the decrease, said Thun.

Dr. Tim Byers, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Colorado, tells NPR the “most striking thing about lung cancer in this report is the enormous variation between states in getting lung cancer and dying from it.”

“One of the questions that this observation raises in my mind is whether or not we should be thinking about the control of tobacco as more of a federal or national program,” said Byers. “Up to now we’ve left it to the states, which is why we’re seeing this enormous state-by-state disparity.”

In separate news, a study published Tuesday in The Archives of Internal Medicine found that breast cancer rates increased in four Norwegian countries after women began undergoing mammograms every two years instead of every six, suggesting that some cancers might have gone away on their own had they not been discovered and treated. Here’s the press release summarizing the study.

Not everyone is convinced by the results, reports The New York Times, but Robert M. Kaplan, chairman of the department of health services at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the implications are enormous:

If the results are replicated, he said, it could eventually be possible for some women to opt for so-called watchful waiting, monitoring a tumor in their breast to see whether it grows. “People have never thought that way about breast cancer,” he added.

Dr. Kaplan and his colleague, Dr. Franz Porzsolt, an oncologist at the University of Ulm, said in an editorial that accompanied the study, “If the spontaneous remission hypothesis is credible, it should cause a major re-evaluation in the approach to breast cancer research and treatment.”

Plastic Surgery Procedures Are Down: “Half of plastic surgeons report their practices were down last year,” writes Margaret Morganroth Gullette at Women’s eNews. ”That was before the worst of the recession, so it’s not just a matter of cost or insurers who only cover operations that fix ‘deformities’ or improve healthy functioning.”

From 2004 to 2005, liposuction was down 5 percent; eyelid surgery down 20 percent. Even less-invasive procedures such as microdermabrasion and chemical peels were down in that same time period, by 7 percent and 50 percent respectively, according to the American Society for American Plastic Surgery.

It’s also a matter of growing cultural aversion toward the results. “Scary” is emerging as an increasingly common adjective for the surgeons, procedures and — more frequently — the results.

Meet My New Hero: Milan Simone Tuttle. She plays basketball. She’s 5 years old. And she’s awesome. Milan appeared on the Ellen Degeneres Show on Thursday. Be sure to check out the video below (via Because I Played Sports).

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 1999 declaring today, Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Why Nov. 25?

The origins of November 25th go back to 1960, when the three Mirabal sisters from the Dominican Republic were violently assassinated for their political activism. The sisters, known as the “Unforgettable Butterflies,” became a symbol of the crisis of violence against women in Latin America. November 25th was the date chosen to commemorate their lives and promote global recognition of gender violence, and has been observed in Latin America since the 1980s.

Several years ago, a UN report found that one in three women will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Say No to Violence, a campaign by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), today delivered signatures collected worldwide — more than 5 million in all — to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. A webcast of the event can be viewed here.

The Say No to Violence initiative supports the multi-year UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign and “aims to demonstrate that there is a global movement of people who demand that ending violence against women be a top priority for governments everywhere.” Here are highlights from related events around the world this year.

UNIFEM today also announced that the UN Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence Against Women (which UNIFEM manages), will award nearly $19 million in 2008 to 23 projects and initiatives in 29 countries that are addressing gender-based violence. Last year a total of $5 million was disbursed, so in that context $19 million is impressive, though the amount still falls far short of the demand.

“Overall, grants requests amounting to US$525 million were received this year for initiatives in developing countries, including in conflict-affected countries where widespread and systematic sexual violence has become a horrific tactic of warfare,” notes this UNIFEM release.

This compendium of facts and figures on violence against women paints a grim picture:

For women aged 15 to 44 years, violence is a major cause of death and disability [2]. In a 1994 study based on World Bank data about ten selected risk factors facing women in this age group, rape and domestic violence rated higher than cancer, motor vehicle accidents, war and malaria [3]. Moreover, several studies have revealed increasing links between violence against women and HIV/AIDS. Women who have experienced violence are at a higher risk of HIV infection: a survey among 1,366 South African women showed that women who were beaten by their partners were 48 percent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not [4].

Take a look at the great amount of work that will be done for $19 million and imagine how many more issues could be addressed if the UN Trust Fund had more resources:

In 2008, grants go to organizations to support the implementation of national laws, policies, and action plans on ending violence against women. 13 initiatives in 18 countries will receive grants amounting to US$12 million to that end. Examples of such projects approved in this 13th grant cycle include:

In India, a grantee will facilitate the implementation of the national 2005 “Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act” by developing a model of an effective response system for women survivors of violence that involves multiple state agencies.

In Ecuador, a project will develop the linkage between economic empowerment and prevention of violence against women in two border rural provinces marked by poverty and discrimination, and highly affected by the armed conflict in Colombia.

In Serbia, a model for cooperation between the police and social welfare centres at provincial level will ensure systematic and standardized data collection and analysis on reported cases of violence against women, as well as coordinated services for survivors of violence.

In China, the UN Country Team intends to raise political commitment among policy makers to adopt a national policy and legislation on domestic violence by working in close partnership with the “All China Women’s Federation” and various ministries. This joint UN programme will build upon good practices and lessons learned from successful pilot projects.

A second set of grants amounting to US$7 million are awarded to 10 groups in 13 countries focusing on catalytic, innovative and learning initiatives to address violence against women.

In Morocco, a country where women are particularly vulnerable to discrimination and violence upon becoming pregnant outside of wedlock, support for professional development and legal literacy will be provided for single mothers.

A cross-regional initiative will document and evaluate four interventions to promote positive changes in men’s attitudes and behaviours regarding gender roles and norms in Brazil, Chile, India and Rwanda, contributing to the knowledge base on effective strategies to engage men in ending violence against women.

Related News:

- The BBC looks at how organizations around the world are using the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women to comment on the situation facing women in their regions. Oxfam, for instance, is launching a campaign in Kenya to reduce the social acceptability of domestic violence. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Cambodia has released a report noting that women face an increased risk of rape and sexual assault.

- Today marks the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, started in 1991 by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in New Jersey.

According to the Center, participants chose to start Nov. 25 and end Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights.

Participating sites include Ireland 16 Days Campaign; Politics, Security and Women (an initiative of the Prajnya Trust, India); cfd, the feminist peace organization (Switzerland); and Feminist Peace Network, which is taking part in Take Back the Tech, which uses information communication technologies to raise awareness about violence against women.

Look over in the right-side column on this site for a Take Back the Tech widget — it will feature a new action each day of the campaign.

Women’s Health Activist Newsletter: Check out the November/December issue of the Women’s Health Activist newsletter, a publication from the National Women’s Health Network, and you’ll see some familiar names.

Fellow OBOB writer Rachel Walden discusses the American Psychological Association’s report that found no solid scientific evidence that abortion causes mental distress in women. And OBOS Executive Director Judy Norsigian and Web Manager Kiki Zeldes explain why OBOS added a new title, “Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth,” and its relevance as an advocacy tool as well as a practical resource. Find those and other great articles here.

Love and Violence: “Even though India legalized inter-caste marriage more than 50 years ago, newlyweds are still threatened by violence, most often from their families,” writes Emily Wax in the Washington Post. “As more young urban and small-town Indians start to rebel and choose mates outside of arranged marriages and caste commandments, killings of inter-caste couples have increased, according to a recent study by the All India Democratic Women’s Association.”

Lost in Translation?: PAL, the Prescription Access Legislation Blog, praises the move by pharmacy chains CVS and Rite-Aid to offer spoken and written translations of prescription information, as required by New York state law. But PAL raises some good questions, such as: Who is responsible for the content and accuracy of the translated label? And how do small independent and community pharmacies fulfill this obligation?

Senators on Our Side: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Patty Murray on Thursday introduced legislation to block the “provider conscience” regulation that Health and Human Services is expected to propose any day now.

“In the final days of his administration, the President is again putting ideology first and attempting to roll back health care protections for women and families,” said Sen. Clinton in a statement. And in a piece published at RH Reality Check, Clinton writes:

As many of you know, the rule being proposed by the administration would limit patients’ access to basic reproductive health care services and information. The Protecting Patients and Health Care Act would prevent HHS from implementing this ill-conceived, midnight regulation.

Senator Murray and I have been speaking out against this rule since July when word of this regulation first came to light. The rule, as it was then proposed in August by the Department of Health and Human Services, is a serious threat to patients’ access to information and care.

Then in September, Senator Murray and I had a very frank conversation with Secretary Leavitt about how this rule could create a slippery slope leading to patients being denied access to contraception and other important information or care. However, despite the important concerns we raised to the Secretary, a recent news report indicated that HHS is planning to release a final regulation in the coming days.

Plus: With all Clinton has done for women’s health as as senator, what might she do for women worldwide as secretary of state?

Timing Right for Healthcare Overhaul: “When Barack Obama steps into the Oval Office in January, healthcare reform will join a list of priorities crowded with two wars, a ballooning budget deficit and an economy mired in one of the worst slowdowns since the Great Depression,” reports the L.A. Times. “But the bleak environment may paradoxically spur the kind of costly, sweeping overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system that has eluded policymakers in Washington for decades, many political strategists, industry leaders and economists say.”

Plus: “Seizing on the momentum of the presidential election and the promise of change on a historic scale, a grassroots ‘conversation’ about health care reform under the Obama administration began Thursday with town hall meetings around the nation, including several in the Bay Area,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

When Mom’s a College Athlete: “Last week the NCAA unveiled their new handbook on how to deal with pregnancy. No, it’s not a sports version of Our Bodies Ourselves, but rather a much needed policy. Stories about a pregnant woman on the basketball team pop up now and then in the press, but with no firm rules, each woman was pretty much on her own,” writes Veronica, who goes on to note that the “guidelines are gender-neutral to allow for men to take leave, if their school provides any leave for new moms, as well as prohibiting punishment to women for having premarital sex if men aren’t also equally punished.”

Continue reading for a smart take on pregnancy and women’s sports.

Enlisting Salons in the Campaign Against Domestic Violence: “The privileged, often therapeutic relationship between hairdressers and clients has long been the subject of magazine articles and movies,” writes Leslie Kaufman in The New York Times. “A growing movement in New York and across the nation tries to harness that bond to identify and prevent domestic violence, a pervasive problem that victims are often too ashamed to reveal to law enforcement or other public officials.”

Plus: Many women separated from abusive partners still experience high-disability chronic pain after almost two years, according to Canadian researchers. Their article was published in The Journal of Pain, the peer review journal of the American Pain Society.

In Search of the Female Ideal: “The sexualization and ‘adultification’ of girls is a troubling enough trend. But it’s bookended with an equally disturbing phenomenon: the extreme ‘youthification’ of older women,” writes Anne Ream in this Chicago Tribune op-ed. I really liked the ending and want to read the book mentioned:

In her groundbreaking book, “The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls,” Cornell University researcher Joan Jacobs Brumberg examined the diaries of adolescent girls in the U.S. over the past 100 years to better understand how they discussed self-improvement. While girls of earlier eras focused on improving their studies and becoming better-mannered, the diary entries of contemporary young women showed an almost exclusive emphasis on improved or changed physical appearance.

Feminist firebrand Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in her renowned work, “Our Girls,” once wrote, “I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.” It’s a hopeful sentiment that feels, right now, more nostalgic than ever before.

Scaring by Example: New York Times writer Lisa Belkin, who pens the Motherlode blog on parenting, recently invited her former editor, Catherine Saint Louis, to guest-blog about her baby’s birth. Saint Louis gave birth via c-section following the diagnosis of severe preeclampsia. Belkin writes in the intro:

Until she left on maternity leave and I began this blog, Catherine was my editor in Thursday Styles. She has long been the healthiest, strongest person I know, so it was particularly jarring when she called last week and told me the story she is about to tell you. She called on the day an article ran in Styles about how home births are on the rise. Catherine had thought of delivering at home. As she writes, her decision to head for the hospital may have saved her life.

In response to the implication that a planned home birth would have been a fatal decision, a number of readers note that midwives who do home births are trained to recognize trouble and would have transferred  the mother to a hospital.

DNA Backlog: In response to the nationwide backlog of rape kits awaiting DNA analysis, The New York Times calls on lawmakers “to address this ongoing insult to women and the intolerable loss for effective law enforcement.”

Girls Not Exactly Gone Wild: “Fewer girls were arrested last year for violent crimes than a decade earlier, according to new government research prompted by a surge in female juvenile delinquency in the 1990s,” reports USA Today. The U.S. Department of Justice found that arrests for aggravated assault by girls younger than 18 fell 17 percent between 1998 and 2007.

Obama Does More for Women’s Health Pre-Inauguration Than Bush in 8 Years: “President-Elect Obama has not been inaugurated yet and, already, he’s taken some critical steps towards restoring the United States as a leader in global women’s health,” writes Amie Newman at RH Reality Check. Newman goes on to identify global reproductive and sexual health mandates that Obama has prioritized since he won the election way back on, oh, Nov. 4.

Plus: NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation has unveiled a new initiative, Free.Will.Power. Check out the t-shirt design contest.

Baby, You’re in the Home (and Garden): The New York Times published a cool story on the increasing number of women opting for home births (still a very small percentage of all births) that took a very New-York perspective: How does one give birth in a small apartment — especially if the room is filled with family and the walls between neighbors are thin?

If the story had left it there, it’s placement in the Home & Garden section might have been more justified. But as it reads — complete with condemnation of home births from the American Medical Association — it’s better suited for Health.

Plus: Don’t miss the related slide show of home births. And here’s a great trivia question: Who was the first American president to be born in a hospital? Answer: Jimmy Carter.

Sexual Assault on Campus – Changing the Culture: Terrific story in the Star Tribune about rape prevention programs on college campuses that focus on men. Check out the intro below, and be sure to read the rest:

Tyler Jones was tipping back a couple of beers with friends at a Dinkytown bar when he suddenly had to take a stand.

“Hey, see that girl over there?” Jones recalled an acquaintance asking, nodding toward a woman he wanted to take home. “She’s almost drunk. Not quite drunk enough. … What shot should I buy her?”

There was a time, Jones says, when he might have laughed off the remark. Not anymore.

“You want to buy her something really strong to like, basically knock her out?” Jones, a University of Minnesota senior, recalled saying. “Man, that’s not right. That’s rape. That’s sexual assault.”

The acquaintance looked stunned. “Whatever,” he mumbled, and walked away.

It was one moment at one bar. But it’s also a sign of a big shift in strategy on campuses trying to tackle a culture that some say tolerates sexual assault. Instead of teaching women not to walk alone at night or to carry Mace, some colleges are trying something much harder — changing college men. Jones, fresh from sex assault prevention training, is in the vanguard of the movement.

Hat-tip: Kay Steiger

Women Gain Some Access, but Not Political Power: “Women still lag far behind men in top political and decision-making roles, though their access to education and health care is nearly equal, the World Economic Forum said Wednesday,” reports Reuters. “In its 2008 Global Gender Gap report, the forum, a Swiss research organization, ranked Norway, Finland and Sweden as the countries that have the most equality of the sexes, and Saudi Arabia, Chad and Yemen as having the least.”

Where does the United States rank? A measly 27th — below Germany (11th), Britain (13th), France (15th), Lesotho (16th), Trinidad and Tobago (19th), South Africa (22nd), Argentina (24th) and Cuba (25th). Here’s the full report (PDF).

The EPA’s Stalin Era: Yes, it really has been that bad, reports Rebecca Claren at Salon. To wit: “[T]he story of the hundreds of sick people who live near the former Kelly Air Force Base illuminates an entirely new manner in which the Bush administration has diluted science and put public health at risk. This year, largely in obeisance to the Pentagon, the nation’s biggest polluter, the White House diminished a little-known but critical process at the Environmental Protection Agency for assessing toxic chemicals that impacts thousands of Americans.”

Prescription Drugs May Deliver Phthalates: We’ve written before about the potential dangers of phthalates — chemical compounds commonly found in plastics, perfumes and lotions that are linked to reproductive abnormalities. But this one is news to me: Environmental Health News reports that prescription drugs can deliver high doses of phthalates.

“At least 47 prescription medications — including the colitis drug Asacol, an antacid and an HIV drug — contain phthalates, according to scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” writes Marla Cone.

Victoria’s Toxic Secret: Feminist Peace Network picks up the story concerning allegations that Victoria’s Secret’s bras are causing skin irritations. The suspect irritant? Formaldehyde.

Racial Barriers Between Doctors and Patients: “In politics, the racial barriers might have fallen, I thought, but what about in health care?” asks Pauline Chen, MD, in her latest doctor/patient column in The New York Times. Chen looks not only at the striking health care disparities and racial inequality, but also at the experiences of minority physicians:

Of all the surgical residents I trained with, “Eric” was easily one of the smartest. He possessed a great bedside manner, brilliant clinical skills and plenty of that Obama cool. Eric was African-American, and one night, when we were both on call together, he told me something I have never forgotten.

“You know, Pauline,” he said, “there are a lot of times when I go to a patient’s room for the first time and they ask me, ‘Are you transport? Are you here to wheel me to radiology?’” I can remember Eric shaking his head as he spoke. “They never assume I’m one of the doctors.”

Supreme Court Hears Gun Rights Case: Allison Stevens of Women’s eNews explains a gun-control case heard before the Supreme Court this week that could effect abusers’ access to guns in some states.

If the justices side with the U.S. government’s challenge — which argues the law should not be restricted to just a portion of the states — batterers in every state and territory would be subject to the gun control ban.

If the court rejects the government’s reading of the law and limits the application of the law to those states with specific anti-domestic violence laws, safety advocates are apprehensive that thousands of abusers across the country will be erased from criminal lists, giving them new access to guns, said Peter Hamm, a spokesperson for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a group in Washington, D.C., that lobbies for gun control.

On this Veterans Day, we take a look at the services available to female veterans, who face high rates of sexual assault, and the increased dangers of domestic violence among military personnel:

- “Shedding light on the challenges facing women in the military, a new study shows that more than one in seven female Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking VA medical care reported experiencing sexual trauma during their service,” HealthDay News reported in October.

The study was conducted by the VA Palo Alto Health Care System’s National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in California.

A previous study from 2007 found that 22 percent of female veterans and 1 percent of male veterans — serving in all areas, not just Afghanistan and Iraq — reported sexual trauma in health-care surveys conducted by the Veterans Administration in 2003.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has set up this page to explain the counseling and treatment services it offered to personnel.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), described the rate of sexual assault in the military as “an epidemic.”

“Women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq,” said Harman.

- Sharkfu remembers Pvt. LaVena Johnson, who was murdered in Iraq in 2005, just eight weeks after her deployment and days before her 20th birthday. The Army insists her death was a suicide. Read more at Our Weekly.

- In a recent editorial, the Fayetteville Observer called on the Army to redouble its efforts to provide programs and services to prevent domestic violence. Fort Bragg was the recent site of protest against domestic violence — four female service members were slain in North Carolina this year, all allegedly murdered by their husbands or boyfriends, also service personnel.

- Writing at AlterNet, author Penny Coleman notes that when “Barack Obama decides who he will appoint to head the Department of Veterans Affairs in his administration, he should consider appointing someone who also understands how important it is that women’s bodies, souls, dignity and health be taken seriously.”

Tammy Duckworth, who is reported to be at the top of his list, certainly has had personal experience with a health care delivery system she has called “a little bit arcane.”

Duckworth is now director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, but in 2004, she was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot in Iraq and lost both of her legs in a crash. She describes the care she received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as “excellent,” but adds, “the comfort package I received contained men’s Jockey shorts, and the local VA hospital carried Viagra but not my birth control.”

There are currently about 1.7 million female veterans in the United States, and the Department of Defense estimates that there are about 200,000 women, 15 percent of the military, on active duty. Thirty-nine percent of those women return from Iraq or Afghanistan with mental health issues, and, for more than a third who seek VA health care, the precipitating trauma was a sexual assault.

Every VA center now screens both men and women for sexual trauma. That is an improvement. Still, Duckworth says, “I don’t think the VA mental health care system is ready for (female veterans).” It would be encouraging to see a VA director who has some understanding of how important that is to fix.