Do everything you possibly can to put your best faceforward. If you have a bad nose, get a nose job; color gray hair; grow your hair long. Men prefer long hair, something to play with and caress. It doesn’t matter what your hairdresser and friends think. You’re certainly not trying to attract them!….The point is, we’re girls! We don’t want to look like boys.
(1) Lesbian mom-to-be (Cheney’s daughter) is slammed by all sides.
I’m going to come out (hahha funny!!!) and say I feel bad for Mary Cheney. She probably didn’t ask her dad to be the way he is. She could disagree with him on several issues BUT maintains a relationship because he is her dad and she loves her family. Someone has to be Dick Cheney’s child and so it has fallen onto Mary Cheney and her sister’s shoulders. She deserves some privacy RIGHT NOW! This is all I’m going to say about it.
(2) Girls wanna strip for other girls but feminist picketers don’t like it much
(3) Mom insists talking barbie doll says “slut”
(4) California parents seem to welcome HPV vaccine for their daughters
As usual, I was perusing the New York Times website this morning when I came across Beyond Medicine, a Doctor’s Urge to Save a Patient from Herself by Alex Friedman, M.D.
I assumed this article would be about a woman wanting something like radical plastic surgery. However, all she wanted was to have her tubes tied after her third pregnancy. As Dr. Friedman described, she was in her early 20s, in school, and worked. Instead of congratulating her on making a well-informed decision, Dr. Friedman said he asked her these following questions:
What if your children died in a fire? Would you want more children?” I asked, a horrible to question to put to a pregnant mother.
No, she said.
“What if the relationship you’re in now ended and you met someone else? Would you change your mind?”
Still no.
These questions should not be asked by a doctor. If they have to be asked at all, it should be the woman’s best friend, mother, partner–someone who knows her well.
What is worse than the line of questioning is the condescending tone Dr. Friedman takes on. By saying he needs “to save her from herself” implies that she is incapable of making informed decisions. Then he treats her like a child and doubting her judgment regarding her own reproductive decisions. Never does Dr. Friedman bring up her economic status except to say she may not be able to afford IVF treatments when she is older.
I could perhaps understand Dr. Friedman’s hesitancy in trying the woman’s tubes if she never had any children BUT that is still only her business. It is true that one day the woman could want more children, but she has her hands full now and she wants to make a responble decision for herself and her children. Dr. Friedman does not address the fact that the woman could be makeing this decision so she can focus on the children she already has, wanting to be the best mother to them.
Dr. Friedman ends his piece by pondering about meeting with this patient years from now: “If …she wants more children, I’ll tell her what I think her best options are and try to talk her out of any bad ideas.” The assumption that patient would just have “bad ideas” toward her health and reproductive rights is unfair. What makes it even worse is Dr. Friedman is just another man adding his voice to the discourse of men talking about what WOMEN should do with their reproductive rights.
Tonight in Barnes & Nobles, I found what the book I have been looking for awhile. I’ve wanted to dissect for SOME TIME ever since it debuted in 1996.
The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right
Obviously, I never followed these rules.
Expect many funny posts to come!
(1) Little kids cannot get enough of baby Jesus.
(2) Julianne Moore is not pro-choice…she’s pro-abortion! Duh!
Actress Julianne Moore, who has stared in movies such as Hannibal and Boogie Nights, is the latest Hollywood star to send out a fundraising pitch for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business. (Emphasis MINE!)
(3) Oh no! My straight daughter went to college and came home a lesbian!
(4) Am I starting to feel sympathy toward the Cheney family?
Today on the subway ride into work, I was looking through the New School course catalog. I was in the media studies section when I discovered they offered a class on how to blog! Here is a description:
Limited to 14. Creating a personal or professional blog space is now almost as common as using an email account. Although still largely produced with text and still images, blogging has quickly become a time-based activity that incorporates video and audio. This course surveys blogs and vblogs, critiquing and analyzing both popular and more obscure sites. Students create their own vblog on one of a variety of free hosting sites and produce a unique space online. (0 credits)
The class actually sounds very interesting. And even earlier today I was thinking that not only do people have multiple email addresses but multiple blogs.
Then I though should I take this class!? I quickly decided no that I could learn about blogging from some of my favorite bloggers by just reading their sites. And really this is all for me anyway. I’m glad my friends (and maybe family members) read it. I started wondering if people are going to build blogging resumes and include whether they have taken a blogging class. Maybe I should learn about vblogs….
(1) Anti-birth-control fanatic to head gov’t family planning office
Just posted that one for the headline
(1) Planned Parenthood giving out Plan B for free!!!
(2) NYC decides NOT to go ahead with gender bending law.
(3) Recognition of black history in trouble.
(4) Why did USA Today decide to discuss why Paris, Lindsay and Britney don’t wear underwear?
Or is the bigger question why did they put it on their front page?
I don’t have an answer to either question.
The LA Times decided to put a Britney story on their front page too.
According to the 2006 UN Human Development Report:
Norway (1913), Iceland (1915), Australia (1902), Ireland (1918), Sweden (1919), Canad (1917), Netherlands (1919), Finland (1906), Luxembourgh (1919), Belgium (1919), Austria (1918), Denmark (1915), United Kingdom (1918), Germany (1918), Hungary (1918), New Zealand (1893), Poland (1918), Estonia (1918), Lithuania (1919), Latvia (1918), Russian Federation (1918), Belarus (1919), Ukraine (1919), Armenia (1918), Georgia (1918), Azerbaijan (1918), Kyrgyzstan (1918), Zimbabwe (1919), and Kenya (1919)
All granted the women the right to vote before the U.S.A. (1920)
This USA Today article Student ’superstar’ on brink of dropping out left me puzzled. It attempts to tell a story of a pregnant 15 year old . The kicker is the mother of the teenager had her when she was 15 as well. The story itself is intriguing, perhaps heartbreaking and certainly thought provoking. But the article left me wanting a lot more. The language used by the author took on a condescending tone.
The article begins in 2nd person: “You are smart and talented and pretty, but you are failing ninth grade for the second time.” Why is it necessary that we know the teenager, Mariya, is “pretty?” Of course, the words smart, talented and pretty are all subjective but in an article about education, it seems as though the author would only be focusing on words that are pertinent in describing Mariya as a student.
The writer Greg Toppo cites example after example about Mariya not making it to school despite being a Superstar student.
Here is a description of the Baltimore Talent Development High School:
Like virtually all of its 400 students, she chose to come here — a smaller, quieter, more orderly place than most. One of the city’s five “innovation high schools,” it operates through a cooperative agreement with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Social Organization of Schools.
Toppo writes about the principal’s involvement in the personal lives of students and parents. The teachers come r as understanding to each student’s needs. Yet, I am still confused as to whether Toppo is trying to write an article detailing a teenage pregnancy or the failures of Baltimore’s school system. Is he trying to combat the image that all dropouts aren’t smart? Is it that even specialized schools that are created to help children at risk can’t decrease the drop out rate? His article is too vague about it message.
What really bothers me is that there is no satisfying media about how America’s teenagers are thriving. There is also no decent coverage of how students are suffering and why. All Toppo offers about Mariya’s pregnancy is that she never used condoms and her mother took her to have an abortion twice but she didn’t want to go through with it. Showing the reality of American teenagers through stories like Mariya’s while enlighteing is not enough. What is needed is a clear understanding of what the writer is trying to write about. This story just adds to the existing collection of articles about teenage pregnancy that offers no hope, answers or even tries to ask thoughtful questions.