NEDAwareness Week

It’s National Eating Disorders Awareness Week and I’ve got something to tell you:

Photo Credit to Phaidra Tsampas

Listen, I get it. Because like Abra Fortune Chernik, I too believed all the lies. “As long as society resists female power, fashion will call healthy women physically flawed.  As long as society accepts the physical, sexual and economic abuse of women popular culture will prefer women who resemble girls.”

But enough is enough.

Join me this week, and all weeks, in reclaiming our bodies. Lets work on unconditional acceptance of our bodies instead of perpetuating body hatred.

For more information on Eating Disorders and to get help today, visit the National Eating Disorder Association.

VAGINAS!

There are so many things I love about this:

1.) Ron Swanson is my favorite Libertarian.

2.) Judd Nelson writing BOOBS on the calculator.

Funny or Die – Women’s Health Video

(You have to click through – I am not internet savvy enough to embed that video for you)

There are so many things that make me sad about this:

1.) The world seems to know that this whole birth control thing is laughable, but it’s still happening… why is no one putting a stop to this nonsense?

1a.) Speaking of nonsense, Virginia’s vaginal probe ultrasound bill passed the senate. (Not really relevant. But still. Le sigh.)

2.) This is funny for lots of reasons, but one of the reasons is that we find the word vagina funny and/or shameful.

Take David Albo, the Virginia lawmaker who couldn’t even bring himself to say the word vagina.

Dude. You are an adult male. You represent the citizens of Virgina. You are talking about WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS. Just say it. Say vagina. Say it. Say “Trans-vaginal ultrasound”. Or even ”vaginally invasive ultrasound”. Because that’s what this bill is about. Not your inability to get laid.

Are we all so ashamed of our bodies that we can’t even call our parts by their names? I don’t see people collapsing into giggles when referencing their right foot, so why are penises and vaginas so funny?

3.)  The whole “white middle aged men know everything” joke? Would be funny if it wasn’t so true.

A friend and fellow attorney posted this picture on my facebook wall the day of the Congressional hearings on the birth control mandate:

(Photo Credit to Planned Parenthood)

Notice anything about the people testifying? Uh… middle aged men.

Last time I checked, biological men can’t get pregnant. They don’t have the right parts.  So why do they get to make choices about women’s bodies?

Blerg. I could continue to blather on, but I want to hear what you think. What are your thoughts on the birth control mandate and the people making the decisions? Why is the word “vagina” so scary?

 

Almost Perfect… But Not Quite

I started teaching college kids when I was pretty young.  So me and the students? We got each other. All of my references made sense to them – they had grown up in the same time frame as me, so I could tell a joke and they would DEFINITELY get it. And now, I am old. I didn’t realize it until this semester. I mean, I had felt it creeping up on me… like last semester when I said “Let’s talk about sex (long pause) baby. Let’s talk about you and me” when I was introducing our Sexualities section and they all looked at me like I had three heads. But, this semester I am now positive that I am an elderly woman. Forget not knowing “Let’s Talk About Sex”, these students don’t even know The Real World when it was good.

There is a huge generation gap between adults who are currently in their early 20s and adults who are currently in their late 20s. And I am consistently surprised at just how big this gap is.  Here’s my latest example.

I just read Courtney Martin’s Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and thought it would be a great piece to discuss with my students when we talked about bodies.  Martin elucidates this dichotomy that exists in every woman – that of the perfect girl and the starving daughter – pretty well and in a way that really hit home for me.  She writes:  

“A starving daughter lies at the center of each perfect girl.  The face we show to the world is one of beauty, maturity, determination, strength, willpower, and ultimately, accomplishment.  But beneath the facade is a starving daughter who annoys us, slows us down,  embarrasses us.  She is the one who doubts our ability to handle a full-time job and full-time school. [...] Young women struggle with this duality.  The perfect girl in each drives forward, the starving daughter digs in her heels.  The perfect girl wants excellence, the starving daughter calm and nurturance. The perfect girl takes on the world, the starving daughter shrinks from it.  It is a power struggle between two forces, and at the cent, almost every time, is an innocent body.”

I read this excerpt to my students, excited to talk about the pressures they feel to be perfect and where these pressures come from.  I was sure we’d have a lot to talk about because I look at my generation of women and see this dichotomy everywhere. I am surrounded by women with advanced degrees who are climbing to the tops of their fields, women who balance work and family seemingly with ease, who work out at 4 a.m. to get to work by 7 a.m., who coordinate their heels and their handbags while breastfeeding their babies, who see a problem as a challenge and face it head on, who change their careers as seamlessly as they change their hair colors and who just do it all.

I was positive they’d share the fears of the starving daughter with me because I see her all the time.  Like when I’m with my friends in my living room when we’re drunk on red wine and talking about nonsense just to hear about something other than “it all“.   I see her in the women dancing in the middle of a humid dance floor – eyes closed, pretending that their cell phones aren’t full of emails, their voicemails aren’t full of “I needs” and their minds aren’t racing with thoughts of what needs to get done before they go to sleep.

But they didn’t. They basically told me that this Martin woman is cray cray.

“Why is she trying so hard?” they asked.

“Why doesn’t she just take a nap?” they implored.

I looked at them, dumbfounded, wondering how they weren’t connecting with Martin.

“But don’t you want to be perfect?” I asked them.

And they laughed at me.  “Silly woman. No one can be perfect!”

Hmm. No one can be perfect? That flies in the face of everything I believe. Sure, my parents were nurturing and supportive and amazing and never told me I needed to be perfect. In fact, they pretty often told me to just do my best and be happy and that would make them happy. But for some reason (cough, society, cough) I heard “your best needs to be perfection, happiness will come when things are perfect”. We can always do better, be better, achieve more.

“Not so!” shout my students. “Calm it down, lady.”

We tried to get to the bottom of this huge chasm of difference in our ways of thinking in class. I mean, I teach at the college I went to. I have students in my class who have led pretty much the same exact life as me – same elementary school, same middle school, same high school, now same college. But we have radically different life views.

So, we looked at our age gap. We’re between 7-10 years apart. We compared the world during my childhood and adolescence to the world during their childhood and adolescence. And we got to the bottom of it.

I grew up in the 90′s. We had the dot com boom, a super fast economic “recovery” following a recession (read: we used our credit cards like maniacs), Blossom, Clarissa, Dana, DJ, and Daria taught us to be tough can-do chicks, and things were pretty rad.

Image via Wikipedia

These kids grew up in the 00′s.  They saw the dot com bust, a rapidly failing economy, an endless war in the Middle East, and Teen Moms, Degrassi Girls, and Zoey101 teaching them that girls have issues. Things have been pretty sucktacular for them.

Sure, we were all told “you can do anything” by our parents. But their society is telling them “no matter what you do, you might fail.”  Many have watched their hardworking parents lose their jobs for no reason.  They watch us, the women who think we have to do everything, struggle and fight for things and feel exhausted.  They have grown up in a time where fate deals heavy and often totally random blows.

The other day, before our analysis of why we think so differently, I asked my students what they do in their free time.  They told me they napped.

Napped.

And there’s the difference.  We Perfect Girls/Starving Daughters watch the shit hit the fan and think we can fix it, even if it’s actually impossible to fix.  So we stress out and try too hard and breakdown when we can’t fix it. Them? The No One’s Perfect/I’m Exhausteds? They watch the shit hit the fan and think no one can fix it, it’s impossible. So they take a nap.

Neither identity works.  But how do we step outside of these roles? How do we stop society from creating our identities?  And for you perfect girls out there – when does “almost perfect, but not quite” end?

Nuns Having Fun

I friggen’ love nuns.

Like this lady, who just photobombed the bejesus (har har) out of the red carpet on the Oscars night:

 

Check out Perez Hilton for an awesome video of Maya Rudolph being the best while this nun just habits about in the back.

And keep your eyes peeled for a blog on just why I love nuns so much – including the super rad work they do in the community and how nun paraphernalia is my favorite thing ever.

Snip, snip.

A+

You feelin’ lucky, punk?

I love talk radio. I love all kinds of talk radio – NPR, Sports Hub (but really only Toucher and Rich) Rush Limbaugh, The Restaurant Show with Pat Whitley, Car Talk with Click and Clack. I LOVE talk radio. I have about a half hour commute, so I spend a lot of time listening to talk radio and either nodding along in agreement or yelling like a maniac at  the radio in my empty car. (I usually yell at Rush Limbaugh, but sometimes I’ll yell at Pat Whitley – I mean come on, how many times can he recommend the same restaurant?!)

Anyway, the big story making the rounds on talk radio recently is the tale of Dennis Fleming from Live Free or Die New Hampshire who heroically apprehended a burglar terrorizing his neighborhood.  After saving the residents of Ten Rod Road from the burglar, Dennis Fleming was notified that he was being charged with reckless conduct for firing his gun into the ground – which he did as a warning shot.

No one seems happy about this. And it’s not just NRA folks who are upset. It seems like everyone is upset. And maybe rightfully so.

Let’s grapple with the issues here:

First, Dennis was fully licensed to own and operate his firearm. That’s a nonissue.

So, the big question we have to ask is – doesn’t Dennis have a right to protect his home?

Short answer: Yes. Of course Dennis has a right to protect his home.  In New Hampshire, you can use non-deadly force to protect your home. You can use deadly force to protect a person or if you think the trespasser is going to set your house on fire. (627:7 Use of Force in Defense of Premises)

And this is where it gets tricky.  If Dennis had apprehended the burglarin his home,he would have been ok. But Dennis caught this burglar after seeking him out for about a half-hour – so that warning shot might not be considered protection of property or even protection of self.  It might be considered just reckless shooting of a gun.

This all seems simple enough, but why is everyone talking about it?  Because in some states, you can use deadly force to protect your home. And in some states you can use deadly force to protect others’ homes! (See the Joe Horn case - where he killed some burglars breaking into his neighbor’s home.)

I am oversimplifying the state by state requirements for use of deadly force in protecting your home – so before you enact some “Go ahead, make my day!” justice… check out your state requirements.

And speaking of state requirements – what do you think the laws should be? Should citizens be able to use deadly force to protect their homes? The homes of others?

Substituted Judgment and Abortion

Yesterday, the Massachusetts Appeals Court struck down the decision of now-retired Judge Christina Harms who directed that a 32 year old schizophrenic women terminate her pregnancy. In her decision, Judge Harms ruled that the woman was not competent to make a decision regarding her pregnancy, ruling that the pregnant woman had “substantial delusional beliefs” and would choose to abort her pregnancy if she were not schizophrenic. The woman, Mary Moe, had two previous pregnancies – the first was terminated by an abortion, the second she gave birth to a baby boy.  In addition, the woman described herself as deeply religious (“very Catholic”).

In striking down Judge Harms decision, the Massachusetts Appeals Court stated “the personal decision whether to bear or beget a child is a right so fundamental that it must be extended to all persons, including those who are incompetent.” Both decisions raise a whole bunch of issues, ranging from abortion to informed consent to competency.

Let’s start with the right to an abortion.  Since Roe v. Wade, we have seen consistent challenges to the right to access abortion by state and federal legislators ranging from limiting abortion to pre-viability to challenges we’re seeing today, like the Life Begins at Conception bills that are being offered in various states (Virginia, Oklahoma, etc.). Even though we keep seeing attacks on abortion, the holding stands – the right to abortion is fundamental, protected under the right to privacy found under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

This

Image via Wikipedia

works both ways – you have the right to have an abortion and you have the right not to have an abortion. So there’s no question here, Mary Moe, as a US citizen has the right to choose whether or not to bear or beget a child.

But does she? This is where the case gets tricky and Judge Harms’ decision starts to raise some questions.  Even though Mary Moe has a right to choose whether or not to bear or beget a child, should she only maintain this right if she is considered competent?

In Massachusetts, a person has the right to refuse medical treatment under the doctrine of informed consent.  If a person is incompetent, they can still assert that right through a guardian. This right to refuse medical treatment/informed consent is protected under the right to privacy found under the 14th Amendment (same as abortion). The standard for a guardian making a decision is that of substituted judgment – that the guardian’s decision should conform as closely as possible to the decision that the incompetent person would have made if they were competent. This standard was established in 1977 in Belchertown v. Saikewicz.

SO! Because Mary Moe has the right to an abortion under the 14th Amendment AND because Mary Moe can refuse medical treatment/or have her guardian refuse medical treatment if she is deemed incompetent Judge Harms can’t just make the decision that Mary Moe should have an abortion/should not have an abortion. It’s either Mary’s decision or her guardian’s decision. And that’s that.

But is that really it? This analysis is beautiful (yep, I’ll toot my own horn) but it leaves out all the scary stuff that Judge Harms’ decision doesn’t say.

Like how many times have decisions like this been made on behalf of incompetent persons without anyone challenging the rulings?

And doesn’t this seem scarily similar to Buck v. Bell (the case that said it was ok to sterilize the “feeble minded”)?

This case isn’t so much about abortion as it is about representation of the mentally ill and incapacitated. If this was any other procedure, we’d still have the same qualms – Judge Harms can’t just have Mary Moe’s right arm replaced with a pirate hook if Mary Moe wouldn’t have made that decision herself. Even though that would be pretty awesome.

Thoughts? Is Judge Harms’ decision getting so much attention because of the right to abortion? Would we give the same attention to a medical decision without the same implications?

 

The Women Behind the Men

Happy Presidents’ Day, everyone! I hope you are all enjoying this long weekend and taking the opportunity to think about the work of our current and former presidents. I mean, even Michelle Obama is spending time reflecting on the work of her husband while slicing down the slopes in Aspen, CO. Kidding, kidding.

But in all seriousness, on this Presidents’ Day, I thought it might be nice to think about the work that the First Ladies of the United States have done.  We spend a lot of time talking about the work that the POTUS does – from his campaign efforts pre-election, to his policies and work while in office – but we don’t spend too much time talking about the work that the FLOTUS does. When we do talk about the FLOTUS, we often remark on inconsequential things – that she shops at Target, her super fit arms, her phenomenal fashion sense. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE all of these things about Michelle Obama, but she does so much more.

Image via Wikipedia

Even though the First Lady isn’t elected to office, she holds a pretty visible position in the U.S. government. As a result, First Ladies have the opportunity to promote causes of interest to them and provide increased visibility for and support to organizations championing these causes. Michelle Obama is currently working on Let’s Move! her campaign to end childhood obesity. Let’s Move! has been pretty successful – encouraging healthier choices in school cafeterias, physical education programs in schools, and children becoming more active. In a time when childhood obesity has more than tripled, with one-third of children in the US classified as overweight or obese, Michelle Obama’s campaign is making a positive difference.

Michelle Obama isn’t the only FLOTUS to make a big difference. One of my favorite First Ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt, really transformed the office of the First Lady and the role of women. While in office, Roosevelt was a vocal proponent of the Civil Right’s Movement, fought for workers’ rights, and created a role herself through her weekly press conferences and newspaper columns. After leaving behind her FLOTUS role, she became the First Chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights and helped author and establish the UN Declaration of Human Rights. THE DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. God, Eleanor was just so rad.

So on this Presidents’ Day, I invite you to think about the women behind the men. Because as Eleanor puts it, “a woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” And I can imagine the water gets pretty hot at the White House.

12 Angry Men No More

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, one of my facebook friends (of which I have an infinite amount. Obviously, this shows how wildly popular I am and in no way causes me sadness or speaks to the horrifying way in which we now share every aspect of our lives…) posited the question to her facebook family “Suggestions for getting out of jury duty?”

I instantly reverted to my standard grumpoppotamus self – I imagine I look like one of these guys when I’m thinking/saying these things – and almost posted “Why would you want to get out of jury duty?! It’s your right to serve!” I didn’t. Because I don’t really want people to know that I am actually an old man muppet who will eventually yell at them to get off my lawn and enjoy the benefits of being a US citizen.

But now I’ve been thinking about this for almost 24 hours and I’m wondering just when the rights given to us by virtue of being US citizens (voting, serving on a jury) became burdens. I mean, we all haven’t even enjoyed these rights for that long.

Did you know that women have only had the right to vote since 1920? That means that until 1920, women had NO SAY in who was going to represent them. Someone who wanted to enact insane discriminatory laws against women could be elected and as women, we could do nothing. Now we have the right to vote and lots of people choose not to exercise that right. Seems odd to me.

Did you also know that is wasn’t until 1947 that the Supreme Court announced that women are equally qualified to serve on juries as men? That means that until 1947, women were considered unable to make decisions regarding justice in their backyards. It was too important for women to stay home and take care of their families.  And now we have the right to serve on juries and we spend a lot of time and effort trying to get out of it:

Why don’t we exercise our rights? Why do we consider these rights a burden?

Planned Parenthood = Sex Pushers

Oh. Mylanta. I can’t even form a coherent thought.

 

 

This is not a joke, people.