The 15-year run of “ER” ended last week, sparking a number of reflections and retrospectives.

Since I cover health, I especially appreciated this analysis of the NBC series’ influence on the representation of health care in television programming.

It was back in 1996 when The New England Journal of Medicine first took “ER” and other medical shows to task for performing CPR much more frequently — and with much greater success — than doctors do off-screen.

Within a year, the show’s writers, which then included an emergency room physician and a pediatrician who was the show’s co-producer, crafted a scene in which Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) broke an elderly man’s rib while performing CPR.

How off were the numbers? A 2006 New Yorker article noted that in reality one in 100 patients undergo CPR or some other resuscitation procedure. Just 15 percent, at most, are successful. On television shows, the success rate is closer to two-thirds.

“ER” has also been the medium for messages about HIV transmission, breast cancer, adoption, domestic violence, elder abuse and drug use. One of the final episode story lines revolved around a teenager who drank too much vodka at a friends’ home, providing Dr. Tony Gates (John Stamos) the opportunity to lecture that only 6 ounces of alcohol can be dangerous.

Adding another layer of real-life complication, the drinking was sanctioned by the friends’ parents. That now translates to “call the police.”

Writing in the Times, Pam Belluck describes the show’s powerful legacy as “a give-and-take between the world of entertainment and the world of medicine that has become stronger and more deeply intertwined with each year that ‘ER’ has been on the air, carrying over to other medical shows.”

One of the first hospital dramas to take its medicine seriously — as the engine rather than the backdrop for its scripts — “ER” caught the attention of the medical establishment as a source of health information for millions of Americans. A 2002 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that viewers’ knowledge of emergency contraception and the human papilloma virus increased after watching episodes that mentioned those subjects; a third of them said the show helped them make health care choices. One in five doctors in a 2001 survey said patients asked about diseases or treatments they saw on shows like “ER.”

Today, a small industry has grown up to influence writers and producers. A program called Hollywood, Health and Society gets money from health organizations and federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to arrange meetings where doctors urge medical-show writers to highlight certain diseases or issues.

“We coach our experts in telling writers real stories of real people,” said Sandra de Castro Buffington, director of the program, part of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication.

Interestingly, the Gates Foundation, best known for funding global health projects, has also helped shape story lines on “ER,” among other shows. Issues include HIV prevention, surgical safety and the spread of infectious diseases.

What I also find interesting about the “ER” postmortem is the shift in attitudes toward doctors. During the days of “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” physicians were revered for their medical skill and bedside manner. The American Medical Association even gave its approval to some shows, but the approval had less to do with medical accuracy and more with how the doctors were portrayed.

[A side note: For a terrific discussion about how "Marcus Welby, M.D." reflected its time period, read this article by Joseph Turow at the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Turow recounts how it addressed medical topics, such as sexually transmitted infections, that up until then TV censors didn't allow. The show was memorable in other ways: Gay rights activists, in one of their first organized protests against a TV show, criticized an episode about about the rape of a teenager by a male teacher. And women's rights activists complained that "Marcus Welby's control over the lives of his patients (many of whom were women) represented the worst aspects of male physician' paternalistic attitudes."]

“These were sort of adoring doctor dramas,” John D. Lantos, a bioethicist at the University of Chicago, told the Times. “My sense is that the medicine was irrelevant and unsophisticated — someone’s lying in a room that looks like your living room and there’s an IV running, the universal symbol that something medical is going on.”

That certainly wouldn’t fly today, when story lines can be fact-checked instantly and the accuracy of medical jargon and physical details is as important as character development.

Speaking of character development, “ER” was one of the few shows that featured strong, complex female characters almost every season. Most everyone I know stopped watching “ER” years ago, but I faithfully TiVo’d each week. I’ll miss the familiar characters, as well as the newer ones, including Dr. Cate Banfield (Angela Bassett, who deserved more air time), and the ones we’ll never get to know, like Dr. Julia Wise (Alexis Bledel); I know, I know — I can’t believe either actress didn’t join sooner.

In recent years my favorite was Dr. Neela Rasgotra (Parminder Nagra). Least favorite: Nurse Samantha Taggart (Linda Cardellini — who had much better scenes as highschooler Lindsay Weir).

But mostly I’ll miss a show that indulged my health curiosity (and anxieties) and made the often arcane and intimidating world of medicine accessible, chiefly by showing that in the end, the characters that compose that world are as human as we are.

Plus: If you’re suffering from “ER” withdrawal, you may want to check out “Doctor’s Diaries.” The NOVA program, which broadcasts on PBS, has been following seven former Harvard medical school students for more than two decades. Pauline Chen has more. (Or you can try to convince me to watch “Grey’s Anatomy.”)

One of the most fascinating angles to the Rod Blagojevich saga is the reaction of mental health professionals to everyone calling him “crazy” or “cuckoo.” As the Chicago Tribune reports:

The language offends many and blames mental illness for alleged criminal behavior, they say.

Ann Raney, CEO for Turning Point Behavioral Health Care Center in Skokie, said the center’s board members were so disturbed about the name-calling that they devoted much of a meeting last week to talking about it.

“We need to be clear that unethical or confusing or bad behavior should never be construed as mental illness,” Raney said.

On the contrary, statistics show that people suffering from mental illness are more likely to be victims of crime than they are to be perpetrators, said Fran McClain, program director for the Josselyn Center for Mental Health in Northfield.

Psychologists interviewed by State Journal-Register of Springfield, IL, want to make it clear that Blagojevich might very well have a “narcissistic personality disorder,” but that does not make him crazy.

While Blagojevich’s outrageousness might be funny to some — it’s clearly the greatest thing to hit the cable news networks since the election — the reaction gives me pause. 

Although the articles don’t explicity note it, it seems obvious that these mental health professionals are trying to fight stereotypes and misconceptions of mental illness that pervade our media.  Television dramas and films rarely treat the full complexities of mental illness, choosing to focus the most extreme and sensational cases rather than the disorders that many “regular” people live with everyday. 

That means — more than anything else – a focus on violence and aggressive, criminal behavior of people with mental illness.  It’s the basis, after all, of more than one horror movie franchise.

I have Tivo’d “Wonderland” — a show about the daily workings of a psychiatric ward, which DirecTV is reviving after an aborted run on ABC a few years back.  I’ll report back if I find anything ground-breaking, but DirecTV’s heavy promotional campaign, which has inundated subscribers for months, does little to change any minds.  The chairs are flying, the patients are screaming … and I imagine real doctors and mental health advocates sighing yet again.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Make Me Dance Around the Question: Watch the Democratic candidates squirm when asked, in light of Gen. Peter Pace’s comments, if they too believe that “homosexuality is immoral.”

When are the Democrats going to realize that backbone is a turn-on for voters? Even if they might disagree with you on a specific position, nothing shows character like having real values.

My Cousin Pookie: Speaking of Obama’s awareness of audience, he said the following during his recent Selma sermon: “If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching SportsCenter and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics.”

Wondering who Pookie is? Jonathan TiLove of the HNIC report has the complex, nuanced answer:

In their interviews and e-mails, Pookie emerges as a stock character of the black popular imagination, a name that has come to personify the kind of layabout kin who, if endearing, is also a source of some embarrassment and consternation to his more successful relations. And, it turns out, in his use of Pookie, Obama reveals something about himself …. In dropping Pookie’s name, Obama is signaling to those who question his blackness — because his mother was white and his father an African without slave ancestry — that he is not an outsider to black life.

Michael Eric Dyson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, claims, “It’s a way of Obama getting purchase on that brand of black self-critique and establishing … his bonafides as a black figure willing to be critical of his own.”

Mark McPhail, an expert on rhetoric at Miami University of Ohio, see it somewhat differently: “This is the type of appeal that reveals Obama’s willingness to play on the worst type of stereotypes.”

The Real Black Youth: Cathy Cohen, a University of Chicago professor, is the author of the Black Youth Project, which interviewed 15 to 25 year-old African American women and men about their attitudes and actions. Their “Topic Area Primers,” which provide very accessible and well-organized results of their research, should be required reading for anyone who strives for accurate image of possibly the most stereotyped demographic in America.

NPR’s News and Notes has held repeated conversations with her and other academics about the state of black youth. The latest installment on the role of sex in their lives is what triggered my interest.

Free Love: A University of Alberta study found that one third of Canadian boys are heavy users of pornography:

Ninety percent of males and 70 percent of females reported accessing sexually explicit media content at least once. More than one-third of the boys reported viewing pornographic DVDs or videos “too many times to count,” compared to eight percent of the girls surveyed.

The great majority of the students surveyed use the Internet as their main conduit to the pornography.

Conservatives have latched onto the study as proof of our collective moral decline. Sonya Thompson, the author the study, however, has a more relevant question: “What kinds of expectations will these young people have going into their first sexual relationships? It may be setting up a big disconnect between boys and girls and may be normalizing risky sex practices.”

Between the Thought and the Act: From Scientific American: “People who play car racing video games may be more prone to drive recklessly and get into accidents, according to a study that adds to evidence that video games can influence the behavior of some players.”

Which brings us to the age-old question of the power of media in altering behavior, particularly of youth. Jonathan Turley, writing in the Washington Post, considers himself a “weapons-tolerant parent” who is not concerned about his sons playing with toy guns. Citing a few disparate psychologists — but mainly ruminating — Turley believes their games model “notions of courage and sacrifice,” work out “more basic emotions in more basic ways,” and, in the words of child psychologist Penny Holland, make sense of the world through “timeless themes of the struggle between good and evil.”

Oh, for a world so simple.

“You are what you eat” has long been the mantra of parents and health professionals who are trying to reach, in the most simplistic terms, a reluctant audience, be they teenagers or their out-of-shape elders. In an increasingly interconnected world, though, the message is incomplete.

A community, a nation, a world is also what it consumes.

And maybe that broader message — which takes the question of eating out of the realm of personal decision-making and moves it into a larger political and environmental context — will resonate where the old mantra has failed.

At least that’s the hope of author Michael Pollan, who now holds the yet-to-be-codified position of what I can only call something like “food contextualizer” at the New York Times. A contributor in the past to The New York Times Magazine, Pollan now writes a blog/column for the online edition of the Times (although it’s part of the TimesSelect subscription-only service). In one of his inaugural columns about long-standing biases against food journalism, he lays out the territory (quite literally):

?When we try to pick out anything by itself,? John Muir once wrote, ?we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.? Some of these things are better hitched than others, and food is surely one of them. We don?t ordinarily think about it this way, but eating represents our most powerful engagement with the natural world ? it transforms the world by remaking the landscape more than any other human activity, and it transforms, and defines, us. Whenever a biologist wants to understand the role of a creature in the ecosystem, the first question he or she asks is, What does that creature eat, and what eats it? What, in other words, is its place in the food chain? Well, Homo sapiens is no exception. As William Ralph Inge, the English essayist, wrote early in the last century, ?all of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.? Even the eating of a Twinkie represents transactions between species, though in the case of the Twinkie I?d be hard pressed to name all the species involved. (Have you read a Twinkie ingredient list lately? It?s long and full of surprises, one of which is beef.)

I teach a course at Berkeley?s graduate journalism school called ?Following the Food Chain,? and what my students quickly discover as they go down that trail is that it takes them to a great many unexpected places. Food connects us to nature, first and foremost, but it also attaches us to all the other large systems that organize our lives ? from energy and economics to politics, public health and cultural identity.

Pollan does a remarkably good job of humbly inviting us to contemplate the impact of our food choices. He has many well-reasoned positions, but he also shows a refreshing openness to debate and criticism.

The one criticism I have of Pollan is his tendency to underestimate the power and persistence of the forces he is up against on a political but especially a cultural level.

Politically, for example, in his constant insistence on the important of eating locally (even over eating organically), he is fond of making statements like this: “Local food has much lower energy costs, and as the era of cheap energy draws to a close, eating local will be more important than ever.” Is the era of cheap energy really drawing to a close? I wish — but I also know my history. I have seen how capitalism, coupled with the American obsession with convenience, always seems to find a way.

In terms of culture, Pollan understandably has little to say. He and most of other progressive food journalists out there (check out the latest Orion magazine, for example) are more concerned with raw economic processes. But this battle will be fought as much in our media as it is at the farmer’s market and on the dinner table.

Have you seen the latest Burger King “Manthem” commercials? They feature growing numbers of men abandoning their feminizing jobs and families, grabbing a Texas Double Whopper and finding their inner chauvinist. Sure, there is element of hyperbole here, but as with BK’s Whopperettes ad, if a satirical point is being made, it is lost in the men’s easy assumption of their supposedly new-found identity.

Combine this re-identification of men with meat with the proliferation of steakhouses and the manly culture they embody across the land. Aficionados of traditional meat-and-potatoes American cuisine are not taking all this talk about bovine growth hormones, childhood obesity, etc., lying down.

At least not until they’ve finished that really big steak.

How can you tell when your nation’s health care system has collapsed?

One sure sign is the creation of a television program that offers access to health care to the desperately ill as a prize. The show has now materialized on American TV screens. Everything about it shows just how badly broken health care in America truly is.

Thus begins this critique of the new ABC series Miracle Workers.

Columnists Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and Glenn McGee, director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical Center, note that what’s really irritating is that the show “makes health care seem a privilege, something you are lucky to get, rather than something you should have as a matter of right.”

They add:

It suggests that what is most exciting about medicine occurs on the frontier, as if having your migraines treated, your alcoholism rehabilitated, your back pain relieved, your wheelchair properly sized or your congestive heart failure managed would not be miraculous if they happened today for everyone with these problems.

Worse still, the show sends out the message minute after phony minute that there is hope. Well, if you have a lot of money there is. If you don’t, then this show is about as close as you are going to get to cutting-edge health care.

Read the rest here.

Plus: “The Doctor Will See You for Exactly Seven Minutes,” an op-ed by Peter Salgo.

So. Today?s the 33rd anniversary of Roe and not only are we still fighting to defend the damn thing, we?re seriously on the verge of losing it.

It?s half past time to take the gloves off, kids. The wingnuts did a long time ago. They both call us murderers and murder us with alarming alacrity.

My immodest proposal? A name change.

Are we ?pro-choice?? Sure. But so are Verizon and many school districts. When a word becomes associated with frozen dinners, it may no longer be the powerful political tool it once was.

So ask yourself: what is it you are really standing for when you stand for the right to legal, safe, affordable and available abortion? If you?re like me, you?re standing for the right for a woman to do whatever she damn well pleases with her own body and her own fertility. We?re not just standing for reproductive choice. We?re standing for reproductive freedom.

And what are we opposed to? What would those fetus-poster-wielding-murderers like to see? It?s not just the abstract, soft-focus opposition to our having a ?choice.? Let?s call it like it is: They want to force us to have babies we don?t want.

That?s called forced pregnancy.

Now, ?forced pregnancy? isn?t a new term, either. It?s used by the UN to describe ?the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population or carrying out other grave violations of international law.?

It?s also beginning to be adopted by some pro-Roe forces, and for very good reason: it fits like a love glove.

(more…)

Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association recently announced yet another new agreement on drug policy. It may even be the final agreement of the year. As such, we can now relax and know that drug use in baseball is under total control.

We also know that democracy is spreading across Iraq and throughout the Middle East. And Santa Claus is coming to town.

The policy was revised under pressure from members of Congress who saw their role as moral crusaders protecting the fabric of American life. Despite the fact that a dozen or so major league players and countless minor league players have been caught and punished under the previous policy, grandstanding members of Congress demanded more. John McCain, Jim Bunning and other House and Senate committee members can now go back to their constituents and proclaim their role in saving Western Civilization and sport in America. Judge Landis must be smiling on them.

At each stage in this process, the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, pronounced his great satisfaction with the agreements he reached with the MLBPA. As soon as significant members of Congressional committees called for a tougher policy, Selig discovered that the agreed upon policy was inadequate. The Commissioner apparently found that of the two groups that have made his life most difficult over the years, Congress was the more formidable foe. So he chose to do its bidding and abandon his agreements with the MLBPA. The fallout from Selig’s unilateral actions could have dire consequences — what looked like labor peace following the last collective bargaining agreement is now clearly in jeopardy.

As for the latest drug policy itself, it is far more sweeping than previous policies. An independent administrator will be responsible for conducting the program, and, in one of those lovely little signs of homage, the agreement “expressly recognizes the parties’ cooperation with congressional investigations.” In addition to increased penalties for steroid use, penalties will also be instituted for steroid possession and distribution.

Even more interesting, in some ways, is the inclusion of testing for amphetamines and penalties for amphetamine use, possession or distribution.

How will all of this affect the game of baseball itself? It is clear that the amphetamine policy will have a greater impact, if the detectors can stay ahead of the drug producers and maskers. “Greenies” have been a staple of the baseball culture for several decades. Jim Bouton discussed their use in Ball Four, and Pete Rose discussed the omnipresence of greenies in baseball clubhouses in a Playboy interview in September of 1979.

If greenies are good enough for Air Force pilots fighting fatigue on bombing runs, why not for Major League Baseball players?

(more…)

Ronnie Paris, Jr., was 3 years old when he died from being slapped on the head over and over by his father, Ronnie Paris, Sr., until the child went into a coma. The father did not want to “raise a sissy,” as the child had seemingly not been masculine enough for the father.

Karlien Carstens ran a small tuck stop out of her home. When her brother found her body, she was tied up with cords cut off of electrical appliances, with one cord tied tightly around her neck. She had also been strangled with some force.

Phool Chand Yadav was part of a drama company. He had been out with two men on a walk. Once these men discovered that he was biologically female by removing a false mustache and forcing him to disrobe, he was raped and murdered. After killing him, the killers replaced the false mustache.

They are just a few of the dozens of people who?ve been violently murdered in 2005 alone for a very simple crime: transgressing the gender binary.

I bring this up now because Sunday is the seventh annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is as good an opportunity as any to say: this bullshit must stop.

First off, let me just spell something out plainly. There is no gender binary, except in our minds. Medical science has identified least seven different varieties of chromosomal gender tags, including XXY, XXX, YYY, XYY, and XO, in addition to the much-ballyhooed XX and XY.

But in order for patriarchy to work, we need to know who the men are, and who the women are. If these categories were, in fact, the only two categories, and everyone fell naturally into them, this would be no problem. But we don?t. So gender requires a lot of policing. And those who are most threatening to the man/woman setup get the most brutal punishments.

Unfortunately, as this excellent Women?s eNews article explains, it?s too often the actual police doing the brutalizing. Which may explain why fully 92 percent of the 3,068 slayings worldwide over the past 30 years are still unsolved, with the murderers free to keep doing their fine work on behalf of the gender binary. (The police abuse issue is so bad that Amnesty International has had to get involved.)

So ?- have you been enjoying Commander in Chief? Are you fighting for abortion rights, or teaching self-defense, or agitating to close the wage gap for women, or engaged in any other gender-related activism? Then, even if you?ve never knowingly met a trans person in your life, you better start caring about their systematic and silent murder. Because when gender roles get challenged, the people who are most invested in them get angry. And the folks the farthest out on the front lines of the gender wars — whether they want to be fighting these battles or not — pay with their lives in ways so awful your brain won?t let you imagine them (but you can read more about them here).

Last year, there were over 212 Day of Remembrance events in eight countries. There?s probably one happening near you. This Sunday.

Don?t forget.

(PS ? if you want to get to know some living transpeople, may I recommend watching Transgeneration on the Sundance Channel, the best show no one?s talking about, according to The New Republic television critic, Lee Siegel. Gee, I wonder why?)

At least not if you rely on your metabolism to stay that way. This according a refreshing new Skeptical Inquirer article that sets the record straight on the ?obesity epidemic? ? namely, that while there are some risks attached, they are highly oversimplified and overstated by [gasp!] big pharma trying to push obesity drugs.

Lakshmi Chaudry at The L-Files sums it up nicely:

This isn’t to say that there aren’t significant risks attached to being morbidly obese, but the data makes no differentiation in terms of lifestyle and focuses entirely on BMI, which is highly misleading. It does not account for poor diet and lack of exercise, or the documented health risks associated with “weight cycling,” an effect of crash dieting. That a number of people are overweight because they are couch potatos and more likely to crash diet makes causality far more complicated than media reports would suggest. And studies show that obese men and women who have a healthy lifestyle are less likely to contract cardiovascular and other obesity-related diseases than thinner folks.

What is unarguable then is that everyone — irrespective of their weight — needs to eat better and get off the couch? This is terrible news for me, my cosmos, and my favorite NY-style pizza. Metabolism, sadly, is not destiny. But the rest of you should feel free to celebrate.

Thanks, L ? I think I will (I?m the third one from the left, smack in front):

This is a promotional photo for The Big Chill, a holiday show produced by Big Moves, the nation’s only organization dedicated to increasing size diversity in the world of dance. I?ll be doing spoken word in the show, and possibly wearing my red bikini top. If you?re in the Boston area you should come on down!

Rebecca Traister held nothing back in her assault of fashion companies that have dropped uber-waif Kate Moss following published photographs that show her cutting lines of coke — this despite the fact that Moss has previously acknowledged using drugs:

What this drama has done is lay bare the ugly skeleton that holds up a fashion industry that for some time has prized hollow cheeks and vacant eyes, stunted, prepubescent frames, and jutting collar bones from which fabric drapes beautifully. In other words, the body that is appealing to designers — and thus to consumers — is a body that looks like it has been ravaged by drugs. In order to stay employed, models must maintain this shape; to maintain the shape they must do something besides eat right and exercise regularly. Whether it’s cocaine or speed or heroin or caffeine or cigarettes or anorexia or bulimia or some combination of the above, most adult women cannot get bodies that look like Moss’ healthily, because hers is not a healthy body. [...]

Moss’ record alone renders Gloria Vanderbilt’s and Rimmel’s assertions of naivete ludicrous. And what about H&M’s statement to the New York Times, that “If someone is going to be the face of H&M, it is important they be healthy, wholesome and sound”? The spokeswoman also told the Times that after feedback, “we decided we should distance ourselves from any kind of drug abuse.”

Remember Capt. Renault’s assertion to Rick Blaine in “Casablanca” that he is “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,” just before the croupier hands him his winnings?

If it were important that the face of H&M be healthy, wholesome and sound, the company would have very few working models to choose from, and everyone — both in and out of the fashion industry — knows that.

Plus: When ms.musings posted “The Dialectic of Fat” by Catherine Orenstein, it sparked some debate over whether “fat” is just a white women’s issue. It’s not. Black women and other minorities are susceptible to eating disorders, though some studies indicate they are less likely to receive treatment.

“In the past 10 years, there has been a tremendous cultural shift: The image of the ideal body image is narrower,” Dr. Ira Sacker, an expert in eating disorders and founder of the Helping End Eating Disorders Foundation in New York, told The New York Times. “Black women, Latina women, they all feel the need to be thin to fit in.”

Denise Brodey writes:

Dr. Stefanie Gilbert, assistant professor of psychology at Howard University in Washington, said black women pictured in magazines often had body types similar to those of white models.

“These types also seem to be the ones who get the top jobs,” Dr. Gilbert said.

Paradoxically, said Dr. Striegel-Moore, the increased pressure on minority women to be thin has stemmed in part from companies’ efforts to increase diversity in their advertising, with images of thin, beautiful Asian-, Hispanic- and African-Americans joining those of whites.

But media images are not the only factors in the development of eating disorders. Studies show that being overstressed and overweight also puts women at risk, Dr. Striegel-Moore said. Eating disorders often begin in the early teenage years and carry into the 20’s, although researchers have recently begun to document cases of middle-aged women developing the disorders.

Continue reading here.

*cross-posted from msmusings.net

Whew. I’m still wiped out — until I crashed last night, I had slept only two hours since Tuesday, and the whole trip was pretty exhausting — so I’m starting slow with a few links to stories you might have missed. I’ll write more this weekend, including a wrap-up about the rescue effort and the people we met along the way. But for now …

* Are You a Vixen or Virgin? Inquiring minds want to know. Joann Klimkiewicz of the Hartford Courant reports on how tabloids are using the Jennifer Aniston-Brad Pitt break-up to reinforce some old stereotypes about women:

It’s the two-category system: the virgin and the whore. And, to hear the glossies tell it, you’re apparently one or the other.

Cinderella and the evil stepmother. Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor. Betty and Veronica. Mary Ann and Ginger.

And now, introducing: Jen and Angelina.

“The powerful seductress is a good sell,” says Margo Maine, a West Hartford psychologist and author of “The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure To Be Perfect.” “It’s an attractive story line.”

And it’s one that serves to perpetuate myths about women, say experts who study how women are portrayed in the media, one that reduces them to sexual caricatures and pits them against each other in the made-up contest of “who gets the man?”

* Cynthia Hall Clements salutes a new feminist hero. The columnist for The Lufkin Daily News in Texas writes about Dr. Susan Wood, who resigned in protest over the FDA’s decision to delay ruling on over-the-counter access to emergency contraception.

A woman who resigns her professional position in an act of courageous defiance to oppose her boss’s decision rather than accommodate his narrow social and political agenda, that woman is a feminist hero to me, and should be for all women in this country, regardless of personal ideology. Especially liberals and even conservatives should respect this display of audacity, for a woman to take a public stand for her convictions on women’s health issues at her own personal expense.

The Village Voice’s Rachel Aviv talked with Woods this week about the outrageous claims made by Plan B opponents.

* The three women leading nanotechnology research at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell used to be known as the “nanonprincesses.” Today they’re “nanoqueens.” Robert Gavin of the Boston Globe writes:

The professors, Julie Chen, Joey Mead, and Carol Barry, earned their lofty, if lighthearted, titles with a collaboration that has landed more than $8 million in grants; established two nanotechnology research centers on campus; and put UMass-Lowell at the forefront of an emerging field that builds structures and devices one-thousandth the width of a human hair. [...]

“Three women in charge of centers at a single engineering college?” said Bevlee Watford, a past president of Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network, a national group in Denver. “There are engineering colleges that don’t have three tenure-track women faculty.”

* Women’s Talk Radio? XM Satellite Radio announced this week its launching “a new talk and lifestyle channel targeting women called Take Five.” In addition to offering radio broacasts of the Ellen DeGeneres Show and the new Tyra Banks Show, Take Five will feature original programming, including The Judith Warner Show, hosted by the author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. I wonder if the channel will approach politics as much as the new Iraqi radio station aimed at women.

* Feminists are icky. Zatera Ul, a blog by a “conservative Christian physics chick,” lists ms.musings and Feministing.com under its “Ew, Gross!” heading.

*cross-posted from msmusings.net

I don’t know if yesterday’s resignation of a top FDA official over the delay of emergency contraception will serve as a wake-up call to the Bush administration’s handling of women’s health. Though the FDA’s own advisory committee and medical professionals around the country are in favor of over-the-counter status for Plan B, folks like Wendy are ruling the roost:

Wendy Wright, policy director for Concerned Women for America and a critic of easier access to Plan B, welcomed Wood’s resignation.

“Thank goodness there is now one less political activist at the FDA who puts radical feminist ideology above women’s health,” she wrote in a statement.

Oh, please.

Chris Mooney, who does a terrific job deconstructing the politics of science, has a new book out — The Republican War on Science — that I’m eager to read, though I fear those around me will soon be wishing I chose something on the lighter, brighter side. The debate in this country over science and truth is beginning to wear on me.

So with that as an introduction, Moving Ideas Network has published a report on obstacles to birth control caused by the religious objections of doctors, insurance companies, hospitals, pharmacies and pharmacists. “Refusal Clauses & the Fight for Birth Control” includes additional resource lists and action items and is well worth a look.

The report links to this Planned Parenthood survey of the prescription policies of the top 50 national pharmacy chains. I recently moved and received a $25 coupon to switch my prescriptions to CVS. Now I’ve got a second reason.

Plus: Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas (PPHSET) will provide a free one-month supply of birth control pills or one free emergency contraception kit to women who fled Louisiana and Mississippi following the Katrina hurricane. Read the press release here.

*cross-posted from msmusings.net

The National Women’s Law Center came out Wednesday in opposition to Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts. The Washington, D.C.-based group, which advocates for women and girls, also released a report on Robert’s record on critical legal rights for women. The NWLC is also covering Roberts’ nomination via its blog, NominationWatch.org.

In other news, Susan Wood, a senior FDA official, resigned today because of the FDA’s refusal to grant over-the-counter status for emergency contraception. Wood, the director of the Office of Women’s Health, wrote to friends and colleagues:

I regret to tell you that I am leaving the FDA, and will no longer be serving as the Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health and Director of the FDA Office of Women’s Health. The recent decision announced by the Commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women’s access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women’s health. I have spent the last 15 years working to ensure that science informs good health policy decisions. I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled. I therefore have submitted my resignation effective today.

I will greatly miss working with such an outstanding group of scientists, clinicians and support staff. FDA’s staff is of the highest caliber and it has been a privilege to work with you all. I hope to have future opportunities to work with you in a different capacity.

And in what may be the saddest — and most surprising — news of all, it seems the chuch/state divide is going the way of the Dodo bird.

*cross-posted from Ms. magazine’s “ms.musings” blog.

Alongside The New York Times’s front-page coverage of the Hurricane Katrina’s devasting blow (if you’re wondering how to help, check FEMA’s list of organizations that could use volunteers or donations), there are two stories that deserve mention.

The first, “Where a Cuddle With Your Baby Requires a Bribe,” is a maddening piece about poverty, corruption and the devaluing of females. Celia W. Dugger reports from Bangalore, India, on the price women must pay to see their babies after giving birth. This is what happened to Nesam Velankanni:

Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want to see your child, families are told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for a girl, a lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The practice is common here in the city, surveys confirm.

Mrs. Velankanni was penniless, and her mother-in-law had to pawn gold earrings that had been a precious marriage gift so she could give the money to the attendant, or ayah. Mrs. Velankanni, a migrant to Bangalore who had been unprepared for the demand, wept in frustration.

“The ayah told my mother-in-law to pay up fast because the night duty doctor was leaving at 8 a.m. and wanted a share,” she recalled.

The grand thefts of rulers may be more infamous, but the bitter experience of petty corruption, less apparent but no less invidious, is an everyday trial for millions of poor people across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Increasingly, it is being recognized as a major obstacle to economic development, robbing the impoverished of already measly incomes and corroding the public services they desperately need.

Below this story is a photo of a baby being cuddled by her parents, but it’s connected to a different piece — “Rape Charge Follows Marriage to a 14-Year-Old.” It’s also a story about poverty and class.

Matthew Koso, 22, began a relationship with his now 14-year-old wife, Crystal, when she was 12. Crystal, who will enter the ninth grade in September, gave birth one week ago to a baby girl. They named her Samara Ann, after a character in the horror movie, The Ring. The couple lives in Falls City, Neb., with Matthew’s parents, though they had to cross the border to Kansas to legally wed.

Now Nebraska’s attorney is charging Matthew Koso with statutory rape, and the community is up in arms about it. It seems that since Matthew stepped up and “did the right thing” by marrying the young mother, the law shouldn’t be an issue here. Jodi Wilgoren writes:

“This was not a close call,” the attorney general said in an interview. “We weren’t talking about a 19-year-old-and-one-day senior in high school and his 15-year-old-and-364-day sophomore girlfriend. We were talking about a grown man and a child.”

Mr. Bruning said he was shocked that more than 80 percent of the 250 people — most from outside Nebraska — who had contacted his office opposed the prosecution. Similar sentiment abounds here in Falls City, where people say putting Mr. Koso in jail would most likely land his wife and child on welfare, an unnecessary double-burden for taxpayers.

“They are trying to make a right out of a wrong,” Mardell Rehrs, 67, said of the couple on Monday morning. “Give them a chance.”

Kansas’ governor, meanwhile, is mortified that her state allows children as young as 12 to marry and will propose raising the minimum age when the state Legislature reconvenes. (I’d like to tie this in with Kansas’ debate on teaching creationism in public schools and the value of sex education across the country, but that will have to wait.)

It’s a messy situation for all involved. By repeatedly mentioning Matthew Koso’s learning disabilities and problems with social interaction — “His own peers never accepted him,” said his mother — it’s clear that Matthew is not as emotionally mature as other 22-year-olds. He was discharged from the Marines for medical reasons and now works for $9.27 an hour loading trucks. Both his mother and Crystal’s mother receive Supplemental Security Income for disabilities and say they will take care of the baby when Crystal returns to school.

Crystal said she would like to finish high school, but at this point has no plans to attend college. She wants to have two more children — “much later on.” She and Matthew seem, by all accounts, to be committed to each other and their daughter.

Is jail an appropriate punishment at this point? I don’t think so, though I do hope Matthew is found guilty and placed on probation. I hope that he and Crystal both receive the support services they and their baby will need, and I hope Crystal completes her education and thinks twice about college. I hope they learn how to practice safe sex and hold off on having more children for a while. I hope her body, still the body of a child, is healthy and strong after giving birth. I hope this Nebraska community addresses the issue of teenage pregnancies by embracing comprehensive sex education in its schools. I hope teenagers who think a baby will fill a void in their lives and provide them with unconditional love are taught the value of loving themselves unconditionally first.

I hope Samara’s life takes a different turn.

*cross-posted from Ms. magazine’s “ms.musings” blog.

“Since January, governors have signed several dozen antiabortion measures ranging from parental consent requirements to an outright ban looming in South Dakota,” writes Ceci Connolly in The Washington Post. “Not since 1999, when a wave of laws banning late-term abortions swept the legislatures, have states imposed so many and so varied a menu of regulations on reproductive health care.”

It gets worse:

Three states have passed bills requiring that women seeking an abortion be warned that the fetus will feel pain, despite inconclusive scientific data on the question. West Virginia and Florida approved legislation recognizing a pre-viable fetus, or embryo, as an independent victim of homicide. And in Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt (R) has summoned lawmakers into special session Sept. 6 to consider three antiabortion proposals.

While national leaders in the abortion debate focus on the upcoming nomination hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, grass-roots activists have been changing the legal landscape one state at a time. In most cases, the antiabortion forces have prevailed, adding restrictions on when and where women can get contraceptive services and abortions, and how physicians provide them.

Antiabortion activists say they have pursued a two-pronged approach that aimed to reduce the number of abortions immediately through new restrictions and build a foundation of lower court cases designed to get the high court to eventually reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision making the procedure legal.

On the other side, a handful of states have approved provisions that make it easier for women to get emergency contraception, known as the “morning after” pill. However, two Republican governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and George E. Pataki of New York, vetoed such bills.

Locally, Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) has signed legislation that makes a “viable fetus” a distinct victim of a crime such as murder or manslaughter. Virginia did not enact any laws related to abortion.

“Every year, we see a lot of legislation introduced,” said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research group that specializes in family and reproductive health. “This year, we have seen a lot more action than in recent years. The level of bills enacted has been much higher.”

Continue reading here.

Plus: Last week, Rebecca Traister from Salon reported on reproductive rights groups striking back against Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts. In it she mentioned feminist bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti taking on Markos Moulitsas Zuniga‘ “frustrations with NARAL’s ’single issue’ politics, and their single-minded devotion to what he called a ‘pet cause.’”

*cross-posted from Ms. magazine’s “ms.musings” blog.