feminist blogs

Now I know why I’ve been watching “Veronica Mars” reruns instead of reading the newspaper in the morning: Creepy stories like “First Signs of Puberty Seen in Younger Girls,” from Monday’s New York Times, which reports on a new Pediatrics study showing that girls are more likely to start developing breasts by age 7 or 8 than they were in the past.

The researchers looked at 1,239 girls aged 6 to 8 recruited in New York, San Francisco, and Cincinnati. The findings:

At 7 years, 10.4 percent of white, 23.4 percent of black and 14.9 percent of Hispanic girls had enough breast development to be considered at the onset of puberty.

At age 8, the figures were 18.3 percent in whites, 42.9 percent in blacks and 30.9 percent in Hispanics.

Yeah. Awesome.

Standard caveat about how nobody seems to have a real clue about why this is happening (and by “this” I mean, an average of 30 percent of 8 year olds growing boobs). Obesity may or may not be a factor. Race and related differences in socioeconomic experiences may or may not be a factor. A historic misreporting in medical textbooks about the onset of puberty may or may not be a factor.

And guess what else may or may not be a factor? Environmental chemicals. Like the hormone disruptors found in lots of our cosmetics and personal care products. That we use, and studies show, enter our bodies and pass over the placenta barrier to our developing babies. And that we slather on our kids. I don’t just mean playing dress-up. We’re also talking about baby lotion, sunscreen, shampoo, you get it. (And also chemicals found in plastics, furniture, cleaning supplies… again, you’re smart folk, you’re up on this.)

“Young girls are exposed to dozens of potentially toxic chemicals on a daily basis,” says Ted Schettler, M.D., M.P.H., Science Director for the Science and Environmental Health Network and a spokesperson for the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition. “Some of these can mimic the natural hormone, estrogen. Although individually their estrogenic activity may be relatively weak, their effects are additive. In the aggregate they could be having significant health effects, including contributing to the early onset of breast development.”

Whenever scientists do zero in on a clear explanation for this, I’m thinking it’s going to be an intersection of all of these race/weight/chemical exposure factors. Which makes me mad, because there’s a lot about that situation that we can’t control. Over at Beauty U, Campbell mentioned a few weeks ago how she was trying to budget for organic milk for her six-year-old daughter. “I don’t like this business about boobies on little girls,” she said. Campbell is black (and black girls had the highest rates of early breast development in this and other studies). She’s also a single mom patching together a living on babysitting after getting laid off from her waitress job. “It’s no joke,” she said to Meg, another single mom, with a two-year-old daughter. And Meg just shook her head. “Do you see what organic milk costs?”

Right. Especially when that’s only the beginning of usually-more-expensive safer product swaps that moms have to think about now.

And while I’m feeling frustrated and out of control about all of that, I’m thinking about all the tween and teen girls who have been coming into the spa lately because we just got a new line of glitter eye makeup and you know how tween and teen girls (and um, me) love glitter eye makeup. I’ve been digging it, because it’s rad to see a girl come in all shy and uncomfortable with herself and then get kinda glowy and excited when we sparkle her up. It’s makeup doing what makeup should do: Put a big ole smile on your face. After the clients leave, we play around ourselves, drawing glitter rainbows and cherries and fireworks on each other’s cheeks. (Or, in Campbell’s case, painting her lips in black glitter topped with rhinestones. Because she’s fierce like that.)

The glitter line we use features a product called “Liquid Sugar,” which you use to get the glitter to adhere to skin. So I checked the label, and of course, there’s nothing remotely related to sugar inside. Of the eight ingredients listed (water, SDA-40 alcohol, acrylates, octyacrylamide copolymer, triethanolamine, propylene glycol, imidazolidinyl urea, methylparaben, and propylparaben), the last five appear on The Ingredient Blacklist put together by the ladies of No More Dirty Looks and are cited in the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database for being linked to a variety of health concerns, including — wait for it— hormone disruption.

And I guess it’s being up close to some angsty puberty-has-just-onset girls while I paint glitter on them that’s reminding me how stupid hard puberty can be. And how I wouldn’t wish it on the average seven year old. So add glitter eyeshadow to today’s list of frustrations. Because we’re talking about a product that, in theory, should serve no other purpose than to make girls smile — but of course, we’ve all watched enough Baby Beauty Pageants to see it’s also about promoting standards that don’t always lead to things like high self-esteem. And while those standards are messing with their heads, the chemicals inside the product are messing with their bodies.

So Campbell’s daughter. Meg’s daughter. My own two-year-old niece. And all of those little girls in that study.

That’s at least 1,242 good reasons for us to push for change. Like the Safe Chemicals Act and the Safe Cosmetics Act, both of which would require more research on how all the crap in our products impacts our kids and get the most dangerous chemicals off store shelves.

It’s just one factor. Just one piece of this whole vicious beauty cycle, where our society tells girls they have to look a certain sexy/young/thin way, pushes products on them to create that look, forgets to figure out if those products are safe… and then gets scared when they start to look sexy way before we’re ready for it.

But writing to my Congresspeople about those laws feels like one good thing I can control today. So I’m on it.

(And now, back to Veronica Mars.)

[Photo: "The Queen" (aka a little girl I would so be best friends with) by Brittany Randolph, via Flickr. ]

Great Recession? What recession? The world’s millionaires and billionaires — now totaling 10 million — saw their overall wealth jump 18.9 percent last year, to $39 trillion.

The surge in the stock market in 2009 restored many people back to the ranks of the rich as the financial crisis abated. The number of people with at least $1 million in assets beyond their homes and household goods climbed 17 percent, according to a report on the world’s wealth by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, a Paris-based business consulting firm. Their total wealth approached the 2007 peak of $40.7 trillion, after a 20 percent plunge to $32.8 trillion in 2008.

“We are already seeing distinct signs of recovery, and in some areas a complete return to 2007 levels of wealth and growth,” Sallie Krawcheck, president of global wealth and investment management at Bank of America, said in a statement. As expected, the most millionaires could be found in the United States, where their ranks rose 16.5 percent, to 2.87 million, last year, according to the report. Their total wealth in North America rose 17.8 percent, to $10.7 trillion. 

I found it interesting that the list from 1968 is straightforward, just the title and author.  The list from this year is full of explanation, as if some ad man is puking it at the reader, like it’s a con game of some sort and a hard sell.   The list of authors is also fascinating.  I’ll leave this with you but I know what I think and it isn’t good.  Story telling is an art and writers are supposed to artists, not vending machines for pulp fiction and crap.  Am I being harsh?  You tell me.

As a reader I’m offended and I feel as if I’ve been had every time I walk into a book store and see the shelves lined with formulaic stories that degrade the art form. This would be the same as Van Gogh or Georgia O’keefe painting billboards or Mozart scoring a Nike ad.  The same story is being told over and over again with a new location and set of character names.  The plots are identical with tiny bits of titillation strategically placed at certain intervals to keep the reader engaged before they realize they’ve been had and put the book down.  Eventually, the reader becomes what I personally refer to as a hamster reader.  They devour the same stories over and over again by the same author stereotype, not because they are good, but because they are familiar and a habit, just like a hamster going around on the same wheel.  Grim isn’t it?

As a writer, a proponent of freedom of expression and art as a tool of social change and communication, this scares the shit out of me.  Remember Orwell’s 1984? Media control at its finest.  Everywhere you look, you are not only being told what you will read, but what you will think.  I believe the desired result is a less intelligent and apathetic public because a malleable consumer is a careless and generous person with their money.  Oh yeah, that’s what it’s all about now isn’t it?  MONEY.

New York Times Best Seller List June 9, 1968  Fiction

1. Airport by  Arthur Hailey

2. Couples by John Updike

3. Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal

4. Topaz by Leon Uris

5. Vanished by Fletcher Knebel

6. Testimony of two men by Taylor Caldwell

7. The Triumph by John Kenneth Galbraith

8. Christy by Katherine Marshall

9. The Confessions of Matt Turner by William Styron

10. Tunc by Lawrence Durrell

New York Times Best Seller List June 11, 2010

Guy Trebay has a little “Noticed” story tucked in the back of the New York Times’ Thursday Styles today, called “Even Macho Toes Like to Breathe,” about how Birkenstocks have become hip with hipster guys, thanks to the fact that “a posse of American fashion editors” have been having a moment with the thong style Birk (above).

I was going to write more about cellulite today because it’s been the theme of my week at Beauty U (stay tuned, you’ll get it next week) but instead, I have to drop everything and address this.

As I blogged a few weeks ago, I am a fairly shoe-obsessed person, in fact a reformed Shoe Astronaut — the type of woman who claims obviously uncomfortable shoes are so comfy because she wants you to think she’s just that hot. I’ve been really working on this, embracing my love of Converse and other shoes that are comfy while still being cute, and no longer pretending that not-comfy shoes are anything other than an absurd indulgence.

(And I know you non-shoe people out there are like, What the what? How can uncomfortable shoes be an indulgence? When they are this pretty, is how. It’s the same part of your brain that says yes to the third mojito even though you know the hangover is now a foregone conclusion.)

So, okay, yay for me. But Birkenstocks, people? BIRKENSTOCKS. I’m having a very complicated reaction to this news.

Reaction #1: It’s just an indisputable fact that Birkenstocks are never going to shake their Hacky Sack associations. They don’t even want to! They’re too busy playing Hacky Sack. From today’s article: “It was never a goal of ours at Birkenstock to be fashionable with capital F,” said Shelly Glasgow, the director of product development for Birkenstock USA. No fear there, Shelly. And while I respect Hacky Sack-ing and the related fashion choices as a valid alternate lifestyle, I just linked to a $320 Kate Spade shoe. Also I have the hand-eye coordination of a drunk five-year-old. It’s not gonna be me.

Reaction #2: People are either Birk Lovers or Birk Haters and I’m a Birk Hater. Because of the above connotation issue and well, the general fugliness of the original Birks (I mean. What is this?). I think it comes down to the way they make people look all toes. Also, they are particularly popular among vegetarians, and I’m real pro-bacon. One of my best friends, K, recently promised to take a 75 minute train ride from her house to mine in order to smack me upside the head if she even sensed I was contemplating a Birkenstock purchase. Actually I requested that she promise to do this, because I was having a little panic attack (and purchasing a pair of blue wedge sandals to calm me down) after that whole Shoe Astronauts post.

Reaction #3: K, get on the train. Because I’m wavering. It started when I was doing some pulse-taking and figured out that not one, not two, but at least three of my other good friends — who are all extraordinarily stylish from the ankles up — have hopped on this Birk thong trend with glee and abandon. One of them is a lifelong Birk wearer, but the others are more recent adopters and they’re proud of it, thankyouverymuch. Suddenly, the Birk Lovers are outnumbering the Birk Haters in my life, which I guess just proves that this article is right. So now I’m thinking about this thong style with ripped, rolled up jeans and cute tops, and I’m like, well that’s kind of sweet. Ditto just-above-the-knee-length sundresses. What is happening here?!

Reaction #4: Hating Birkenstocks is maybe kinda pointless. I mean, they’re just ugly (and maybe not even all that ugly now that I know they come in lavender, plus, I know, I know, ugliness is totally subjective, aren’t I always the one telling you that?). They don’t hurt anyone.

And the whole love/hate Birk thing is really about finding your social norms and clinging to them, even when they stop making so much sense. I don’t want to be that girl. I’m just not sure I’m a Birk girl. Even if the creative director at Lucky says they’re cool.

Though I admit that’s really helping me out.

Okay, let’s hear it. Where do you stand on Birks? Have they become hip and are you okay with that? Am I being horribly Beauty Industrial Complex-indoctrinated to be so anti-Birk? Or is that okay because it really is a travesty, what they do to people’s toes?

Oh God. I just looked at them on Zappos where you can see all the shoe at all angles, and I have serious concerns about what they do to ankles, too.

[Photo of the Lavender Natural Leather Luxor Birkenstock, from Birkenstock, obviously. PS. I wear a size 6.5.]

5 states now require providers to perform ultrasounds on women seeking abortions, with several other states encouraging women to do so via counseling/consent provisions.  Pro-life proponents of this expensive, unnecessary, and patronizing requirement hope that viewing a fetal image will dissuade women from choosing their choice.  Au contraire.

The New York Times reports that out of 254 women at 2 British Columbia clinics, none reversed their decisions to terminate as a result of viewing an ultrasound.  Zero.  At an Alabama clinic, patients and providers report that ultrasounds helped ease the decision to abort:

In some instances, the ultrasounds have affected women in ways not intended by anti-abortion strategists. Because human features may barely be detectable during much of the first trimester, when 9 of 10 abortions are performed, some women find viewing the images reassuring.

“It just looked like a little egg, and I couldn’t see arms or legs or a face,” said Tiesha, 27, who chose to view her 8-week-old embryo before aborting it at the Birmingham clinic. “It was really the picture of the ultrasound that made me feel it was O.K.

Remember,  61% of abortions in the U.S. are obtained by women who already have one or more children:

Like other patients, Laura, who has a 17-year-old son, said she took offense at the state’s implicit suggestion that she had not fully considered her choice.

“You don’t just walk into one of these places like you’re getting your nails done,” she said. “I think we’re armed with enough information to make adult decisions without being emotionally tortured.”

Laura Bush: Pro-Gay Marriage? – Gay Politics
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Could Still Be Repealed This Year – Gay Politics
Would You Sell Your Ova to Make Some Cash? – Tenured Radical
Is Elena Kagan a Lesbian? – Mother Jones
Liberals, Conservatives, and Abortion – New York Times
The AIDS Epidemic Enters Old Age – Poz Magazine