By Ann • 15 years ago

Health provider or plastic-surgery pusher?

A reader writes in…

I went to the OBGYN for a check up, and while I was cooling my feet for two hours waiting for the doctor, I found myself staring at multiple shiny pamphlets advertising laser surgery, microdermabrasion, and botox. In an OBGYN office.
Then I found out that this Laser Surgery place shares all its rooms with the OBGYN. I feel like the two practices are completely antithetical. One should create a nonjudgemental, private, safe and caring environment. The other preys on negative self-image and unbalanced expectations for women’s appearance. I felt outraged that they felt it was a good partnership.
Has anyone else found supposedly caring places for women sabotaged?

Yuck. Hopefully this is not a widespread trend.

A reader writes in…

I went to the OBGYN for a check up, and while I was cooling my feet for two hours waiting for the doctor, I found myself staring at multiple shiny pamphlets advertising laser surgery, ...
By Ann • 15 years ago

Food stamp money finally comes through

A class-action suit against New York City for refusing to provide food stamps to nearly 9,500 households was settled back in 2006, but the reimbursements are just going out now:

The payback does not quite amount to winning the lottery — the 18 largest reimbursements just top $5,000, and most average far less. And all of the credits can be used only for food.
Still, to many who had given up on or forgotten what they were owed, the money in their accounts, some of which arrived before any notice from the government to explain it, has been a rare moment of bounty at an otherwise dismal economic moment.
Monica Ryan learned of her good fortune when she went to ...

A class-action suit against New York City for refusing to provide food stamps to nearly 9,500 households was settled back in 2006, but the reimbursements are just going out now:

The payback does not quite amount to ...
By Ann • 15 years ago

Know of an awesome female drummer in Saudi Arabia?


…because the Accolade, a rock band made up of four women, is looking for one. I know we’re a little behind on this, but it’s never too late to recognize some bad-ass women:

“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.”
In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship — the ...


…because the Accolade, a rock band made up of four women, is looking for one. I know we’re a little behind on this, but it’s never too late to recognize some bad-ass women:

“In Saudi, yes, ...
By Samhita • 15 years ago

Upskirt photography, upskirt pornography.

Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon has an informative piece up about the increase of creepy upskirt photography. What is upskirt photography? When someone stands behind you or below you and snaps a pic on their camera phone up your skirt when you don’t realize it. Then shares it with other upskirt fetishists on the internets. It is gross, offensive, violating, and a very popular form of pornography.

When it comes to voyeurs who photograph or videotape up a woman’s skirt (known as “upskirting”) or snap a photo down a woman’s shirt (“downblousing”), though, “there are not many practical, legal remedies available to people who find themselves the victim,” says Anita Allen, a privacy expert and professor at Penn Law. That’s if ...

Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon has an informative piece up about the increase of creepy upskirt photography. What is upskirt photography? When someone stands behind you or below you and snaps a pic on their camera phone ...
By Samhita • 15 years ago

Indonesia’s Papua plans to implant microchip in those with AIDS

Please file this under-horrid short term solution plagued with serious ethical questions while not creating long-term change. It is unfortunate that this is considered a viable solution for the increase in rates of HIV infection in the state of Papua.

Indonesia’s Papua province is set to pass a bylaw that requires some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips in a bid to prevent them infecting others, a lawmaker said on Saturday.
Under the bylaw, which has caused uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown “actively sexual behavior” could be implanted with a microchip to monitor their activity, lawmaker John Manangsang said.
“It’s a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will ...

Please file this under-horrid short term solution plagued with serious ethical questions while not creating long-term change. It is unfortunate that this is considered a viable solution for the increase in rates of HIV infection in ...
By Miriam • 15 years ago

Quick Hit: Florida Supreme Court deems adoption ban unconstitutional

Via Queers United
From the Miami-Herald:

A Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday declared Florida’s 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional, allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster kids he has raised since 2004.
Moments after Lederman released the ruling, attorneys for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced they would appeal the decision to the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami.
The attorney general’s office had argued that gay men and lesbians are disproportionately more likely to suffer from mental illness or a substance abuse problem than straight people, rendering them less fit to parent — especially children in foster care who already are under tremendous stress.
In a ruling that, at times, reads more like a social ...

Via Queers United
From the Miami-Herald:

A Miami-Dade circuit judge Tuesday declared Florida’s 30-year-old ban on gay adoption unconstitutional, allowing a North Miami man to adopt two foster kids he has raised since 2004.
Moments after ...
By Miriam • 15 years ago

Saving on health care costs by crossing borders

An article in Newsweek chronicles a new phenomenon: outsourcing US health care to Mexico. People have been going abroad to save money on cosmetic procedures for quite some time (Brazil is an infamous destination for this) but this is something different:

Dorthea, 72, a retired bank teller, lives in Harlingen, Texas, a city of about 67,000 in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley. Like a lot of Texans, she’s crossed the border to Mexico a few times to buy cheap medication. But she’d never considered undergoing complicated medical procedures there–at least, not until she was quoted the prohibitive price of $30,000 for a gastric-band procedure, a treatment for obesity in which a band is placed around the stomach to ...

An article in Newsweek chronicles a new phenomenon: outsourcing US health care to Mexico. People have been going abroad to save money on cosmetic procedures for quite some time (Brazil is an infamous destination for this) ...

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