The XX Factor: What women really think.

The "Botax" Is Actually a Great Idea

A post from DoubleX intern Jessica Dweck:

With all due respect to Slate's Christopher Beam, I don’t agree that the "botax" tucked into the Senate health care bill is a bad idea. Much as it pains me to swallow conventional wisdom, the obvious conclusion in this case—that taxing elective cosmetic surgery is a great way to raise revenue for health care reform—also happens to be the correct one ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Forget the Cost, Give Us Our Mammograms

Depressing poll numbers from Gallup and USA Today (via Instapundit): Seventy-six percent of women say they disagree or strongly disagree with the recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to delay mammograms to age 50. And 84 percent ages 35 to 49 say they plan to get the screenings anyway. Why? Because they're suspicious and confused: "Seventy-six percent of women said they believe that the panel based its conclusions on cost, even though the task force's report included only scientific studies. Women also perceive their breast cancer risk to be higher than it really is."

Terrific: We're having another death panel moment. The promise of sensible cost-cutting, grounded in evidence-based medicine, gets plowed under ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Sign of the Times in Baltimore

The Baltimore City Council has passed legislation that would, if enacted, require crisis pregnancy centers to display signs saying that they don’t offer birth control or abortions. This measure is annoying on a number of levels, as the libertarian in me generally supports a business’ or charity’s prerogative to operate according to its own mission and guidelines and beliefs. I mean, it’s a bit like telling a Catholic church it must post a sign saying there are no Torahs or Qurans in the pews: Duh. It’s also insulting to the women who go to these centers: Aren’t they smart enough to figure out pretty quickly what a place has to offer? If they wanted an abortion, wouldn’t they have sought out Planned Parenthood or an abortion clinic? ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Clarity, Climate, and the Fort Hood Massacre

Bill Bennett has a post up at National Review demanding that Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s murder of 13 people be deemed “terrorism.” Forty-nine percent of Americans apparently prefer the phrase “killing spree.” This, we are to understand, is the terminology of the morally unserious, the purveyors of “psycho-babble,” the “politically correct” masses who prefer the “language of mush.” Avoidance of the word “terrorism” is taken to be an avoidance of clarity.

Whether you want to use the word terrorism probably depends on whether you see Hasan’s actions as the isolated ravings of a madman or as part of some larger ongoing struggle ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Free-Range Parenting Movement

Hot Global Warming Conspiracy

Stefanie Spielman, RIP

Know More, Screen Less

Emily B, I agree with you that it’s really unfortunate that the conclusion that we don’t need to routinely do mammograms until 50, instead of aparking a national, rational discussion about the advisability of “screening and prevention,” has become the harbinger that we’re all going to live under British health care rationing. The debate over whether we benefit from searching for early cancers is not new, and no wonder the public is so confused. This is like the “no fat” to “no carbs” pendulum swings on official diet recommendation ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

The Mammogram Mania

I've been trying to understand the flap this week over the recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Task Force—a group ill-prepared to handle the controversy—to delay routine mammograms to age 50 for most women. And now, in a truly terrible coincidence of timing, we have a second round of commotion over the advice of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to push pap smears to screen for cervical cancer back to age 21 ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Home for Thanksgiving

A post from DoubleX Staff:

I know what they say, that holidays are occasions to revisit family stress. Many a great novel and movie has been built on this premise. And in general, I would say it's true. The Jewish holidays are all about starving and yelling. Vacations involve too much childcare. But for me, Thanksgiving is the blissful exception. Maybe it's because I really like my in-laws. Maybe it's because turkey has a soporific effect. Or maybe it's because my mother-in-law bakes dozens of pies, at a ratio that works out to be about one per person. Who could complain about that? ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Time Magazine Prematurely Applauds an End to Hover Parenting

A post from DoubleX writer KJ Dell'Antonia: 

Time magazine's "Can These Parents Be Saved?" story offers a glorious rundown of the rampant possibilities for overparenting that have become available in recent years. From kid leashes ("Kinderkords") to fears about kindergarden "pencil-holding-deficiency," the opportunities for parental self-congratulation are plentiful—almost anyone can think "I may have hovered once in a while, but I was never that bad" ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

It's Time For Some Competition, Yoginis!

Yoga is a meditative practice sometimes thought to help liberate the soul from all worldly suffering. The Olympics are a tribalistic sporting event in which nation states battle to produce impressive feats of human athleticism. Bikram Choudhury—a man who teaches yoga in a speedo and a diamond-studded Rolex, guards his trademarked pose sequences like a Rottweiler on meth, and likes to compare his balls to “atom bombs”—says its high time to combine the two. “This,” Bikram’s wife tells the New York Times, “is our dream" ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Why Oprah Is Giving Up the Mic

Oprah Winfrey is going to announce today that she will be leaving her eponymous talk show in 2011. The New York Times believes Winfrey is resigning from network TV in order to focus on the cable network she's working on, called OWN, which will feature shows from all of her favorite cronies, like Dr. Oz, Rachael Ray, and Dr. Phil. While this might be the case, I think another reason Oprah is hanging up the mic is because she has destroyed the core of what made her so popular in the first place: She's no longer relatable ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Famous Authors on Writer's Block: Junot Diaz's Sweet Spot is in the Bathroom

A post from DoubleX writer Lauren Bans:

Last week the Wall Street Journal interviewed basically every good living writer and asked them to share tips on sitting down and penning a book. The only clear lesson to emerge from the piece (titled "How To Write A Great Book") is that there is no set step-by-step instructional for writing a great book. That, and writing is hard so famous authors invent their own eccentric tactics to deal with the inevitable torture that is writer’s block ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

A Brief Defense of Sarah Palin

Women Need a Pap Smear for Breast Cancer

A guest post from Cindy Pearson, the executive director of the National Women's Health Network:

Mammography screening just doesn’t work very well in women before menopause, as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has now recognized. Everyone hoped that it would. But in 1993, it became clear from well-done studies that our hopes hadn’t panned out, and screening just didn’t work well for women in their 40s (or at all, for even younger women). The fact that most women didn’t know this, and instead received a falsely optimistic message about the life-saving benefits of once-a-year mammography screening, was incredibly frustrating. More background here.

At the National Women’s Health Network, we’re glad that the federally appointed task force has told the truth about what studies have found. Now women have a better chance of getting an honest assessment about the value of a heavily promoted technology. Information is always a good thing ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

The New Mammogram Guidelines Smell Like Rationing

We keep hearing from proponents of health care reform that government rationing of health care is a “canard.” We don’t have health care reform yet, but with the new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that women shouldn’t get mammograms until the age of 50, and then only every two years, it feels like we’re getting the rationing.

The Los Angeles Times writes that “[i]nsurance companies and Medicare administrators … said they they would continue to pay for the procedure -- although it is not clear how long they can resist the panel's influence.” The LAT adds that the panel’s recommendations are “generally followed” by insurers and Medicare ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

My Husband Went to Argentina, and All I Got Was This Lousy Divorce

A post from DoubleX writer KJ Dell'Antonia:

Politico.com reports that days after husband Mark Sanford admitted to having an affair, Jenny Sanford filed an application to trademark her name for use in "product merchandising to be sold at online retail store featuring clothing, mugs and other household items; stickers, decals, notepads.’” Herein, a few ideas that should sell out fast. OK, we get that this kind of thing is probably exactly what Jenny Sanford is trying to prevent. But here are a few items we'd like to see in our scorned-wife-fantasy-revenge-scenario of the still- (but presumably soon-to-be-former) Mrs. Sanford's store (that would be VindictiveBitch.com):

The "My husband went to Argentina and all I got was this damn divorce?" mug ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Going Fake: Sarah Palin's Book Rewrites History

Emily Y., Emily B., Hanna, and Jessica: You’re all so on point with your observations of Sarah Palin. Like Emily Y., I would like to see her go away, but not before I add my voice to the chorus of why I believe she is a fraud.

I watched Palin on Oprah yesterday afternoon. I wanted to hear what she had to say, since I have no intention of reading, let alone buying, her book. There are enough published excerpts of Going Rogue that I’ve already gotten my fill ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Sarah, Go Away