“Queerspawn: ‘Culturally
queer’ kids of LGBT parents come out of the closet”
Planned
Parenthood Teen Talk, 06.09
Alexis used to treat her mom’s
homosexuality as a “secret identity.” She was afraid
of being ridiculed at school, so she let everyone assume that
her “step-mom” (her mother’s partner) was
married to her dad instead of her mom.
But that all changed
last fall, when Alexis was assigned to write an essay about
something that changed her life. Her parents’ divorce
and her mother’s
coming out certainly fit the bill. When she read her essay
aloud to the whole class, her secret was blown. To her surprise,
it was a relief.
“I had major fear back then
because . . . I get this vibe from society that my family is
not accepted,” she says. “But now I’m glad
I came out (about having gay moms). I think the world needs
to know I’m not going to cower in fear because I’m
afraid of people making fun of my family.”
Read the full
article here.
Download a PDF of this article
here.
“Stay in Balance: Natural remedies
can help keep PMS symptoms at bay”
Yoga Journal, 08.08
“When monthly preperiod cramping, moodiness and fatigue
hit, it’s tempting to pop a pain reliever, down some
caffeine and keep powering through your day. But numbing the
discomfort or giving yourself an artificial energy boost won’t
address the underlying causes of your symptoms.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Taking Control of Birth Control”
teenwire.com, 03.04.08
Talking to your health care provider
about the big BC — birth
control — can be so mortifying you want to crawl right
out of your skin. But it can also be quick and painless.
And, most importantly, talking to your provider about contraception
can prevent a life-altering unintended pregnancy.
A recent study
in Pediatric Adolescent Gynecology asked teen moms whether
they used birth control before they got pregnant. Their answers
may — or may not — surprise you:
Most reported that they were too embarrassed to talk about
contraception with almost anyone, including their partner,
their parents, and their health care providers.
Read the full
article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Defining Virginity"
teenwire.com, 01.08.08
You've messed around. You've made
out. But did it cross the line to sex?
That's the question that
a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health tackled. The
study asked more than 1,000 teenagers between the ages of 14
and 19 what they'd have to do to lose their virginity and what
counts as abstinence.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Lighten Up: When winter’s gloom darkens
your mood, yoga can brighten your days”
Yoga Journal, 01.08
During much of the year, Becky Hahn cheerfully heads to her yoga mat in the morning,
enjoying the deep breaths and Sun Salutations that leave her body humming.
But in the wintertime, it’s a different story. From mid-October through
April, Hahn feels mentally and physically drained. She struggles to get out
of bed in the morning, withdraws from family and friends, and has a tough time
coping with unexpected obstacles.
Sometimes she has to drag herself to her mat, but the 26-year-old Pennsylvania
resident makes sure not to miss her practice. Her regular yoga sessions make
her seasonal depression manageable. When she started doing yoga five years
ago, the change in her mood took a few weeks. But once she started feeling
an effect, she said, “The sunshine was back.”
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article
here.
“Do I Look Weird? How girls can feel better
about their bodies”
teenwire.com, 10.02.07
You're a teenage girl, and in
addition to worrying about doing well in school and whether the
person you've got a crush on knows you're alive, you're worried
about your body. A lot. You dread someone seeing you naked. You
think your breasts are abnormal. You have hair in strange places.
You're too skinny, or too fat, or maybe you feel strangely small
in some places and strangely big in others. And your vulva? You're
pretty sure it's not supposed to look like that.
The
only answer is to avoid any and all romantic relationships for
the rest of your life — right?
Wrong, says Kathy Kater,
author of Healthy Body Image: Teaching Kids to Eat and Love their
Bodies, Too! and a therapist who treats lots of teens and adults
who struggle with body image issues. In lots of cultures, girls
don't experience this prolonged and torturous body judgment,
Kater says.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Do I Look Weird? How guys can feel better about
their bodies:
teenwire.com, 10.09.07
You're a teenage guy, and the
thought of someone — especially
that someone you have a crush on — seeing you naked fills
you with dread. You feel generally freakish: You think your
penis is small and misshapen and you have hair in weird places.
Maybe you think you're too skinny, too fat, or have the torso
of a sickly nine-year-old.
The only solution is to avoid any
and all romantic relationships for the rest of your life -
right?
Wrong, says Leigh Cohn, co-author of Making Weight: Men's
Conflicts with Food, Weight, Shape and Appearance. While many,
and perhaps most, teens are embarrassed about their bodies
in one way or another (and so are adults, by the way), your
insecurities about your body don't have to hold you back.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Not Seeing Straight: What nurses need to know
about lesbian sexual health”
Registered Nurse Magazine, 10.07
Providers lacking training
and research are often insensitive to the needs of lesbians,
making them uncomfortable by treating them like straight patients.
And many lesbians, in turn, shun medical care—falsely assuming they don’t
have as many health risks as straights. Learn the latest on
what nurses can do to ensure everyone gets the care they need.
Download
a PDF of this article here.
“A Questioning Mind: The questions Deborah Tolman
asked have changed the way people think about teenage girls
and sexuality”
SFSU Magazine, Spring.07
Professor Deborah Tolman uses
her hands as she talks, sweeping them up in an imaginary bell
curve. She is mapping the way teen girls behave and think about
their sexuality. The ends of that curve, where teens are either
more chaste or more aggressive, are getting longer, she says, “as if someone has grabbed
them and pulled them out a bit. But for the vast middle, my
sense is that it’s still a minefield, and girls are
still not entitled to their own sexuality.”
As the director of the San Francisco state center for Research
on Gender and Sexuality, Tolman is one of the country’s
preeminent experts on teenage sexuality and sexual health.
From the classroom to the set of ABC’s “Nightline,” she
challenges commonly held beliefs on these subjects and asks
thought-provoking questions. “We only know what we ask,” she
says. “The tagline of our center is, ‘Producing
new knowledge to advance social justice and social change.’ But
I’m thinking that ‘Asking new questions to advance
social justice and social change’ is more accurate.”
Read the full story here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Healthcare for All: Making space
for LGBT healthcare”
PlannedParenthood.org,
07.06.07
Planned Parenthood has strived to be at the forefront
of health care for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ). In 2005, the most recent
date for which statistics were available, Planned Parenthood
affiliates performed 2,500 hours of training on appropriate
and sensitive care for LGBTQ clients.
plannedparenthood.org
looks at some local affiliates who are reaching out to the
LGBTQ community in new and innovative ways.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Feelings and Sex”
teenwire.com, 06.05.07
Sure, sex ed may teach you what body
part goes where and when — but
does it teach you how you'll feel after hooking up?
Probably,
not. Unfortunately, even the most comprehensive sex education
usually teaches only the physical parts of sex. Most teens
are left to figure out the emotional part by themselves.
And
young people often get confused, says Amber Madison, a former
college sex columnist and author of Hooking
Up: A Girl's All-Out Guide to Sex and Sexuality.
When Amber tours college campuses to talk about sex, it's almost
always about the emotional aspects of sex. What she finds most
of the time is that teens get confused about whether they're
having sex because they want to or whether they're having it
because of outside pressure.
Read the full story here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Self Image and Sexual Health”
PlannedParenthood.org, 04.11.07
When Natalie Campbell-Ybarra,
24, got her first bra in second grade, she was just an average
tomboy who favored baggy jeans and loose T-shirts. She was totally
unaware of how other people saw her.
But after getting that bra,
everything changed. She suddenly felt that she wasn’t just a kid, but “the girl
with boobs.” She became self-conscious about people seeing
the outline of her bra through her shirts and felt horrible
when kids teased her, asking her if she stuffed her bra. “Why
would I do that?” she remembers thinking. “Why
would I want this?”
Soon she moved desks to the back of the class and became
painfully introverted. She refused to do oral reports because
she would have to stand up in front of everybody. She had
a hard time concentrating. She stopped playing jump rope
with the other girls. Her grades started to slip. She felt
depressed and hated her body. As a teenager, she says, all
the teasing and assumptions from people who thought she was
older than she was and more sexually experienced finally
got to her. She started having sex — and not good sex, either. She didn’t
enjoy it.
Campbell-Ybarra’s story may seem extreme, but it’s
not, according to a report recently released by the American
Psychological Association. The report, issued by the association’s
Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, analyzed research
on girls and sexualization and found that those who felt
alienated from their bodies and felt their appearance was
the most valuable part of themselves were also more likely
to experience a number of poor health effects.
Read the full story here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Questioning Abstinence Until Marriage”
PlannedParenthood.org, 03.14.07
With the national debate
about abstinence-until-marriage programs raging on, Lawrence
Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute,
a nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive
health research, policy analysis, and public education, decided
to investigate whether abstinence-only until marriage campaigns
are a realistic policy goal. After all, the average age of
first sex and the average age of first marriage are wildly
different. To
find the answer, he looked at rates of premarital sex in the
United States.
What he found was surprising to many: Not only had more
than nine out of 10 people had premarital sex, but the rate
of premarital sex has been consistent for more than 50 years. Finer’s
conclusion was that premarital sex is not only normal but nearly
ubiquitous — and has been for decades.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Generation Confused: Cancer vaccines, birth
control, emergency contraception -- with all these options,
are teens any sexually healthier?”
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, 02.11.07
Teen girls
have access to the HPV vaccine, Depo-provera, a form of injectible
birth control they don't have to remember to take, and to prescription-only
Plan B, an emergency contraceptive that prevents pregnancy if
taken within days of unprotected sex. If you define sexual health
as being free of disease or pregnancy, today's teens have the
potential to be the healthiest of any in history.
But sexual health
is more than that. The World Health Organization defines
it as "a
positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual
relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable
and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination
and violence."
In a country where the president supports abstinence until
marriage, "To Catch A Predator" regularly tops the
ratings in its timeslot and the raunchy "American Pie" films
are hits, parents and teens are trying to navigate a world
marked by piety on the one hand and raunch on the other.
What
fills that gap is sexual schizophrenia: lots of flash and little
of substance to help teens understand desire and how to navigate
the tricky world of first relationships.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Plus-Size and Pregnant: Having a positive plus-size
pregnancy”
BabyCenter, 01.07
When Adrienne Erazo, a researcher at
a newspaper in Orange, California, got pregnant the first time,
the excitement over building her family was immediate and profound.
As her baby started to grow, she felt a sense of purpose, like
this was what she was supposed to do her whole life. But hanging
over that joy was a pall of doubt and shame: Was she doing something
wrong? Was she hurting her baby?
She wasn't drinking alcohol,
smoking, or taking drugs — she
was simply overweight, a size 22W at 5 feet 4 inches tall.
She'd been overweight most of her life.
Now pregnant with her
second child, Erazo wants you to know something: "I'm fat and pregnant and I'm just fine," she
says simply. "It's important for other moms to know that
you're not a bad mom and you won't be a bad mom just because
you're plus-size."
In fact, if you're a plus-size woman, you're part of a growing
sorority. Today, one in three pregnant women is considered
obese — having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more.
And half of women of childbearing age are considered overweight — having
a BMI of 25 to 29.9. And while plus-size women face increased
risks of complications, the majority of these are manageable
if they occur, and being overweight doesn't mean you're destined
for a troubled pregnancy.
Read
the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Plus-size the Pregnant: Understanding and managing
health risks”
BabyCenter, 01.07
Most plus-size women can expect a healthy
pregnancy. But as with any journey as complex as having a baby,
the ride may get a little bumpy from time to time.
Women with
a body mass index (BMI) above 25, considered overweight, are
more susceptible to certain pregnancy conditions such as gestational
diabetes. This risk climbs higher if your BMI is 30 or above,
considered obese. Not sure where you fall on the spectrum?
The
fact is, doctors and researchers still don't know exactly why
weight matters. And it's just one piece of the puzzle — age,
genetics, and even ethnicity factor in.
Read
the
full article here.
Download a PDF of this
article here.
“Plus-Size and Pregnant: Seven facts about pregnancy
after weight-loss surgery”
BabyCenter, 01.07
Weight-loss surgery (also called bariatric
surgery) is becoming ever more common — according to the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of
people getting gastric bypass surgery increased ninefold from
1996 to 2004. But how do these kinds of surgeries impact getting
pregnant and affect those nine months afterward? Here are seven
facts you should know about having a baby after bariatric intervention.
Read
the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article
here.
“Positive Period Alternatives”
teenwire.com, 01.17.07
You know the feeling. You're sitting
in class. You've got your period. You're wearing a pad or tampon,
but you're still worried. Sixteen-year-old Abigail (not her real
name) recalls the feeling vividly.
"You sit in class knowing you have it and wondering what's
going to happen," she says. "I felt nervous. If something
leaked, I'd freak out. Then you have to stand up and everyone
sees you. It's potentially disastrous, social suicide."
But
Abigail has found a way to avoid that feeling. She uses alternative
menstrual products that she says are comfortable and make her
feel better about her period.
Read the
full article here.
Download a PDF of this article
here.
“Get the Shot: The HPV vaccine isn’t just
for straight girls. Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo tells us why.”
Curve Magazine, 01.07
HPV vaccine? Aren’t you already immune simply because you don’t
have sex with men?
Not so fast.
Research shows that queer women are just as likely to have HPV as other women.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Resolve to Prepare”
teenwire.com, 01.02.07
Katie (not her real name) is starting the year with something new: a prescription for emergency contraception (EC). As part of her New Year’s resolution, the 17-year-old Massachusetts resident is protecting herself in case a condom breaks or something worse happens. Should you do the same? Katie thinks so.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“HIV Testing Today: How new guidelines could affect you.”
Planned Parenthood Online, 01.06
When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its revised recommendations for HIV testing earlier this fall, Dr. Celia Maxwell was ready.
Maxwell, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Management and Research
at Howard University Hospital, deployed staff to the emergency room, labor and
delivery department, the medical wards, and the outpatient clinics to give free
HIV screening to everyone who wanted one. She says it's time to start thinking
of HIV in a different way.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“The New ABCs of HIV”
teenwire.com, 12.05.06
There are so many things to worry
about when you start dating someone: Does your boyfriend or girlfriend
like you as much as you like them? What level of sexual activity
are you comfortable with? How secure do you feel with this person?
Should HIV testing be added to that list?
It should be, according to new guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC). Released just in time for World AIDS Day on Dec.
1, the new recommendations suggest that sexually active teens get tested starting
at 13.
Read the full article here.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Plus-Size Pregnancy”
Choice! Magazine online, 11.13.06
Half of all women of
childbearing age in the United States are considered overweight,
and one in three is obese. Research
shows that being overweight or obese — defined, according
to the standard body mass index (BMI), as more than 25 BMI
for overweight individuals, and more than 30 BMI for those
who are obese — raises a woman's risk for certain pregnancy-related
complications. How common are those risks, and what can
overweight women do to have a healthy pregnancy?
Download a PDF of this article here.
”HPV, Herpes and Sexual Health Vaccines”
Choice! Magazine
Online, 10.27.06
When Jonas Salk discovered a vaccine for polio
in the 1950s, he changed the lives of millions of children
and their parents. No
longer did the public live in fear of disfigurement or death
from the disease. As the country commemorates Salk’s
birthday on October 28, researchers and scientists are making
breakthroughs of their own with vaccines that have the potential
to improve the lives of people at risk for sexually transmitted
infections (STIs) — just about everybody on the planet
at some time in their lives.
“This is a very exciting time and I’m very heartened
by the research,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, associate professor
of medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. “It’s
a very wide open field right now. Sexual health vaccines
need to be very strongly developed over the next 10 years.”
Download a PDF of this article here.
”Intimate Partner Violence and Pregnancy”
Choice! Magazine Online, 10.23.06
When Dr. Sujatha
Reddy sees new patients, she asks them the same questions: Do you ever feel unsafe at home? Have
you ever been hit, punched, or kicked by a member of your household? Have
you been hit recently?
While the answers to those questions
are usually in the negative, new evidence shows that it continues
to be important for health care providers to ask them. One recent study proves what
Reddy, an OB/GYN in Atlanta, GA, already knows — violence
during pregnancy can cause severe health problems for both
the woman and a newborn, and that those health effects can
last for years to come.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Men & the Mirror”
Choice! Magazine Online, 07.16.06
Research shows men of all ages and sexual orientations can experience a negatively
skewed view of their bodies called body dysmorphia. It can make men feel either
too fat, too short or too tall, or not muscular enough, and can include everything
from thinning hair to penis size to the shape and appearance of testicles, says
Dr. Katharine Phillips, director of the Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Body Image
Clinic at Butler Hospital in Providence, RI. She is the author of The Broken
Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
Phillips' most recent
research — which has not yet been
published — shows that 60 percent of men and women
with body dysmorphia avoided physical contact, including
sexual activity and close dancing. Those who did have sex
said it wasn't satisfying. The study did not address whether
men felt more sexually apprehensive than women.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Gaining Menstrual Pride”
Choice! Magazine Online,
05.08.06
Many women have felt shame about their periods and bodies
and have felt powerless when it comes to sex. But is there
a connection? That's the question at the heart of a recent
study in the Journal of Sex Research. The study confirmed
a connection between menstrual shame, body shame, and,
for those who were sexually active, riskier sex. The good
news is that the converse is also true — positive
feelings about the menstrual cycle, vulva, and body in
general are associated with more sexual assertiveness,
more sexual experience, and less sexual risk.
Download a PDF of this article here.
“Weight Matters”
Choice! Magazine Online,
12.05.05
Researchers have found that women with a body mass index of 25 or more — that is, women considered overweight or obese — receive fewer Pap tests and mammograms, even though they face a higher risk of cervical and breast cancer. Indeed, overweight or obese women got fewer Pap tests or mammograms regardless of their income, age, or health coverage.
Download a PDF of this article here.
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