Linda's Women's Issues Blog

Vitamin D has become the hot topic in health and nutrition news. Articles and recent research suggest the so-called 'sunshine vitamin' may reduce the risk of certain cancers, including breast, colon, and prostate.

But one very real benefit exists for women who have adequate levels of vitamin D - the reduction of hip fractures. US News & World Report cites a study done by University of Pittsburgh researchers on vitamin D intake and hip fractures in women, and quotes Dr. Michael F. Holick, director of the Vitamin D Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University, on the vitamin D-fracture link:

"The good news is...the higher your vitamin D status, the lower the risk of your developing a hip fracture."...

Hip fractures can be devastating for older individuals. In fact, 50 percent of older people who suffer a hip fracture will end up in a nursing home and 20 percent will die within the first year due to complications such as a pulmonary embolism resulting from the fracture, Holick said.... According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine, people should get between 200 and 400 international units of vitamin D a day. The best way to get vitamin D, naturally, is by being out in the sun.

As little as 10 to 15 minutes of sun a day can give you all a vitamin D you need. Vitamin D is also available in small quantities in foods such as fish and milk.

Preventing hip fracture is another good reason to keep your vitamin D levels up, Holick said. "To get vitamin D levels to where they need to be to reduce the risk of hip fracture, you need to be taking at least 1,000 international units of vitamin D a day from a supplement," he advised.

The buzz is that we're hours away from Obama's announcement of his VP pick.

Over at the Huffington Post, Rebecca Curtis makes one final eleventh-hour pitch for him to choose Hillary in "Summer Love, Fall Freak-Out: The Bradley Effect and Why Obama Will Lose Without Hillary." She brings up some interesting issues with regard to race, gender, hidden prejudices, and past history - particularly Tom Bradley's run for governor of California in 1982, from which the 'Bradley Effect' draws its name.

According to a US Census report released yesterday, 1 out of every 5 women age 40-44 is childless. That's 20% of that age group, and it's a figure that's doubled from a generation ago.

Janet Kornblum at USA Today has additional information on why more and more women are opting not to have children, or are delaying motherhood until much later in life. For childless professional women who feel pressured by a society that still sees 'married with children' as the default for females, the following factoid from the article should be of interest:

The declining birth rate for older women "shows that patterns of family formation have obviously changed," says Carl Haub, a demographer at the non-governmental Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C. "There are significant numbers of women in the U.S. who would choose a career over having a child — married or unmarried."

In a commentary for the Women's Media Center, Barbara Cohn Schlachet asks the question that I've always wondered - why is it that male politicians are the ones caught cheating? How come we don't see any female politicians in the same boat?

...[W]omen with political power seem not to have been, or be involved in the sexual escapades that plague powerful men. Granted, there aren’t as many: women haven’t yet, in America, reached the same level of power as men, but the number of women representatives and senators are increasing, we’ve had two women as secretary of state, one as national security advisor, a female attorney general, a speaker of the house, and 35 percent of all state governor appointed posts are now women. Are we just better people than the men? Is it really all about testosterone? Or, perhaps, we just keep a secret better. What can we expect of women when more of us attain positions of power? Will we, too, be flooding the airwaves with stories about our sexual liaisons with subordinate men or, for that matter, women?

Alternet.org has Ren of Feministe asking, "Where have all the role models for girls and young women gone?" and answering, "Right here." At the Olympics.

We are in good company, you and me. 'We' being readers (and writers) of internet sites geared toward women. Earlier this week, the New York Times cited some statistics:

Sites aimed primarily at women, from “mommy blogs” to makeup and fashion sites, grew 35 percent last year — faster than every other category on the Web except politics, according to comScore, an Internet traffic measurement company. Women’s sites had 84 million visitors in July, 27 percent more than the same month last year, comScore said.

Advertisers are following the crowd, serving up 4.4 billion display ads on women’s Web sites in May, comScore said. That is more than for sites aimed at children, teenagers or families. “Moms are the decision makers of the household as far as purchases are concerned,” said Chris Actis, vice president and digital director at the ad agency MediaVest.

You and I already knew that.

In fact, I'm writing this while on my family's summer vacation, and guess what? All our airfare, rental cars, accommodations, meals, dinners out, even shopping - all decisions I made while surfing the internet for the past 8 months preceding the trip. Yes, women are the decision-makers, and we base a good portion of those decisions on things we find on the web.

It's about time advertisers acknowledged how much we're worth.

Related articles:

• What Women are Worth - Word-of-Mom
• Mommy Tells All - Blogger Heather Armstrong and Dooce.com
• Online Communities and Websites for Moms
• "That's What She Said" - BlogHer '08 Women Bloggers Conference

To sell clothing, yogurt, acne medication, and even breakfast cereal, women are featured in commercials and TV spots advertising the product. Okay, fine, that makes sense. We wear, buy, and use those items. But car mufflers, plumbing parts, heavy duty tools? What's the relationship there between the woman and the product in question?

We may laugh about how ridiculous it is, but we've been exposed to the use of women's bodies to sell products for so long that we don't give it much thought. (One terrific and bizarre example is from a 1953 calendar for a tools and parts manufacturer.) Many a famous pin-up girl got her start lending her beauty to glamorize otherwise unremarkable products; and the most successful women did more than sell products - they sold idealized images of themselves that exaggerated their best aspects and ignored or downplayed their worst.

In fact the Pin-up Files, a website devoted to pin-up art, explains that one very popular and successful painter of pin-up girls said he "felt the ideal pin-up was a fifteen-year-old face on a twenty-year-old body," and with a great deal of artistic license, he used his paintbrush to graft together these two wildly diverse females into one impossible image.

Does this matter? We've all grown up with this in our lives. So what's the harm?

Read more...

Mrs. Johnson raised her son Tim right. He's the Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers, and he cares about moms. So much, in fact, that he's blogged about Xian Dongmei, the first mommy to win a gold medal in the Beijing Olympics.

And he's not stopping there:

When I saw the headlines on this, I began to wonder how many “mommy” Olympians are out there. What I found just on the U.S. Olympic squad surprised me. There are at least 20.

He's got details on all the US Olympic moms.

Tim, thank you for caring and for covering this aspect of the Olympics. I'm not being facetious when I say that you are the epitome of a nice, thoughtful boy and have given all of us moms a meaningful story to rally around. You go, Moms!

_{Photo of Xian Dongmei © Clive Rose/Getty Images Sport}

It's LA Times reporter Mary McNamara's assessment of what happened, and the telling words she uses are 'highly scripted.'

If you didn't read Elizabeth Edwards' statement about her husband's affair, you really should.

Form your opinions, then comment. I'm still working on what I want to say.

Is Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic governor of Kansas, about to be named Obama's running mate? Does she know something she's not telling? Team Obama sent the following email notice out to supporters last night:

Be the First to Know - Barack is about to choose a running mate, and he wants you to know first. You have helped build this movement from the bottom up, and Barack wants you to be part of this important moment. Sign up today and we'll send you an email announcing Barack's running mate.

Sounds like they're pretty close to deciding. Those in the know say Sebelius is on the short 'short list' and is his best bet for a running mate. Her name was brought up as early as January 2007 as a possible VP choice in 2008. The Washington Post had this to say about her at the time:

The 58-year-old governor is a self-described "aging rocker" who squeezed a ride in an Indy race car and a Rolling Stones concert into the same day last year. She runs nearly 15 miles a week and regularly attends college football and basketball games.

Her wit occasionally gets her into trouble, as during a 2002 gubernatorial debate when she said driving roads in neighboring Missouri was "much more terrifying to me than the attacks on the World Trade Center."

Her father, John Gilligan, a Democrat, was governor of Ohio in 1971-75, making them the only father-daughter governors in U.S. history.

Some believe that it would be a slap in the face if another woman (i.e. a woman other than Hillary) is chosen for the VP slot, and that Obama doesn't dare risk this offense. Would die-hard Hillary supporters then completely turn away from the man they've labeled Nobama?

Hillary aside, Sebelius seems like an interesting choice. But is she his choice?

_{Photo of Governor Kathleen Sebelius © Jamie Rose/Getty Images}

Related articles:

• Profile of Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas
• The VP Guessing Game: Fun, Coyness, and Some Hints