How to change societies image?

I have seen shows with anorexic women whose body image is totally askew to the fact of what their body actually looks like. They may be so thin that all you can see is the outline of their bones, but they truly believe they are still fat. I think society has the same skewed image of aging and menopausal women. Being 52 myself and having gone through surgically induced menopause 17 years ago, I can tell you that the truth of menopause is much better than societies view.

I can honestly say that the year I turned 50 was the best year of my life. The only one better was 51 and I gotta tell you I think 52 is gonna top it! My family is raised, my career is taking off and I can finally focus on me! Going back to school to get my degree is something I have always wanted to do, but family and other commitments always came first. Now for the first time in my adult life, I come first. That doesn't mean I have turned into a selfish person who ignores all my other responsibilities, it just means my responsibilities have changed, so that I am now free to explore new and exciting things.

How do we get this message out to society? We are going to have to have people who stand up and make their voice heard. How did women get the right to use contraceptives? There were a few women who were brave enough to stand up and make their voices heard. Yes, they suffered persecution because of it, but if they had not had the courage to fight, we still wouldn't have contraceptives available to us today. So you may ask what are we going to stand up and say and to whom? My first thought is as wives and mother's our first audience is our husband and children. Notice I didn't just say daughters! Yes, we need to teach our daughters how to respect themselves and have healthy self-images, but we also need to teach our sons how to value women. If we can bring our sons up to have healthy self-images then maybe they won't be as intimidated by the strong independent women we are bringing our daughters up to be. The best way to get this message across to our sons and daughters is by having healthy enough self-images of ourselves that we command respect from our husbands and everyone else in our lives. If we don't love and respect ourselves, how do we expect anyone else to?

I received several cartoons on menopause this week, but if I included those in my blog, then I would just be perpetuating the myth of how bad menopause really is. Don't worry though, I haven't totally lost my sense of humor, I did laugh at the cartoons!

Blog #7 Perception of People with STD's

"Many people equate STD's with immorality, promiscuous behavior and low social status." The two pictures on the right remind me of the ignorance of thinking STD's is a problem for low social status. Do you really think the homeless man is having more sexual opportunities than the man pictured with a higher social status? I think our prejudice against the poor has more to do with our thinking than actual facts on those susceptible to STD's.

What about our prejudice that says STD's are problems of the immoral, promiscuous only? I'm afraid that a lot of those prejudices started back in our childhood when we went to our first sex education class. If you were like me, you were taught that young people were not to have sex until they were married. If they did have sex before marriage it could result in STD's or pregnancy. We were even shown films on STD's and what they could do to your body. Unfortunately this negative programming hasn't seemed to stop teenagers from having sex. Instead it has caused a lot of guilt and risky behavior. The kids coming out of these sex education classes really believe it can never happen to them. I think our society promotes the belief that bad things only happen to bad people. Since society has said that bad people are immoral, promiscuous and low income people, then if you are a good person, you are safe. If you look at the millions of cases of STD's and teen pregnancies in the United States, we are either saying that there are millions of bad people in our country, or maybe we are wrong. Maybe bad things sometimes happen to people, good or bad.

I agree with many of your post that say education is the key, however I think we need a change in the education we are giving, because the increase in STD's and teen pregnancy tells me what we are doing is not working. What if we changed this negative campaign into a positive campaign for abstinence? What if we taught our kids how to protect their bodies, not just from STD's and pregnancy, but all diseases or life style choices that can harm them? Chapter 8 in our book talks about how menopause has had this negative connotation for years, and yet they are learning that those women who take care of their bodies from youth with nutritional eating and exercising don't suffer near as much during menopause as those women who have lived life styles that are unhealthy.

There is a new commercial on TV that I think promotes the positive aspect of healthy eating. It's a commercial for eggs that says "If you want to be incredible, eat incredible". I love that! I think we should be teaching our kids and ourselves how to strive to be incredible.

Blog #6 Prenatal Testing

Having children is a heavy responsibility and I think that responsibility starts when we first decide to conceive. That is why I think routine prenatal testing is important. It is being responsible first for your own health and second the health of your baby. Two different kinds of prenatal testing came to my mind when I read this question, the tests for birth defects and the tests for STDs. I do believe that not every test should be routine, for example an Amniocentesis that puts the baby at risk, needs to be an individual decision. However tests for STDs that do not harm the mother or the baby should be routine because it can effect the outcome of the pregnancy. We know that women don't always have outward signs that tell them they have an STD, so they might not know the danger they are putting their baby in. HIV comes to mind since there is now a treatment that the mother can have to prevent it from passing to her child. Also Syphilis may be prevented from passing to the infant if the mother has a C-Section. If the mother has Hepatitis B the newborn should receive immune globulin. Routine testing will give the doctor and mother time to make informed decisions for a healthy pregnancy and delivery.

Education helps with prevention when it comes to our health, but we need to rememeber that in todays economy there are many expectant mothers with no health care. They don't always have the luxury of informed decision because they can't always afford all the test that need to be done. As our country goes forward looking for better health care policies we need to realize that the cost of preventative test is much less expensive than a life time of consequences that can occur if testing is not done.