A decision they might regret when they become great-grandparents 15 years later.

Why is that the “girls will be girls” mentality always dumps all responsibility of a situation on said girl, but “boys will be boys” completely alleviates said boy from any consequences?

Keep your head up and keep up the good fight. You are doing valuable work. God bless you.

During earlier hearings on earlier versions of the bill, anti-choice Republicans indicated that they believed that teens were lying to otherwise loving parents in trying to obtain judicial bypasses, and that judges wanted clarification on the existing law.

I mostly just lurk, but occasionally talk about my work with pregnant teens in South Africa (http://youngmomsupport.co.za)
South Africa has many issues: but we DO have good laws that are not constantly changed and challenged. One is the ability for any pregnant person from the age of 12 to access abortion without…

I obviously don’t agree with this in any way, shape, or form, but if it has to go down this way, then the parents of these pregnant minors should be responsible for their new grandchild and all the financial problems that come with it.

Yes, “parental rights,” until the girl who was unable to obtain the abortion is a parent.

Oh Texas... what hath you wrought? So, I guess everything really is bigger in Texas. Including the need to smother a woman’s rights over her own body. New rule. You can’t come up and smoke our weed or ski on our slopes until you get all this straightened out.

Hi, I’m a white woman and I’ve also wondered about the special role of thinness in white culture. One thing I can say is that several white boyfriends have told me that there’s a culture among straight white men of (to various degrees of explicitness) shaming/looking down on guys for having non-thin girlfriends, and…

I’m black too and “our culture” doesn’t speak in unison on these matters. I have felt tremendous pressure to be thin from other black women and from church—

And I’m SICK seeing black women with eating disorders get ignored. One of the reasons I was able to go so far in my 20s was because as a black anorexic everyone…

Because thinness in white women is shorthand for a number of things: education level, class, force of will. Stuff like that. The white woman who is thin is doing it right. She’s eating 1200 calories a day or less. She goes to the gym regularly, doesn’t miss a workout. If she drinks wine at dinner, she’s not having the…

An ideal black woman of beauty would be, who? Beyonce? Rhianna? And an ideal white woman of beauty would be, I dunno, Taylor Swift? Or who, Jennifer Aniston? We are held up to different standards, which is even more stupid because despite being white, I’m built WAY more like Beyonce than TayTay (not that I’m 1/10th of…

there’s a ton of history behind it…Coco Chanel, Twiggy, Kate Moss, etc. It’s mostly pop culture based, and there’s definitely a lot of classism involved - poor whites are fat, rich whites can afford to subsist on quinoa and almond milk. At one point, high class women would never finish all the food on their plate,…

I agree. I said as much in another comment in this thread, but perhaps less viscerally than you did. I linked the 1980s Reagan-led neoliberalism and its focus on personal accountability as part of that, but I also shouldn’t discount the Protestant work ethic that promulgated much of early America’s history.

It may be more true in photos, and the photo obsession that now reigns supreme in our culture (see under: Selfies). I ‘lost’ about forty pounds a few years ago (gained about 25 back) due to high blood sugar, and male attention and compliments regarding my appearance radically dropped.

I mean, I might be. I just have noticed that there seems to be an immense self-pressure that SOME white women place on themselves to be thin. And I’ve never gotten the motives behind that mostly because I’ve never asked. So while I get that it’s not a case of ALL white women, I’ve noticed it enough to ask and want to…

I think it’s class based. Eating a healthy diet and going to the gym regularly is not 100% accessible. People on the lower economic rungs end up eating a lot of easily and cheaply acquired food and drink. I live in Canada, in a province with a huge Aboriginal population, with numerous reservations. For companies, it’s…

Well, in 2015 *white woman now have to be rail thin, with a perfect and perky bubble butt, flat stomach, hour glass waist, and perky perfect tits. Don’t forget about those full lips! So, to answer your questions...some of the aspects of black culture beauty ideals** are slowly making their way into white culture…

This is my own personal theory, but I’ll give it a whirl (white Protestant woman here; from a poor background but the generations before had lots of dough). I think there is a rich WASP thing that says “we rule the world and we deserve to rule the world because we DO NOT GIVE IN TO OUR BASER DESIRES (because we have…

Honestly, I think it’s a combination of everything you’ve just named: media, TV, community, fearmongering about health / “one way” to be healthy, and patriarchal “values.” In contemporary psychology, there’s a term for it — “normative discontent.” It’s normal to feel dissatisfied with your body. It’s also weird…