If you’ve been noticing an extreme amount of pink on t-shirts, jackets, bags, cars, banners and bumper stickers, it’s because it’s October, baby, and that means it’s Breast CancerAwareness Month. I know I’m a little late in the month doing this but better late than never!
I’m not going to talk to you about checking your breasts for lumps, getting mammograms, the need for more research and care facilities or fundraising efforts (though these are all things that merit discussion as well). I want to talk about a preventative measure that you may be able to take to help reduce your chances of being diagnosed with this horrible disease in the first place.
Studies have previously shown that women who have their first child before the age of 25 have lower rates of breast cancer than those who have them later or not at all. In this day and age when more and more of us who want to become mothers are delaying childbearing until our late 20s, 30s and even 40s, that is concerning. So what can you do to combat your increased risk if you choose to have children but not until you are older than 25? Breastfeed your baby!
Newstudies show that women who have breastfed their children, even those who gave birth after the age of 25, have no higher risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer than those who gave birth before 25. Essentially, breastfeeding cancels out the increased risk of those who choose to give birth later in life. And not only that, it is effective in fighting against the more aggressive non-hormonal-responsive cancers as well as the hormonal types, which was previously unknown before these recent studies.
So let’s hear it for breastfeeding — not only does it offer optimal nutrition and immunity protection for babies, it helps mothers stick around longer to see those babies grow up. It really is, as we call it in my house, Mama’s Magical Milk.
Think pink when you decide what to give your baby to drink.
What bothers me about this case is not that Freeman was cleared because I have no way of knowing what happened that day was consensual or not, though I can’t imagine why a teenage girl would want to go through a trial against a famous soap star and be put through the wringer just to make herself feel better about having sex with a C-list celebrity 12 years her senior. It’s not even that a 28-year-old approached a teenage girl for sex (though I find that kind of creepy as well), but that his exoneration seems to be based solely on what his defense said was the girl’s contradictory statements, including whether she was attracted to Freeman.
Now, I don’t know how other adults’ brains work but I have a hard time understanding why so many people fail to grasp the concept of rape as anything other than a dark and desperate stranger grabbing a woman off the street and having his way with her in a side alley. That kind of attack happens in only a very small percentage of rapes. The vast majority are perpetrated by ‘regular guys’, men whom the female victims know, sometimes even intimately. Rapists are our friends, family members, colleagues, neighbours, shopkeepers, classmates, fellow parishioners, holidaymakers, board members, gym buddies, spouses, dates and anyone else who is seemingly normal in every way except for the way in which he views women, sex and male power. Just because a woman finds or found her rapist attractive at some point, even right up until the point that rape was committed, it does not make his crime any less reprehensible nor her testimony less valid. Without knowing the details of the case I can’t condemn the verdict (he may very well be perfectly innocent) but I do condemn the manner in which rape and its victims are treated in courts of law and in society at large, and that includes language like this.
When a rape is reported the focus is all too often on the victim — what was she wearing, doing, saying, drinking, taking? Where was she walking, working, living? Who are her friends, who has she slept with? When did she say no and did she really mean it? The only thing asked of the accused rapist is often merely whether the sex was consensual. With rape there are no grey areas, there are no mixed signals. You either stop when someone withdraws consent (or doesn’t give it in the first place) or you are a rapist. It doesn’t matter if she was flirting and telling you she wanted to eat whipped cream off of your body two minutes before that. Capiche?
A barrister has caused outrage by suggesting a rape victim could not have been upset by her ordeal because there were photos of her on Facebook looking happy.
The woman was attacked in 2001 when she was 19 and has since tried to kill herself.
Her attacker, Anthony Francis, was caught seven years later as a result of a DNA sample.
His barrister tried to persuade a judge to be lenient by showing pictures posted on the social networking site of the woman laughing and smiling at a fancy dress party in the years since the rape.
First, let me just say that I’m so glad that the judge didn’t buy this crap and that the victim’s MP came out and made a statement on its ridiculousness. The fact that this rapist’s defense attorney felt it was even remotely acceptable to use her personal photos as a basis for reducing his client’s sentence is appalling. Really, truly appalling. I hope that whatever association allows him to practice law strikes him off their register. A swift kick in the nuts wouldn’t go amiss either.
Sadly, the most outrageous thing about this entire case is not the barrister’s attempt to shame the victim but the fact that he did this in order to save his client from the ‘harsh sentence’ of 5.5 years. That five and a half years is considered ‘harsh’ for rape is the most pathetic part of this story. As it is, he’ll probably be out in three years due to overcrowding. For fuck’s sake, no wonder so many people don’t take this crime seriously.
The message here is: Parents, don’t want your daughters getting themselves raped? Don’t buy them booze and let them become drunken hussies then! No messages about not buying their teenage boys beer so that they don’t become bullying rapists, no sir-ee. I can’t believe that this is a governmental Public Service Announcement. Well actually, I can, but that just makes it all the more maddening.
I got my tragus pierced 12 years ago, when I was 17. This is a tragus, for those of you not up on your ear anatomy
Aside from the initial healing period, I’ve never had a problem with it. Until now.
Yesterday I noticed that it was a bit sore and that it was difficult to push the hoop around through the hole. I chalked it up to it being irritated from sleeping on that side of my head for a long period the night before and went about my day. This morning it is even more sore, hard and visibly swollen. It’s almost certainly infected and will have to be removed to allow it to clear up. I worried out loud to TNH, as he was getting ready for work, that I was afraid it would close up while I had it out and the piercing I’ve had for so long would be no more. He had the nerve (the NERVE!) to smirk and say “Well, you ARE a mother now. Maybe your piercing is being rejected.”
I glared at him and wished I wasn’t holding the baby with both hands. But then I looked at him glumly and said “No, it’s not my piercing being rejected. My piercing is rejecting me! Apparently it is too cool for motherhood.”
The silver lining in this unexpected cloud is that it gives me a reason to get the second tattoo I’ve been wanting for so long. Can you get inked up while you’re breastfeeding? Or would that just look like a sad attempt to cling onto my fading fun-time youth? I’m already driving a freakin’ station wagon for god’s sake. If my piercing goes I might as well start wearing stone-washed tapered jeans and white Keds. Kids, Mummy needs a martini, pronto. Oh wait, make that a vodka and Red Bull. That’s what the kids drink these days, right?
Just a little warning that my mother arrives tomorrow for a ten day visit so posting will likely be light. Here to keep you entertained (and thinking about your own mothers) is a site that I was told about today and which I’ve been reading and laughing at all evening: Postcards From Yo Momma.
I used to at least respect John McCain, even if I didn’t agree with him on many things. But the way he has behaved and allowed his running mate, staffers, volunteers and supporters to behave is really reprehensible and I no longer have any respect for him whatsoever. I’m no pie-in-the-sky, kumbayah Obama love child, I know that politics is dirty and that candidates find themselves doing dirty things in the course of an election. I don’t have any illusions about fair play or a squeaky clean fight. But for McCain supporters to call for Obama’s murder and for it to receive no response, no condemnation, from McCain’s campaign team is absolutely despicable. That’s why I enjoyed watching this Keith Olbermann clip so much. It really is worth repeating.
