V Word Weekly Links

January 4, 2019

By Dr. Erica


Hey there, Happy New Year to YOU! We hope it’s your best year yet.

Here’s what we’ve been consuming this week instead of reading about weight loss (why does the internet think that’s all women’s health is???) and working on resolutions.

READING

  • Becoming by Michelle Obama – it’s as good as everyone says it is – More MICHELLE please!
  • Ecstasy and Agony of Being A Grandmother (NYT) – “That is the weird self-annihilation at the heart of the job, as the novelist Edwidge Danticat observed. The ultimate goal of raising a child, she wrote is to give the child everything she needs to leave you: ‘to get bigger, smarter, to crawl, babble, walk, speak, to have birthdays that you hope you’ll live to see.’
  • Raising Boys Today (Washington Post) – A series of stories about parents trying to raise good guys in an era of toxic masculinity
  • The Warmth of Other Suns (Isabel Wilkerson) – the epic story of America’s Great migration of 6 million African Americans from the south to the north from early 1900s through the 1970s. SO FASCINATING.

LISTENING

  • Women’s Social Clubs (No Man’s Land Podcast) – a brief history of women’s social clubs including “colored women’s club” and a club of women formed in a Japanese internment camp that still meet today through the Women’s march and new missions.
  • Orphan Drugs (99% invisible) – discusses the path to get drugs to market for diseases that are rare, but important
  • Health Policy Questions (What the Health) – amazing reporters from the Hill (all women, BTW!) answer questions about health policy including fetal tissue research
  • But That’s What Happened (This American Life) – stories about women having unsettling things happen to them – including gynecology exams under anesthesia. NB: we plan to discuss more on the podcast soon.

WATCHING

  • Mary Queen of Scots – in theaters now, a story about the parallel lives of Mary and Elizabeth (the first) in which their different reproductive choices come to define them
  • Big Mouth (Netflix) – animated series about puberty; pretty crass and pretty real
  • and if we’re being really honest, Queer Eye – More than A Makeover (thanks Netflix) which has literally nothing to do with women’s health but is oh so enjoyable 🙂