Healthy Living:Mind and Body

The Seven Lows in Women’s Health


By Stephanie Dolgoff
From Health magazine

You’ve read the best advances in women’s health over the last 20 years. Here, our list of the top seven bad things in women’s health.

“You’ve come a long way …” not so much
In 1968, Virginia Slims co-opted the feminist movement by portraying smoking as an empowered act. The “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” campaign ran through the 1980s, well after tobacco companies knew that smoking can cause lung cancer.

Forced sterilizations
In rural Alabama, two African-American girls Mary Alice and Minnie Relf, 12 and 14 in 1973, were deemed mentally incompetent and then sterilized without their consent. The case brought attention to the practice of using federal funds to sterilize mostly poor minorities in the name of public health.

The hysteria diagnosis
From ancient times until 1980, sexually frustrated and otherwise emotional women were diagnosed with hysteria, a constellation of multiple symptoms that added up to one hell of a bad mood. Treatment for the problem was often doctor-administered “pelvic massage.” Gee, wonder why it was diagnosed so often?

The need for a Plan C


Last Updated: November 6, 2008
Filed Under: Mind and Body
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