Despite the Puritanical origins of Thanksgiving, I decided that it is a pretty good feminist holiday. First of all, it encourages copious eating. Given the complex relationship that many women have with food thanks to insane societal pressure to be thin, thin, thin, any holiday that gives people permission to eat is good in my book. (Of course, the key is to not later feel guilty about indulging.) I plan on eating piles of delicious foods today. Hurray! But what are other feminists doing for this American holiday?

Right now, if you're living in America, you're probably on your way to a Thanksgiving dinner. Or maybe you're chewing a bite of turkey. Or you've holed yourself in the guest bedroom so you can read some blogs rather than socialize with your cousins. Because this is a universal truth: family-oriented holidays are hard when you've run into a wall with family building. And this is true for the multitude of holidays stretching from Thanksgiving (Canadian or American) to New Years.

Pennsylvania's Lincoln University has instituted a requirement that first-year students who arrive on campus with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher must either lower their BMI below 30 or take a one-unit course called "Fitness for Life" in order to graduate.The Chronicle of Higher Education provides some details on the university's reasoning:

Unless you've been under a rock all week, you have probably heard about the government task force that has recommended new guidelines for breast cancer screening.  It goes something like this... If you're younger than 50 or older than 75, you no longer have to worry your pretty little head about breast cancer, or getting those pesky boob squishing mammograms.

Don't fret if you're not part of the adoption/loss/infertility community because this year, our annual list has been expanded to include everyone in the blogosphere.

One of the first things I did moving to California was to make a pilgrimage to Santa Monica Beach. I wanted to see the place where the fictional Dr. Marcus Welby would talk to his patients about not giving up, fighting for the next chance or saying yes to that one in a thousand treatment that could save their lives. Dr. Welby would not rest until he found the reason for the condition, no matter that his solution was far out of his general practitioner area of expertise. He was all knowing, all caring and had the good sense to select Dr. Steven Kiley as a bit of eye candy.

It's day 29. Does your computer know when your period starts? My iPod just warned me that I'm about to be incredibly cranky. Using my past blog posts as a guide, by searching for key words like "horrible cramps" and "PMS", I found some details of my last few periods to set up the background data. For years I've found myself blogging in the middle of the night while crying and complaining. Then some commenter, usually my sister, will go "Your life sucks? You mean just like how it did right about this time last month?" How embarrassing that it always hits me as a giant surprise.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." "Beauty is only skin deep." "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Bartlett's Quotations is full of quotes about beauty. Great words by great poets.This week we'd like to introduce you to another great poet talking about beauty: Stephanie from The NieNie Dialogues is our BlogHer of the Week with her post Do You Still See Me?

Over the holidays, it's a tradition to focus on food and festivities, and to put working out lower on your to-do list.  Way lower, like maybe just above organizing your sock drawer.  Who has time for the treadmill when you need every spare minute for shopping, cooking, fretting, decorating, partying, wrapping presents, lighting candles, and engaging in epic family arguments over trivial events that happened 20 years ago?Yet you know if you let exercise slide you’re going to feel guilty. 

In honor of Word Diabetes Day I've decided to do a blog roundup of women blogging diabetes.  Most are blogs by women who are living with diabetes, and others are women blogging about parenting a child with diabetes.  I've also included several informative links and resources at the end of this post. If you blog about living with diabetes or World Diabetes Day, please leave your link in comments. World Diabetes Day...

A woman named Lynsee just gave birth online and I didn't watch. Perhaps it is a testament to how greatly I'm affected by the stories of loss I've read, but knowing what can go wrong in birth, I didn't want to witness a live-feed of emotional anguish. Also a testament to how greatly influenced I am by my own story and those of others in the community, knowing what can go right in birth, I didn't want to witness their enormous joy knowing how out-of-reach it is for 7.3 million Americans.

I'm not a huge fan of scales. I'd like them a lot better if they were only used as tools to assist people in maintaining a healthy lifestyle or to help medical professionals treat patients. Unfortunately the scale is more often used as a weapon to harm ourselves and others (and the harm is done primarily to women.)