Historiann

How’s this for short-sighted?  Only 1 in 5 girls under 18 have received the HPV vaccine as of the end of last year.  In the same story, “Anti-Cancer Vaccine A Tough Sell To Parents,” NPR reports that according to a study of 10,000 mothers who are nurses, almost half are squeamish about giving the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (the one that dramatically reduces the chance of cervical cancer!) to girls at the recommended age of 11 to 12, but more are OK with administering the vaccine to girls aged 15 to 18.

[Dr. Jessica] Kahn says that in a survey of 10,000 mothers who were also nurses, less than half were opposed to giving an 11-year-old the vaccine, compared with 90 percent who would agree to it for 15- to 18-year-olds.

“Nurses might be expected to be more supportive of vaccination,” Kahn said. “In a way, our study might overestimate the proportion of mothers who intend to vaccinate a 9- to 12-year-old daughter.”

But, she says, middle- to high-income parents tend to be more suspicious of vaccines. And that’s why communication between pediatricians and parents is important in easing concerns, Kahn said.

“If parents don’t believe the vaccine is safe, and believe the vaccine has serious side effects, that will weigh against their daughter being vaccinated,” Kahn said.

It seems like Dr. Kahn and NPR are conflating two issues here:  1) the unreasonable fear of vaccination that many middle- and upper-class parents have (which Historiann has written about previously here), and what I think is more at issue with the HPV vaccine, namely, 2) fears that daughters may actually have a SEX LIFE ZOMG!!!!111!!!!! someday.  If 9,000 nurses are OK with dosing older teenagers, but only about 5,000 are OK with dosing tweens, that means that about 4,000 have fears of adolescent sexuality rather than vaccine safety.  (And brace yourselves:  the NPR story reports that while the Center for Disease Control recommends that the HPV vaccine be administered to girls at ages 11 or 12, the Food and Drug Administration now recommends it for 9-year olds, “since the antibody response to the vaccine is better at younger ages than in the older girls.”)

Parents today engage in all kinds of preventive care and invest in all kinds of worst-case-scenario equipment in order to keep their little darlings safe.  And yet, we don’t think that the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) will send the message that our kids should go consort recklessly with diseased children because they think they’ll be safe.  We’d never think of accusing parents who strap their children into car seats and give their children bike helmets of planning to get into car and bike crashes.  We recognize that random bad stuff happens to people, and we should feel grateful that we live in a world where we can minimize the risk of disease and trauma. 

Parents who think it’s OK to vaccinate at 15+ but who balk at 11 or 12 (or 9) need to grow up, because their children surely will.  Administer the vaccine when it’s most effective–and if that’s age 9 or age 7 or age 6 months, just do it.  Resistance to the HPV vaccine is mostly about fears that vaccinated girls will become sexually active solely because of this one vaccine.  But, guess what, parents of daughters?  Your kid will become sexually active someday.  Your kid may also get cancer someday.  Since there is no vaccine yet that will prevent sexual activity, let’s go for the anti-cancer vaccine, m’kay?

19 Comments »

We’ve had some recent reader complaints that Historiann has been remiss in posting pictures of cute cowgirls lately, and we agree.  (Although, don’t you think that real-life North Country Gal, Rootin’ Shootin’ Sarah Palin counts just a little bit?)  So, here you go complainers!  Didn’t we overhear you complaining about the coffee and beans at a Dude Ranch out thisaway, too?

Give the people what they want, I always say, so here’s a little roundup of news, previews, and advice on the academic blog circuit:

• Tenured Radical was on the job all summer long, working on her series of posts containing advice for both job seekers and search committees.  Yesterday she offered a post about applying for jobs when you already have one.  For those of you behind in your mandatory TR reading see these posts on how to write a great letter of application, and (for those interviewing hapless young victims) how to write a good job ad and how to be a good search chair.  Next up, she promises advice to search committees as to how to evaluate a pool of applicants.  
• Adjunct Whore (who is really Tenure-Track Whore now) has had a couple of really bad weeks, but all is well and order has been restored in her universe.  Still, I sympathize with her fears that both her body and her blog had been taken over by hostile invaders.  As a family member of mine famously says, “After 40, it’s all patch, patch, patch!”
• Squadratomagico is back home from Burning Man, and we all eagerly await photos and descriptions of what she saw there, (especially any Barbie- or other doll-related displays, natch.)
• At Romantoes, Tom Rose explores his her hatred of the “mawkish and bombastic” Bob Seger in “Shutup in Aisle Five,” while Rose and also writes “Meet the New Right, Same as the Old Right, now STFU.”  (What is it with the shout-outs to shutups at that blog?)  I guess I would say that it’s refreshing to hear at least one major party in this country speak out against sexism, however disingenuously–I’m just really sorry it’s not the Democratic Party! 
• Cakewrecks does it again, with some cakes that make taxidermy for household pets look like a classy afterlife.  (So it’s not an academic blog–but you all don’t post enough photos of stupid cakes on your blogs, so what’s a girl to do?)

6 Comments »

Seriously.  What are you googling out there that leads you to Historiann.com?

• disfigurement of Civil War soldiers
• original barbie
• Pocahontas
• pretty 40 year old women
• hot 40 year old women
• Burger King crowns
• full body-length posters of Cher
• Thomas Cole
• Captain Scarlet
• Burning Man naked girls
• hot women athletes
• (censored)
• cod piece/codpiece
• knitwear
• forties pinup

It’s times like these that I realize that the vast, vast majority of my fellow citizens use the internets very differently than I do, and to very different ends.  I don’t like the looks of it, but I have to admit that I’m pretty sure which posts those queries led to (except for the Cher query and codpiece.)  They’re not nearly as sick as these babies, which just came in over the transom last night.

• In 1492, was it OK to beat a woman
• was it legal to beat a woman in 1492

Yegads.  Is someone plotting domestic violence by time-travel?  But, my fave queries are of course, the philosophical,

• what is america

And the political:

• John Adams at his worst

Don’t look for Historiann to be lovin’ up Mr. Second-Worst!  Welcome, my fellow Adams haterz!  You have found a refuge here.

18 Comments »

I don’t like Sarah Palin’s policies, which are extremely right-wing and are not the direction we need to go.  I don’t want her to be the next Vice President of the United States.  However, speculation about and scrutiny of her body, pregnancy, and sex life, or her daughter’s body, pregnancy, and sex life, and all discussions of leaking amniotic fluid, lactation practices, medical records, or anything at all relating to the sexuality and reproductive history of anyone in the Palin family are disgusting, beside the point, and moreover, a really dumb path for so-called ”liberals” and “progressives” to go down.  (Aren’t we the party of sexual and reproductive liberty?  Do we or do we not believe in medical privacy rights?  Or does that all depend on whether we’re sniffing Republican or Democratic panties?)  Besides–guess who else had a teenaged mom (h/t TalkLeft)?

Please see these posts at Roxie’s World and Anglachel on why it’s never appropriate to make any woman’s (or teenaged daughter’s!) sexuality or reproductive history a political talking point, and to ask yourself how you would react if Bristol Palin weren’t just a media image to most of you but rather a student of yours.   (Thanks to Roxie for the Scarlet Letter comparison, a concept that I’ve borrowed from her.  A also stands for Arrogance, friends.)  All of the Dimmesdales out there should remove the logs from their own eyes before scrutinizing others for splinters.  Big Tent Democrat–and Bob Herbert–also explain why the Dimmesdales need to lay off.

Historiann will warn you again:  there are an awful lot of families out there who have dealt with teenaged pregnancy and who are helping to raise their own grandchildren.  Are those families going to be more sympathetic to the Palin family, or to the people who are gossiping about and laughing at them like city slicker collegiates chuckling at the antics of the small-town rubes?  Figure it out.  Doing the right thing morally just might be the right thing politically.

Here endeth the lesson.

41 Comments »

Well, kids:  you gotta hand it to John McCain.  He’s made Democrats go totally crayzee with his choice of VP!

First of all, via Shakesville, the Palin family has announced that their eldest daughter Bristol is currently five months pregnant, which pretty much scotches the tacky rumormongering that Sarah Palin’s youngest son Trig is her grandson, and not her son.  The young lady and her baby’s father plan to marry and raise their child together.  Seems to me like there are a lot of families in this situation today–Dems will push unsourced rumors and nasty comments about other people’s sex lives at their peril.  (Hey–aren’t we also the party that stays out of people’s bedrooms?  Like we’re also the party of feminist values, I guess.)  D’ya still want to go after her for going after her wife-beating, stepson-tasing ex-brother in law?  Does anyone have some dirt on the kid who’s off to Iraq this fall?  Well, do ya, punks?

And secondly, also via Shakesville, Joe Biden steps in it this morning, at a rally in Historiann’s hometown, no less:

“There’s a gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and between me and I suspect my vice presidential opponent,” Biden said at an outdoor rally Sunday, getting ready to hit the GOP ticket for their economic policies.

“She’s good-looking,” he quipped.

Heh heh heh.  What’s the matter, honey?  Can’t you take a joke?  You should smile more, with such a pretty face.  And Gloria Steinem was just a slut from East Toledo!  Heh heh heh.

Keep it up, Dems!  Remember:  the people don’t think you’re laughing at Palin.  They think you’re laughing at them.

16 Comments »

Those of you who know me in real life know that I pretend to be a really hard-core jock while struggling to get out to run 5-6 miles twice a week and doing curls with 10-pound weights about twice a month.  One of the ways that I preserve this illusion is that I like to run on the Ute Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, which runs from the visitor’s center at the top of the park at 11,796 feet above sea level, down to Milner Pass, the continental divide, at 10,800 feet.  I end up doing this about once or twice a year–it’s about a two-hour drive from my house, depending on the time of day and traffic, so I can’t justify getting out to do it weekly or even monthly during the summer, the only time the road and the trail are accessible (usually early May to late September, depending on the snow.)  Sometimes I do it round trip, but yesterday I only had time for a one-way jog, downhill.

Yesterday was the day, and it was great!  I’ve never had any trouble running at that altitude, for some reason.  You feel a little lightheaded and tingly at first, but then it’s just another run, albeit with better scenery than my neighborhood routes.  No large animal sightings–not even an elk, which in RMNP are as common as pigeons in big cities.  Once I saw a couple of bighorn sheep on this run–fortunately, they left me and my running partner alone, as they can be very nasty creatures.  There were still lots of wildflowers, like asters, Indian paintbrushes, and all kinds of little yellow and white blossoms.  And the weather was mixed–overcast with thunderstorms all around me, but patches of warm sun (as you can see in this picture of the trailhead.)  Maybe I can get up there again in a few weeks to do the round-trip run before they close the road!

10 Comments »

Is anyone else struck by the way that men and women in both the print and broadcast media describe women athletes who happen to have children as (to paraphrase) “an Olympic athlete and a XX year-old mom!” in a tone that suggests they’re saying something like “an Olympic athlete and a XX year-old two-packs-a-day smoker!” or “an Olympic athlete and a XX year-old liver transplant patient!”  Why does anyone think that motherhood necessarily erodes or competes with athletic talent?  Of course, not every mother physically gives birth to her children, but even for those who do, childbirth and its aftermath doesn’t necessarily alter the body in ways that would affect athletic performance.  (And, if a woman is an Olympic-level competitor before she has children, her level of fitness means that she would be among the likliest candidates to snap back from pregnancy and childbirth extremely quickly.)

NPR did it again this morning in reporting on the women’s marathon gold medal winner, Romania’s Constantina Tomescu-Dita.  The reporter declared “she’s a 38 year-old mom who made it look easy!”  And U.S. women’s swim team member Dara Torres is almost always described as a “mom”in any reporting on her comeback efforts.  (With both Tomescu-Dita and Torres, the reporters seem equally amazed at their “advanced” ages, too, which are history-making but–do we really think of 40 as enfeebled any more?  U. S. Olympic weightlifter Melanie Roach’s motherhood is also heavily featured in the reporting on her, although she is still a relatively dewy 33.  The fact that reporters and the media are making such a big deal out of female parenthood suggests that culturally we’re still very invested in the notion of women’s bodies’ weakness and delicacy compared to men’s bodies.  I haven’t heard any male athletes being described in breathless terms as “dads,” although my study of this subject is admittedly accidental and anecdotal.

Finally, what’s with the word “mom,” instead of “mother?”  This seems to be an appropriation of the expression “stay-at-home mom,” or “full-time mom,” which are almost never rendered as “stay-at-home mother” or “full-time mother.”  To me, it sounds grating, because “mom” is a name, not a job, and not a word that should be used with the indefinite article (as in “a mom.”)

13 Comments »

UPDATED BELOW

This letter came in across the transom in the H-WOMEN digest Monday night:

I have a question that deals not so much with scholarship as with academic
life.  I would very much appreciate hearing how other women in higher
education — and their institutions — may have managed having a baby
during an academic term.  I am currently pregnant, due February 10, right
in the midst of Spring 2009 semester, which runs from mid-January to early
May.  I am entering my 5th year in a tenure-track position, and am in good
standing. However, the university where I am employed does not have an
official maternity leave policy for faculty members.  We all teach a 4/4
load, and the courses I will be teaching in the spring have already been
added to the registrar’s page, though I’m sure it would be possible to
change days and times.

I realize that I am of course entitled to 6 weeks unpaid leave via FMLA,
but my husband and I cannot go without my paycheck.  I will have to work
out the details with my dean and I am curious to know what others have
done in similar situations.  I would like to have a few good possible
plans in mind before I meet with the dean.

This is a real request for ideas to take to the Dean–although I’m sure the vast majority of us think it’s ridiculous that any university would still not have some kind of a maternity leave policy at this point, let’s keep the laments to a minimum and the helpful advice and suggestions to a maximum.  At Baa Ram U., at least in the Liberal Arts College, people giving birth or adopting a child are now entitled to a one course release from our 2-2 load, in addition to maxing out whatever accrued sick leave time one has.  (I believe that it’s typical even for newish Assistant Professors to have 6 weeks of paid sick leave for a vaginal birth, and 8 weeks total to recover from a C-section.)  This of course still doesn’t solve the problem of who might cover or teach your courses during your recovery–that is still unfortunately handled by the pregnant individuals themselves, who must rely on the kindness of colleagues–and that’s a terrible burden to put on an untenured person especially.  It’s one thing to ask a colleague and teaching assistants to sub for one or two classes–and quite another magnitude of annoyance to have to worry about covering four classes! 

Coincidentally, yesterday I ran into a male colleague in another department, and heard a tale of woe about his last academic year, which was marked by different surgeries followed by other surgeries meant to fix infections and other problems caused by the initial surgeries.  He told me that he wished he had taken the whole first semester off (he’s got a wad of accrued sick leave), because 1) he pushed himself too hard to get back to work because 2) he really disliked relying on the charity of his colleagues to cover his classes while he recovered.  (Why can’t the Dean keep a little pot of money to distribute to hire emergency adjuncts to take over and teach for a month, or two, or for the rest of the term, without forcing us to make decisions on the fly while ailing, and burdening our already overworked colleagues?)  Although we are hired for our minds, those minds are unfortunately embedded in human bodies, which are subject to traumatic injury, decay, and transformation.  Given that fact, my suggestions to this maternity leave question are, in no particular order:

• Find out what paid sick leave you’re entitled to–it should be decent, given that you’ve been there 4 years.  That may help you decide what kind of relief you’ll need, and when.
• Since you’re married, your husband should investigate what kind of parental leave his job offers, and how to go about taking advantage of it.
• Suggest to the Dean that you be offered a one- or two course-release next spring.  (After all, it doesn’t cost 25% of your salary to pay an adjunct to cover a course–sadly, they can probably get that done for $3,000.)
• If you’re not already signed up to teach a seminar course or two (or other such course that meets only once a week), see if you can change your schedule in that fashion.
• Consider offering to teach some summer classes, in order to “pay back” courses, if they’re unwilling to grant you one or more course releases, and see if you can do it over the following two summers rather than just next summer. 

If you, dear readers, have dealt with this issue before, or if you have knowledge as to how this has been handled at your university (productively or otherwise), please leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments below.  (I’m also picking up the Bat Phone to see if Ann Bartow and her coven of legal experts can help!)

UPDATED 8/14/08:  H-WOMEN has posted some interesting, angry, and helpful replies to the above query, although I don’t see too many strategies that haven’t been suggested here and in the comments below.  See here for a collection of replies, and see also Catherine Clinton’s thoughtful and sad commentary on the lack of progress for academics on this issue over the past twenty-five years.  Sigh.

UPDATED 8/15/08:  H-WOMEN has seven more responses–these range into more personal reflections, some of which are more useful than others.  See especially Susan Yohn’s post on the personal versus the political, and also her thoughts from the perspective of a department chair.  She offers both practical advice for now, as well as urges us to take political action on this issue.  Sounds like we’ve got an old-fashioned Consciousness Raising going on right here on the internets!

18 Comments »

Although still a dewy young thing in her 30s (for a few precious, precious weeks, anyway!), Historiann feels a slight chill in the air when she contemplates these harbingers of old age and mortality:

• Kelly Bundy has breast cancer.  (Seriously–send good wishes to actress Christina Applegate, who is being treated for breast cancer at age 36.  Breast cancer is never good news of course, but being diagnosed before your 40s is very alarming.)
• Brandon Walsh is seriously pushing 40.  (He turns 39 at the end of this month!)  Donna Martin graduates!  Donna Martin graduates!  Donna Martin graduates!
• Check this out:  Marcia Cross (”Bree Van de Kamp/Hodge”) and Kristin Davis (”Charlotte York Goldenblatt”) used to play bad girls, and Courtney Thorne-Smith (of According to Jim) used to have attractive male co-stars!  (You tell kids that today, and they just won’t believe you!)
• Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth got her AARP card in the mail five years ago!  Sigh.  (See this new history of the band:  David Browne, Goodbye 20th Century:  A Biography of Sonic Youth, just released in hardcover in May.)    Rock-and-roll band biographies are a really strange genre of writing–written by and for superfans, with very few clues or ways into the book for anyone who’s not a superfan.  (Kind of like the most hagiographic biography you can imagine!)  But, if you want to spend 15 minutes laughing and shaking your head, look up “Love, Courtney,” or “Lollapalloza 1995″ in the index and go straight to those pages.  Ahhh, my misspent (sonic and otherwise) youth!

5 Comments »

Cakewrecks is the most hillarious website I’ve seen in a long time.  The photo at right comes from this post.  (Thanks to Susie Madrak for linking to Cakewrecks last week.)  Don’t you wish you could have been invited to that wedding?

I’m really impressed (in a queasy sort of way) by the large number of professionally decorated cakes there are in the world in the shape of body parts and/or bodily traumas.  Don’t miss the extremely weird baby shower/childbirth cakes.  Today’s post is a cake in the shape of a bound foot.

Cakewrecks is internet crackrocks if you’re looking to fritter away some time on the world wide timewasting web. 

2 Comments »