Archive for the 'net

Healthy body image vs. the waif

June 27, 2010 nutrition, the 'net 5 comments
Fitness Model posing with dumbell. Photo by Gl...

Image via Wikipedia - their version of fitness (not mine!)

I love advertising, and I truly appreciate cleverly or elegantly done ads. And I try not to let most advertising bother me, unless it’s truly horrendous. But Special K, a cereal long held up as a ‘diet’ solution for morning breakfasts, has gone just a little south of promoting healthy body image for women with its latest advertisement.

A model who embodies everything appalling about the starving waif look – protruding bones, sunken cheeks, smokey eyes – stares disconsolately at a ginormous bowl, bored out of her gourd at the prospect of yet another bowl of dietary punishment. Then, magically, when she opens her cupboard and finds a box of Special K, her world becomes brightly colored, her hair falls in gorgeous wavy rivulets down her back and all becomes right with the world.

Personally, I don’t *hate* Special K cereal, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. If I had to pick a cereal, and if I was eating from a bowl that size – well, it would probably be either Cocoa Puffs (hey, I have secret sins, too!) or Oat Flakes, my childhood favorite, with fresh strawberries. Special K wouldn’t even make my list if I wanted anything approaching healthy nutrition.

I guess what bothers me about the ad, though, is the idea that in the minds of Special K marketers, this waif-like model embodies the picture of a woman who needs to lose or watch her weight. Frankly, the woman in the ad needs to be held down and force fed a decent breakfast of bacon and eggs, with a side of buttered cheese grits and a hot full-fat whole milk latte. Repeatedly. Until her bones no longer protrude through her shape-hugging neutral sweats. Or until she realizes that Special K may just be the road to wreck and ruin. ;)

Talk about sending the wrong message about a healthy body image.

Special K waif tries to stay motivated to lose weight

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All multi-tasking, no breathing just makes a mess

May 25, 2010 life, the 'net 4 comments
Old typewriter help
Image by ChepeNicoli via Flickr

I am a writer. I am an editor. I am the person other people call, several times each day, saying, “Do you have a minute to take a look at something?” Or, “What’s another word for ‘relevant’?” Or, “Can you fix this sentence? I’m stuck.”

That’s me. So glad that four years of J-school and 12 years of newspaper copy-editing and ad agency copy writing aren’t going to waste here in private industry. Really glad. Especially when I make a mistake.

Ai-yee, I have always hated mistakes, especially mistakes in print. We used to post-mortem each issue of the weekly newspapers where I was the editorial designer. Every error, every typo, every missed photo credit – 34 years later, I still remember those meetings and shudder. Now, on the web, mistakes are in pixels instead of points. But the parameters of the destruction are so much wider in web publishing. With the increased expectation that writers will be capable of independent self-editing comes tighter deadlines, bigger audiences. Ai-yee. Today, I hate mistakes even more than I did in print.

So here’s my post-mortem of yesterday’s work:

  1. I revised a cover letter I’d written two weeks ago and then .pdf’d it and emailed it to a prospective freelance writing client – complete with not one, but TWO typos.
  2. I asked my online editor why a piece I’d written hadn’t made its usual featured spot – trying not to sound righteously angry, but probably failing on that score. Editor: I don’t know, but if you let me know in advance I can fix the placement. I chalk it up to the cost of doing business – some days I won’t get the feature – and I move on. Until I look at my editorial calendar. I’d headlined the piece “Free rabies shot clinic tonight.” When I proofed it before hitting ‘publish’, I realized that the clinic was on Tuesday. I edited the article to correct the date – but never changed the headline, and published it early Monday morning, instead of holding it for the correct day (Tuesday.)
  3. I incorrectly listed a yogurt manufacturer’s production state. Corrected it when I found the error – and the content provider’s website never took the edit.

=sigh=  Third time (wrong) is the charm that breaks the curse, right? Three disasters – now I’m done for awhile?

I think I need that intervention for women who keep trying to do too much.

No more multi-tasking, no publishing tonight. I am going to meditate, do a yoga pose, and go to bed.

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Loving and hating technology

April 18, 2010 life, the 'net 4 comments
Palm TX

Image via Wikipedia

Last week and this weekend I realized that I have a love-hate relationship with my Blackberry Tour smartphone.

I love that I can access the web anywhere that I have a cell phone signal. It means that train rides, cheap hotels without wi-fi and camping trips do not have to take me off the web.

But I hate that my smart phone is NOT, and I do mean NOT, a fully-functional hand-held digital assistant in the same way that several models of Palm personal digital assistants have been. My smart phone is NOT a PDA – and I miss the PDA functions that used to make my life easier.

When I got my first Palm IIIxe PDA in 2001, I discovered that I could write on it with its included stylus – and magically, my stroke-altered scrawl was turned into legible on-screen letters. Even more magic – when I popped the IIIxe into its cradle and hit the Sync button, I sent those scrawled notes directly to my PC – where they became memos, and task lists, databases and Microsoft Word docs. With my little electronic extra brain cells, I only had to write things down one time. Once written, the information could be read on the PDA and synched to my PC(s). From there it could be re-written, edited, emailed, categorized and saved a dozen ways.

I fell in love. I became the Palm subject matter expert at work. I bought second-hand, reconditioned PDAs and loaned them to other techs, converting a couple to PDA users over time. My PDA was always at my side or in my purse. I hadn’t taken notes on paper for nearly a decade – but I’d used and retired a Palm IIIxe, Palm m500, Palm m505, Tungsten E and my first Tungsten E2.

And then my phone died. And my second Tungsten E2 was getting quirky – the touch-screen sometimes blanked on me and the date-time would reset for no reason. I decided it was time to jump into the ‘convergence’ between PDAs and smart phones that tech writers had been singing about for years. My next phone would be a smart phone. Only my phone coverage lives with Verizon Wireless. No iPhone. Palm smart phones were being retired. It was Blackberry, or the new Droids. I decided to go Blackberry, a name that had a long history in multi-tasking smart phones.

And as I said, I mostly like the Tour. But I *hate* that I cannot write directly on my smartphone with a little stylus. I miss Graffitti. I miss scrawling down quick notes, and I miss being able to take notes in a meeting directly in my PDA. I hate tapping out a note with my thumbs on the included keyboard. The keyboard works for contacts. It sucks for writing. The Tour is not alone in sucking as a writing tool. No smart phone can do what my little Palm PDAs were able to do for a decade – allow me to write, in something like handwriting, and record my thoughts as fast as I can think them.

I am back to taking notes in a paper notebook, and then struggling to read my notes and retyping them into outlines, task lists, emails, Word docs and blog posts. Why? Because Palm no longer *makes* PDAs. And my Tungsten E2 is still being a little too  fruity to rely on it any longer. I will have to go to the eBay resellers and see what I can find reconditioned, or maybe I will be lucky enough to score another new-in-box Palm PDA that I can give a good home.

Yeah, I’ve seen an iPad. I want a real keyboard and I want to be able to write on the screen. I own a 9″ netbook which I love – but I don’t want to carry all 2.2 lbs. of my netbook with me at all times – I want the 4-5 oz. I devote to a phone to also be a funcitonal PDA.

If convergence means I can’t write on my phone’s screen, then I want my Palm PDA back. And I want my PDA to be able to make phone calls and surf the web. We have the technology. Why can’t we make our smart phones into true personal digital assistants? Things we can really write on? Please.

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Every step makes a difference!

November 1, 2009 cancer, research, survivorship, the 'net 10 comments

A few weeks ago, in an effort to improve my blogs I joined www.problogger.com. I know that the tips and tricks I’ve picked up so far are improving my blogging – who knows, maybe someday I’ll even move my blog(s) to their own domains!

One of the things I really enjoy about the blogging community is that I’m always finding opportunities where my blogging can make a difference. I’ve blogged here to support Yoga Bear and tweeted to support Cancer and Careers – two organizations who give direct, real-time support to cancer survivors, support which makes their days easier. The most recent opportunity was a call for bloggers to help compile an ebook designed to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation and raise funds and awareness for breast cancer research and support.

Yeah – I know. I don’t have breast cancer; I have rectal cancer…and we have our own awareness and funding issues. But at the end of the day, I’m a woman. I have breasts. I have cousins and an aunt who’ve had breast cancer, and one of my cousins died of recurrent BC. I work in pre-clinical research, helping to make cancer drugs – and in the vivarium, drugs don’t wear single-color awarenss ribbons. Drugs that work on some kinds of cancer often become candidates for treatment regimens in other types – and every step forward makes a difference for all types of cancers.

I submitted one of my favorite posts, “The (reluctant) cancer warrior,” — and I’m proud to announce that it was accepted and appears in the Blog4Cause ebook produced by Lance Ekum (@lance02) and Joanna Sutter (@joannasutter), authors of the Journey of Life and Fitness & Spice blogs, respectively.

Every donation, large and small, to the Komen Foundation from the targeted Blog4Cause page gives the donor a download key to the ebook Ekum and Sutter compiled. Even more important, the ebook puts survivors’ perspectives in the hands of even more people. Through this effort, awareness about and understanding of living with cancer will reach a new audience. I’m very proud to have been accepted in Blog4Cause’s effort – and very happy that by doing something I enjoy, I can do a little good.

Ekum and Sutter’s effort also stirred up some sleeping marketing and PR skills, has me thinking that there’s ebook potential out here to raise year-round awareness about colorectal cancer.

Bloggers and friends – would you be up for a similar effort targeted as a colorectal cancer awareness/fund-raising effort? Take a look at your best posts (or write up a new one) and let me know!

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Look to your right – it's not all about me!

September 13, 2009 cancer, survivorship, the 'net 6 comments
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Image by koka_sexton via Flickr

When I started writing this blog, it was all about me — what I was feeling, my treatments, my surgeries, my struggles, my doctors. But as my life out loud lasted longer and moved into remission, and then recurrence, and now back into remission, I wrote here about different subjects. Some of my other passions (as you might have noticed from reading older posts) are my dogs, dog training, research, camping and cooking. This blog has become very personal, and for the most part, it’s still all about me.

But now and then I’ve written about causes which inspire me: the lifestyle study examining cancer prevention which is taking place in NY state’s Mohawk Valley; the foolishness of some proposed NY state canine legislation; Yoga Bear‘s efforts to get funding for programs that bring yoga to cancer patients; the Army of Women’s efforts to bring more women into cancer patient research. And the last few days I’ve mentioned Everything Changes, Kairol Rosenthal’s blog about living with a cancer diagnosis in as a 20 or 30-something adult.

Kairol writes a great blog, one that makes me think (in a good way) about how I’ve chosen to live with cancer. As much as I enjoy her blog, it’s only one of the links in my sidebar. So today, it’s not all about me. It’s time to spotlight some of the other folks who make up my blog roll. Those links in the right-sidebar are there because I find their blogs or the sites interesting, thought-provoking, inspiring — and sometimes they make me laugh out loud (LOL is on purpose an acronym for my Life Out Loud.)

Casa Az is my friend Azahar’s personal blog. Like me, Az is a stage IV cancer survivor. Unlike me, she’s an American ex-patriot (Canadian) living abroad in a place I’ve always wanted to visit: Seville, Spain. On her site, you’ll also see links to her beautiful photos at Azahar’s Sevilla, Azahar’s Kitchen, and Sevilla Tapas. Dealing with cancer outside of the battered US health care system is very different from what I’ve experienced here, and sometimes orders of magnitude more complex. Az inspires me daily, mainly because most of the time she lives her life and doesn’t talk about cancer.

Dr. Mike Eades’ Protein Power Blog can cover any subject that crosses Mike’s radar, but it most often focuses on diet and nutrition research. I’ve been a low-carber since 2002; some of my docs think my diet may have helped me withstand the rigors of over 75 chemo infusions, three surgeries and 25 days of radiation. I’m not going to argue; low-carbing just makes me feel better. Mike’s trademark post is an analysis of the latest hot-topic nutrition study — and he generally can make even the most complex nutritional science interesting and accessible.

The author of My Cancer Deployment calls herself ‘Sugarmouth O’Riordan.’ Be warned, this isn’t a sweet-as-pie discussion of life with rectal cancer. The subhead for the blog says it all: You’ll find no pretty ribbons here. Sugarmouth spells out what she’s feeling, how she’s feeling with the appropriate asterisks included. Her blog is gritty and real and Sugarmouth always makes me think.

Whidbey Woman is a caregiver to her husband, Ron, a recurrent colon cancer survivor. She’s been journaling about her experience at Ron’s Road to Recovery. Mixed in with observations and thoughts about coping as a caregiver are tips for survivors like how to prepare as a patient when you’re about to start chemo again.

I met Rotorhead at the Colon Club, an online support community for colorectal cancer survivors and caregivers. Rotorhead’s Waterblog is about RH’s journey with cancer, and his physical and mental return to wellness. I think what I find most appealing about RH’s blog is that he’s done as much as he can, as often as he could, to focus on living his life. And he writes about surfing in Hawaii. When things were tough for me, I’d visit RH’s blog for the sheer vicarious joy of reading about his daily adventures on the ocean.

There are more blogs out there which talk out loud about survivorship; I’ll spotlight them in another post. Meanwhile, you might find some thought-provoking interest if you check out the links in my Blogroll. There it is in the sidebar — just look to the right. Survivorship isn’t all about me.

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