Trailblazers & Pathmakers: Women’s Leadership with the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario
Me? A trailblazer? Apparently so, because I had the privilege of being invited to the Trailblazers & Pathmakers event at Queen’s Park hosted by The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. On an early April morning, I joined 99 amazing women to discuss issues surrounding women’s leadership. May I get real for a moment?…
How To Ruin a TV Show
It’s been a couple of very, very busy weeks and all I can say is thank various divinities for vitamin B12 shots. Amazing conveyors of energy in a syringe! However, even with this miraculous bit of boost, I am now so toasted that I’m crispy and plan to spend the next couple of days drooling…
Perfect Comebacks
Perfect comeback #1: Barnes & Noble and Borders in the US have requested that a magazine cover up due to what apparently has a controversial cover: an androgynous-looking man with his shirt off wearing makeup and girly hair. Because, says B&N “the model is young and it could be deemed as a naked female.” I’ve…
Definition in Opposition
There was another thing that struck me in the New York Times’ Patient Voices feature. What struck me was George’s story, in particular the part where he talks about practicing doing certain things over and over again in order to “appear normal”. It struck another of those tender places, because what do you do when…
Pain Thresholds, Gender and More Ranting
A couple of weeks ago, in response to my rant about the medical literature talking about the alleged hyperalgesia (i.e., lower pain thresholds) in people living with RA, Carrie (sorry – forgot the link) asked a very good question. Namely whether it wasn’t a good thing to identify that RA appeared to lower your pain…
A Rant Revisited
I subscribe to a number of HealthCentral writers and a couple of days ago, got the latest notification that Karen Lee Richards (who writes about fibromyalgia and chronic pain) had written another post. It turns out that it was an alert mentioning that Dr. Oz has a segment about fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome on…
Woe, oh Woe am I. Not.
About six months ago, I finally gave in and joined the Canadian version of Netflix. I’d resisted because I tend to watch movies based on what I’m in the mood for and that’s not something you can do when you never know what’s arriving next in your mailbox. However, my local video store now has…
Weighty Thoughts
I’ve just returned a pair of size 8 pants because I couldn’t pull them up past my hips. This is a very new experience to me. In the past, I’ve hovered around size 4 or 6 (with temporary excursions into size 8 the two times I quit smoking) and aside from the myriad variations of…
Feminist Empowerment My Arse
On Friday, I read an article in the Toronto Star about Beyoncé’s new single called “Single Ladies”. The article pronounced it “a shout-out to sisterhood,” “a strong song of female empowerment” and claims that it has “a powerful feminist message”. Naturally, this made me want to check it out, especially since just the night before,…