Ken Burns Misses The (Nursing) Boat

Most people have probably heard of Ken Burns, the famous filmmaker; and many people who know about Ken Burns have heard of his four-part cancer series, "Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies."

Having just finished watching this six-hour cinematic expose on the history, research, treatment, diagnosis, and future of cancer, I found myself feeling let down; and why was I feeling let down? Because, in six hours of "edutainment," Burns failed to feature or pay attention to a single nurse throughout the entire program. Once again, the mainstream media gives nurses the cold shoulder, pushing them summarily into a dark, quiet corner where their opinions, actions, and life-saving skills and knowledge are basically ignored.

Nurse Jackie Revisited

Several months ago, I watched the premier of Nurse Jackie, a new Showtime "dramedy" about a dysfunctional nurse struggling with infidelity and drug addiction, and I lambasted the show's producers and writers for choosing to portray such a flawed and troubled character who happens to be a nurse. Not having cable TV, I have not been able to watch the remainder of the season, although I hear through the grapevine that most nurses are quite unhappy with the show.

While I in no way wish nurses to only be portrayed as angels of mercy, the premier of Nurse Jackie did indeed leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Suzanne Gordon, a brilliant and insightful author for whom I have the highest esteem, has written a post about the end of the first season of the show. Ms. Gordon takes this opportunity to react to nurses like myself who have shunned Nurse Jackie out of self-righteous indignance, and she offers her own evaluation of the show, it's portrayal of 21st-century nurses, and how we as nurses may or may not be seen by the public.

I thank Ms. Gordon for her writing and her opinion, and when I do indeed watch Nurse Jackie on DVD some day, I will take her position into consideration and perhaps reevaluate the feelings that were stirred up when I first watched the premier.

"Natural" Beauty

Looking at different natural health and yoga magazines, I am sometimes shocked (perhaps unnecessarily) at how the publishers of such magazines follow the lead of mainstream fashion magazines, ubiquitously populating the pages of their publications with beautiful, flawless young women with clear skin, taut muscles, ample cleavage, exposed bellies and long, tan legs. 

One would think that so-called "natural" magazines would be more apt to use "real" people for their ads and articles, but in this culture dominated by a fascination with youth and beauty, I shouldn't be surprised. 

Perusing the pages of one such magazine, my wife and I were both independently struck with the fact that the pages of this "natural" magazine were filled with nothing but young white women, all of whom were displaying some combination of the attributes described in the first paragraph of this post. 

This type of natural lifestyle is not necessarily just the purview of the young, white and beautiful, yet, if I were an alien and happened to pick up several of these magazines soon after landing, I would be convinced that anyone who did yoga or drank soy milk had the legs of a gazelle and blinding pearly white teeth. If the same alien went to a yoga class, he or she might be disappointed that many of the yogis and yoginis did indeed sport some modicum of body fat and hints of cellulite. 

Alien visitations aside, I am simply appalled that yoga and natural health magazines all need to jump on the homogeneity bandwagon, delivering a bland and culturally narrow image to the soy milk-drinking masses, subtly convincing their readers that the products sold amidst their pages will deliver beauty, smooth skin and glowing health to anyone who happens to be young, white and female. 

Radio Interview: Columbus, Ohio

For anyone interested, my interview with Fred Andrle on WOSU, Ohio Public Radio, is available online at http://www.wosu.org/radio/radio-open-line/. Just scroll down the page to the Monday, November 10th section, et voila! You can listen from the website or download it is an MP3 file.

Dangerous Messages

Standing in line at the pharmacy the other day, I was struck by the headlines I saw on several magazines on display near the register. The headlines screamed, and I paraphrase: "Young Starlets Reveal How They Lose Weight Fast!" and "Tired of Winter Fat? Lose 20 Pounds in One Week!"

Living in a college town, I wondered how many young impressionable female college, high school, junior high (and elementary!) students stood in line at this and other stores, reading those headlines, fervently ruing the few pounds they may have gained over the holidays. How do they compare themselves to those starlets and models? What messages are sinking in, especially into the brains of those school-age girls? What are we doing to girls and women in this culture?

As the media proclaim the dangers of obesity (some calling it an epidemic), we also run the risk of running too far in the other direction, sending our young girls (and some boys) into crazed tailspins of body image dysmorphia. As someone who was a chubby youngster, I myself was frequently on the receiving end of jokes and innuendos about my weight from relatives, family, and strangers alike. The resultant misguided self-talk about my body still reverberates in my mind to this day, and I still suffer the psychic consequences of the frequently cruel statements which so often came my way.

In this media-saturated world where there simply seems to be no escape---especially for the young---it is the responsibility of the society at large to monitor its language and the messages which it feeds to its most vulnerable members. From my point of view, we are failing miserably, and the resulting eating disorders and unrealistic body image suffered by young women across this country are the natural result of our stark collective failure. How can we right this wrong?

Our collective failure is, of course, our collective responsibility to rectify. But how can we do so when the powers of the media---and the very culture itself---thwart us at every turn? God help young women as they face this constant onslaught to which they can never measure up, and if we can't stem the tide, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.