Letters to the Editor
Leeandra Nolting
Published Letters: 177 Editor's Choice: 10
-
boys and girls are different
[Read the article: Girls' suicide rates soar]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's incredibly tragic when a teenager of EITHER sex kills him/herself.
However, it makes sense to study SSRIs effects on boys vs. girls vs. men vs. women. Males and females have different hormones and chemicals running around their systems. Both male and female hormones, in the wrong amounts, can effect things like mood and rage levels. And teenagers' hormones are all out of whack for a couple of years.
Is it that far of a leap to say that, due to their different chemical compositions, men, women, boys, and girls will all be effected by SSRIs differently?
(I'm not knocking SSRIs here. Like any medicines, they're lifesavers for many people, dangerous for others. Were I to inject myself with insulin four times a day, I'd probably end up very ill in the hospital before too long. But I have friends who have to do just that to stay alive.)
-
oh, doppelganger...
[Read the article: Bouncy breasts seek better bras]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you don't want to read about bras, don't read about bras. I wouldn't find it frivolous if the R&D guys somewhere were looking to build a better jockstrap. After all, I have no idea what it's like to have a penis and testicles flopping around when I run.
-
"if there's demand, there will be production..."
[Read the article: Bouncy breasts seek better bras]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, right.
The "males in marketing" at Kimberly-Clark didn't see any demand for inexpensive, mass-produced, highly absorbant, disposable bandage material until WWI.
And then the war ended suddenly and they had a bunch of this stuff left over.
And then the Red Cross nurses working in the trenches pointed out that approximately a third to a half of the adult population bleeds copiously 13 weeks a year.
And they still needed two years of convincing before Kotex hit the market in 1920 and became an overnight success.
(87 years later, Kotex is still the world's leading brand of sanitary pad.)
-
to watch_this_space...
[Read the article: Bob Herbert argues against prostitution, again ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Re: minors in prostitution vs. food service. A minor working at McDonald's ain't in danger of getting pregnant, AIDS, hepatitis, etc. from the fry machine. The reason there are so many minors working in fast food service is largely because the wages are so low--it's not attractive work to people who can command higher salaries elsewhere. The general managers of McDonalds franchises would LOVE to have all adults working on their staffs because then they would not be subject to the hour restrictions of child labor laws.
The reasons there are so many minors in prostitution are many and varied, but there will ALWAYS be pimps looking to have a stable of underage girls (and boys). Unfortunately, there will always be a lucrative market for sex with children.
And it's easier to work your way up from a job at McD's than from prostitution. There's no moral taint to having worked in fast food in your younger days. There is to having been a prostitute. I don't see that legalization is going to change society's attitudes that fast.
(BTW, I'm not saying one way or the other whether it SHOULD be legalized.)
-
eh...
[Read the article: Hair removal for the preteen set]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I just can't get that worked up over this.
I think I was 9 or 10 the first time I shaved my legs. (I'd always had hair on them.) Then I didn't shave them for a while. Then I did again. I probably started doing it consistently in around eighth grade.
I tried Nair once around that time. Bought it with my allowance money, so it was fairly cheap. It smelled like rotting cucumbers and burned my skin. Other friends LOVED it, however.
Nowadays, I shave every day in the shower. (Not a real meticulous operation, just dragging a razor over the soap suds. Takes maybe a minute while I'm letting the conditioner soak into the hair on my head.) My hair and fingernails grow very fast, so I've always got some stubble going on somewhere. I don't really worry about it. I've got friends that shave, friends that wax, friends that use Nair, friends that go au naturael. To each her own.
If I have a daughter someday, what she decides to do about her leg hair is the least of my worries.
-
what is the problem here?
[Read the article: Catholic Charities' birth control battle]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Less than half of Catholics in America attend Mass every Sunday. Since the majority stopped practicing THAT rule, should the church change it to "get with the times?" Or should it keep preaching what it sincerely believes to be the truth, regardless of unpopularity?
There is Jesus' saying of "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Most Christians take that to mean that they are obliged to obey legitimate secular law EXCEPT when doing so would violate God's law. Then the Christian is obligated to disobey the secular law in favor of obeying the higher authority. Regardless of popular opinion, the Catholic Church DOES consider contraception to be gravely against God's law.
Catholic Charities isn't prying into people's bedrooms here. All they are doing is refusing to subsidize something that they sincerely believe is wrong. (Strikes me as being like the parents who know their child is living with a boyfriend/ girlfriend, but refuse to put the two in the same bedroom when they come home for Christmas because they believe extramarital sex is wrong. If the kids don't like it, they can find other accomodations.)
Nobody is preventing these women from obtaining birth control on their own. If Planned Parenthood is so worried that they won't because of the cost, why do they not offer free contraceptives to women who work for Catholic Charities?
BTW, The Church recognizes that the pill has legitimate medical uses outside of contraception and has no problem with use of the pill for treating acne, cramps, regularity, etc., so long as it is used by women who are abstaining from having sex. If this is a sexually active woman we are talking about, she is supposed to only use it in desperate situations (i.e., crippling endrometriosis, not acne) and after all other feasible treatments have failed.