Letters to the Editor
smallfox
Published Letters: 111 Editor's Choice: 8
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Sarah -
[Read the article: Roundup: The incredible identical quadruplets and more!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]it's impossible that there are only four MRIs in Canada. There are five that I know of in my mid-sized US city, and Canada is not a backwater third world country. They have MRIs. Trust me.
And as for the hospitals being over-capacity, this is the same at every county hospital in the US. Running on Code Level 2 or 3 (meaning the wards can have 2 or 3 patients in the halls on stretchers waiting for beds) is a daily occurance and par for the course. Private hospitals circumvent this by adding capacity, but only in money-making wards, and by turfing unprofitable patients to county hospitals where they are seen and the cost is written off (meaning we as taxpayers pay for it). As such, high profit specialities can become oversaturated while low-profit necessities get shafted. Canada's system isn't perfect, but shifting healthcare away from a for-profit model is a huge step in the right direction.
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babies don't like pastels
[Read the article: Scientists: Chicks like pink]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As far as I've heard. Early infant toys are generally decorated with bold patterns of red, black, and white because infant vision isn't as acute and well-developed as adult vision. You could ask if toddlers have a preference for certain colors based on gender, but by that age cultural influences are already well at work.
But more to the point, who cares? I happen to like pink, and I don't care if that's because the Western heteropatriarchal hegemony says I should be traditionally female and like pink (as the pink top I'm currently wearing in no way, shape, or form influences my desire to conform to gender stereotypes) or because my ancestors picked berries. ...Maybe I just like pink.
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What's changed so much
[Read the article: Buh-bye girlhood, hello trampy 'tweendom!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]in the last ten years? I must be a cohort of Tracy, as my tween years were just over a decade ago. It may have partially been a function of where my mother took me shopping, but I don't recall any of the sort of trashy, hip-to-be-stupid type clothing that dominates pre-teen wear today even at Limited, Too, etc. When I was 11, the predominate "fashion" was functional shorts and printed t-shirts and boys and girls dressed relatively similarly until junior high and high school.
What precipitated this explosion of preteen streetwalker wear? Aspiring to adult/teenagerhood has always been a part of preteen identity finding, and somewhat sexy/adult characters have long been marketed to young girls (my early elementary years saw Jem as the paragon of cool) but it seems like only recently have preteens adopted the fashions so literally. What happened?
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very young diaper-free
[Read the article: Diaper-free nation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"potty training" generally has a lot less to do with the child signaling than the mother learning when junior makes that face or motion he's going to go in roughly 10 seconds and mom needs to ready him ASAP. This was/is the common practice in places before diapers or where diapers aren't readily available but I wouldn't call that "potty training" (since the child still has basically no physical control over the function) so much as hyper-vigilant oberservation. That said, by all means let your little hooligan ran around naked at home, but for the untrained and very young, diaper them in public. If they are able to hold it or signal, great - no messy diaper. If they can't, at least you won't have a baby peeing in the sink. Which is really, really gross.
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It's very unfortunate
[Read the article: Burqini creator hearts "Opus"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That the "burqini" has become as hot-button as the hijab when it has the potential to be so useful in and out of an Islamic context. If a woman chooses to wear it to keep modest by Islamic standards I fail to see what's so offensive about that -- it allows her to do activities she otherwise wouldn't be able to do (if the choice was otherwise between a western bathing suit or a burqa.) I, personally, am an athiest who happens to find most western bathing suits impractical and too revealing. It has nothing to do with religious mandates on displaying myself - I simply feel more comfortable wearing more than the equivalent of skimpy underwear in public (both for public-display and freedom of movement without worrying about "wardrobe malfunction" reasons). A burqini (or an abreviated form) is much more practical for warm-water scuba or other swimming activities I enjoy and as someone with a genetically high risk of skin cancer, keeping more covered is always good.
So what irritates me is that we've politicized both ends of the clothing spectrum, and I have thing assumed about my religious fidelity based on how I dress. Sometimes a woman in a burqini is just a woman in a burqini. How about we leave the arrogant, self-righteous assumptions out of it and remember it's none of our business if she's a "subjugated" Muslim, a cancer-survivor, a surfer, someone with scars, or whatever other personal reason might motivate someone to wear something in between a bikini and a wetsuit.
(And, therefore, focus on the *real* problems within Islam and international human rights. I can tell you now it's not options in swimwear.)