OWL President discusses body image, beauty, and growing older as a guest blogger on Disruptive Women in Healthcare

By Margaret Huyck, Ph.D. We know the birthday cards - the ones where "older woman" is signified by sagging everything and bunny slippers. And the advertisements urging us to utilize the latest magical cure ("hated by dermatologists") to restore wrinkly, saggy, puffy skin to an earlier, more youthful visage. We remember the astonished comments when Dove began showing real women, with real curves (and fat) in their advertisements, even on buses. And the current comments about the young woman who protested (effectively) to Seventeen Magazine about air-brushed images of the women who were presented as their models.

Attractiveness is equated with intelligence, beginning in nursery school. By midlife we are all too aware that attractiveness is often used synonymously with "youthfulness." When people began saying, "Oh, you don't look 60! ...or 70!" they meant it as a compliment. When my friends began serious hair coloring and face lifting, and stopped marking birthdays or even mentioning their graduation year, and worried about holding on to jobs in which competence was connected with appearance... we knew we were all in trouble.

To read more, click here .

The ACA preventative care benefits for women take effect August 1st! 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes preventive care more accessible and affordable to millions of Americans. This is especially important to women, who are more likely than men to avoid needed health care, including preventive care, because of cost. To help address these cost barriers and make sure all women have access to preventive health care, the health care law requires all new and non-grandfathered private insurance plans to cover a wide range of preventive services without co-payments or other cost sharing requirements. Over the next few years, as an increasing number of health plans come under the law's reach, more and more women will have access to a wide range of preventive services without co-payments or deductibles. The National Women's Law Center (NWLC) has highlighted several preventative care services that insurance companies are required to make available to women:

• Well-woman visits 
• Breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling 
• Contraceptive methods and counseling  
• Screening and counseling for domestic partner violence
• Screening for gestational diabetes
• Counseling for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV
• Screening for HIV
• DNA testing for high-risk strains of HPV

For more information, click here.

To read OWL's Statement on the Supreme Court Ruling on the Affordable Care Act, click here.