• Afghan law to protect women’s rights blocked by opponents – From Critical Dragon1177.
• Why do men keep putting me in the girlfriend zone? – This is brilliant. From Blakut.
• Felicia Day on the women in the new Star Trek movie – Spoilers, of course. I couldn’t agree more with her assessment.
• 6 women scientists who were snubbed due to sexism – Why not start your day with some outrage?

Trigger Warning for Body Image Issues and Eating Disorders

So you’ve stopped making the political into the personal when it comes to your fat friend. That’s awesome! Thank you so much for hearing what your fat friend has to say rather than your own internalized assumptions about her feelings.

“But sometimes,” you tentatively begin, “I hear her actually hating on herself. I hear her call herself worthless, ugly, and so on. What should I do then?”

Definitely, definitely don’t tell her to just love herself, ignore the “haters,” or otherwise pretend that your assessment of her attractiveness will make it all okay.

In addition to robbing us of our ability to discuss that which affects us, telling fat women to self-love away anti-fat bias asks quite a lot of us. Are we just supposed to turn ourselves into rubber and all of the fat-haters into glue? Ignore everything that we happen to see or overhear? Pretend that everything that is said to us was never uttered?

I’ve worked my ass off to feel good about myself but I have my down moments. A head-pat that frizzes up my carefully-arranged hair and a “you should give yourself more credit, hun” doesn’t help me in those moments. All the self-given credit in the world won’t change the fact that sizeism is, indeed, A Thing, and that my experiences are real. One person’s individual feelings doesn’t exactly change all of my external experiences.

The relentlessness of the message that fat women are repulsive means that fat women have to grow quite a thick skin in order to be confident at all. To make matters worse, confidence in fat women is often mocked and derided even more than their fatness is. One person’s declaration that a particular fat woman isn’t “actually fat,” that she is “proportional,” that she is worthy and beautiful, won’t magically make all that disappear.

What to do about your fat friend, then?

If she mentions any kind of positive feelings towards her body, you should be damn proud of her. She has managed to resist a pretty incessant message in favor of being happy with herself and living a full life. Direct some kudos her way.

On the flip side, if she mentions anxieties about her body, blaming her for not being confident enough is a rather jerkface move. Think about just how hard she would have to work to never once internalize the message she’s constantly being force-fed. Give her some of that credit you think she isn’t giving herself in her moments of self-hate and refrain from blaming her. Instead, offer the truth: that you feel she’s a worthwhile person and that you’re not sure what you can do to help her feel better, so until she indicates otherwise, you will offer a friendly ear, sympathetic murmurs, and a hug if she wants one.

On May 20, 1932, Amelia Earhart began the world’s first solo nonstop flight (by a woman) across the Atlantic, starting in Newfoundland and ending in Ireland.

• Lyndon Baty and the Robot That Saved Him – The story of a young man (born with PKD) who uses a robot to attend school. If you need to read some good news, check this out.
• Is Homosexuality Natural? Yes. So is male lactation – Check out this informative (and arty) series! From CriticalDragon1177.
• An Open Letter to Felicia Day About the Value of Trans Women’s Lives – From Elyse.
• Disney Exec Defends Brave Princess Merida’s Makeover – So, they made her look less badass by using previous art? Still not cool.
• 10 Ridiculous Christian Right Prophesies – Ten seems like a pretty low limit. From CriticalDragon1177.
• Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland? – On a related note, I would love to visit Iceland. If any of you have been, what are your thoughts?

BONUS: “It’s Great to Be Alive!”

On your mark! Get set!  GO READ ALL THE SKEPCHICK NETWORK AWESOME!

Teen Skepchick

The Physics Philes, lesson 48: Physicists Make Weird Things for Science
Mindy draws a weird picture in the name of physics, and also talks tries to explain moment of inertia.

Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be
Eddy muses on the concept of hell.

Speak You Mind: Summer Vacation
The whole summer is ahead of you. What are you plans?

Mad Art Lab

“Palm Reader” and “Religion vs. Skepticism”: SkepchickCon, Part 1
Gigi reveals a photo project she’s been secretly working on for SkepchickCon 2013.

Nerd Racism – A Defense
Ryan understands why some nerds require strict adherence to the source material.

Welcome Home, Chris Hadfield
Cloe illustrates the world’s most popular astronaut.

Escéptica

In Very Catholic Malta (en español)
Prayer made easy: just check the box.

There’s No GMO Without an O (en español)
If they can market non-GMO salt, what other products can we market to people who don’t know what O in GMO stands for?

Please Tag Me (en español)
The crazy world of labels in food.

Queereka

AI: Transferring Schools
How do you transition to a new environment?

AI: Summer Plans
Do you still think of summer as vacation time?

Keep Your Heterosexism, Jezzies
Will rebukes heterosexism in the comment thread on Jezebel.

School of Doubt

Journalism Fail: Weissman on Financial Aid
Dan critiques a recent article on the college financial aid system and finds some flaws.

“Let the Students Decide for Themselves”: Or, Don McLeroy is Full of What Makes the Grass Grow Green in Texas
DrShell takes on the faux critical thinking mindset espoused by creationists.

Pop Quiz: Call Me Maybe (Except Not When You’re in Class)
How do you deal with mobile phones and other technology in the classroom?

Featured image credit: Danielle Walquist Lynch

If you want a crack at the items up for sale this week, you are running out of time. In less than 2 hours, these donated items may be lost to you FOREVER. Can you live with that kind of regret? CAN YOU?!

Here’s what we’ve got up for auction to help raise money for SkepchickCon travel costs:

• The original ink drawing of a horse featured in Surly Amy’s post about white knighting, signed by Amy and accompanied by a Surly-Ramics necklace with the horse design
• A custom cocktail recipe created just for you by mixologist Anne Sauer of Mad Art Lab
• Handmade copper goblet with a raised Skepchick logo, created by Mad Art Lab’s Ryan Consell
• An imp skeleton in a museum-style display case, created by Ryan
• A blog post in your honor, answering your culinary question, by Anne
• Drawn-to-order MS Paint penis by Elyse “Mofo” Anders

See all items here.

Of course, you can always just donate directly over at skepchickcon.com, where you can also answer such burning questions as “SkepchickCowhatta?” and “How much awesome can be fit into a con without breaking the laws of physics?”

We welcome donated items and services to put up on eBay as well as ideas for other causes and events that might benefit from future fundraising auctions. Contact us with your donation ideas or cause suggestions.

Welcome back to the Skepchick Book Club! This month, we read Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. (NOTE: Details for next month’s book are at the bottom of this post.) I’m a huge fan of her writing style–witty, full of facts (the footnotes are usually where the best anecdotes are), and delightfully gross. The book tackles everything related to digestion, starting from the nose (where most of our taste comes from) and ending up exactly where you would think. If you’re interested in reading a preview before buying Gulp, you can see pages 105 – 141 here. Based on how much I’ve loved Roach’s previous books, I just go ahead and buy whatever she’s written recently without even knowing the content.

The subject matter of the book didn’t bother me at all (which is good, considering the type of lab work that I have to do for my job). But I wouldn’t recommend drinking a chocolate milkshake or eating a delicious bowl of boeuf bourguignon while reading either (at least, not past the halfway point of the book). If you have a vivid imagination or you can’t handle the thought of human excretions, you may find this book hard to read.

Unfortunately, because some of the subjects in this book are considered gross (bowel diseases, issues with flatulence, etc.), the science behind these issues has not advanced as quickly as with other areas. During human autopsies, it was common for doctors to chop out the colon and throw it away because of the bad smell (thus they missed out on observing disease states). So even though this book is funny, I was glad to read that the scientists mostly took the subject matter seriously. (On a related note, there is a similar problem in the research surrounding better sports bras for women.)

Aw, look at the little appendix! (source)

Here are a few of my favorite chapters and facts that I learned from each one:

• I’ll Have the Putrescine: Your pet is not like you. Pet food is not about what pets like, it’s about what their owners like (see: vegetarian cat food). Dogs prefer their food to smell a bit like cadaverine (freshly rotted!) and cats are happy eating the same thing every day. You may not know this, but cats are usually either birders or mousers but not both. Don’t be afraid of seeing “meat meal” in the ingredients in pet food–that is a mixture of organs, skin, heads, and bones, which your pet enjoys eating.
• Spit Gets a Polish: Someone ought to bottle the stuff. Saliva is amazing, until it leaves your mouth and then it immediately becomes disgusting. Saliva contains anti-clumping factors that make it difficult for bacteria to thrive and form colonies. If you don’t have saliva in your mouth, your gums decay and your teeth become too soft to chew food. Incubated saliva apparently has one of the worst smells of all bodily excretions, according to odor judges (and I agree with them).
• Stuffed: The science of eating yourself to death. Competitive eaters have stretchy stomachs and the ability to swallow regurgitated food before it comes out of their mouths (or else they lose points). Also, your stomach can handle a massive amount of food, but if you do gorge yourself, don’t chase it with sodium bicarbonate or the reaction with the acid may actually cause you to burst.
• Dead Man’s Bloat: And other diverting tales from the history of flatulence research. The marketing team for Beano sells windbreakers and has sponsored a hot-air balloon team (haha, I love it). They also have a hotline for all of your fart-related inquiries. Finally, a “suppressed fart” is my new favorite insult.
• I’m All Stopped Up: Elvis Presley’s megacolon and other ruminations on death by constipation. Elvis did not die of a drug overdose, he had a horrible constipation problem because the end of his colon wasn’t fully able to push fecal matter through and thus expanded his colon to twice the typical size.

I will admit, I didn’t make up a themed recipe for this month. In fact, I went out of my way to not have a theme, because it was just too easy (chocolate-covered bananas, chocolate milkshakes, malted milk balls, etc.). At our meeting, I served up some Gouda and red grapes (simple and yummy). But certainly, if you wanted to do your own version of a gut microflora party, as described in the end of the book, I would love to hear how you cooked your way through the Bristol stool scale.

Next Month’s Book

For next month, we will be reading The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World by Steven Johnson. I will put a post up on June 23rd. Happy reading!