Children whose mothers drank small amounts of alcohol in early to mid-pregnancy, or even binged occasionally, showed no signs of mental problems at age 5, results of a Danish study indicated.
Up to eight drinks a week produced no significant deficit on tests of intelligence, executive function, and attention in the 5-year-olds, a study of 1,628 women and their offspring followed from pregnancy showed.
Mothers-to-be who said they had indulged in binge drinking — five or more drinks on a single occasion — also gave birth to children who appeared normal at age 5, Ulrik Schiøler Kesmodel, PhD, of Aarhus University in Denmark, and colleagues reported in BJOG: International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The ‘no alcohol while pregnant’ thing annoys me, not because I think pregnant women should be drinking heaps but because, as I’ve noted before, it is such a classic example of how we infantalise and control pregnant women.
Accurate information for women instead of heavy-handed public health and shaming messages, please.
(The study is discussed here at Medpage Today).
blue milk 
For heavy-handed public health messages.. look no further: http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/a-few-sips-is-too-much-for-mumstobe-20120617-20hsc.html Thanks L for the link.
This is a good example of some heavy-handed public health messages, as well as, a bit about a book on the subject. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/02/23/fetal-alcohol-syndrome-and-the-social-control-of-mothers/
“It turns out that only about 5% of alcoholic women give birth to babies who are later diagnosed with FAS. This means that many mothers drink excessively, and many more drink somewhat (at least 16 percent of mothers drink during pregnancy), and yet many, many children born to these women show no diagnosable signs of FAS. Twin studies, further, have shown that sometimes one fraternal twin is diagnosed with FAS, but the other twin, who shared the same uterine environment, is fine….FAS is not just related to alcohol intake, but is “highly correlated with smoking, poverty, malnutrition, high parity [i.e., having lots of children], and advanced maternal age” (p. 6). Further, there appears to be a genetic component. Some fetuses may be more vulnerable than others due to different ways that bodies breakdown ethanol, a characteristic that may be inherited. (This may also explain why one fraternal twin is affected, but not the other.)”
“But “women” do not cause FAS. Neither does alcohol. This strategy replaces addressing all of the other problems that correlate with the appearance of FAS–poverty, stress, and other kinds of social deprivation–in favor of policing women. FAS, in fact, is partly the result of individual behavior, partly the result of social inequality, and partly genetic, but our entire eradication strategy focuses on individual behavior. It places the blame and responsibility solely on women.”
I bought a fabulous little booklet from an Antique store in Lismore a couple of years ago called “Healthy Motherhood for the Mother and Mother-to-be” published by the NSW Department of Public Health in 1948. Under the chapter entitled “If you want a healthy baby…” it is advised: “Excessive cigarette smoking is bad during pregnancy and, if possible, smoking should be avoided altogether during pregnancy and lactation, though moderate cigarette smoking, say two cigarettes a day, does not do any harm”.
Alcohol turns into acetaldehyde in your liver. Acetaldehyde is a group I human carcinogen (bad), and it can cause DNA and chromosomal damage. FAS is NOT the only reason to not drink during pregnancy.
I get what you mean about babying pregnant women, and if a woman wants an occasional drink during pregnancy I’m not one to judge BUT as a waitress in the UK (which has notoriously high drinking levels) I just want to say that it is REALLY fucking awkward when pregnant women ask me for a glass of wine ect.
a) because as their “server” I don’t feel like I am in a position to say no or to tell them about acetaldehyde in front of their friends and b) because I don’t know how much or how often they drink, so asking me to pour them wine is possibly (not probably, possibly) making me implicit in damaging their fetus.
The inherent subservience of my profession means that when pregnant women ask me to serve them alcohol they are manipulating me into being a bystander and I really really resent it.
So maybe asking strangers to give you alcohol should be on the list of things you aren’t allowed to do when you are pregnant, like eat liver pate or change the cat litter.
Or you know, you could just stop trying to figure out how much alcohol that pregnant woman has been drinking and allow her to police her own intake. There’s really no need for so much heartache here.
No. I’m sorry, no. It’s not anybody’s place to police a pregnant women’s consumption. It is in fact really insulting to her. Look: alcohol is bad for *everybody* – but you don’t get all antsy about anyone else ordering a glass of wine, do you? You could be colluding in someone’s alcoholism. You could be destroying their liver, their life, their relationships. You don’t know. It’s not your responsibility. Being able to see a baby bump doesn’t change that. It’s just not your business. And if you care that much, stop working in a place that serves booze.
A friend told me she was celebrating her anniversary while 6 months pregnant, and the waitress – seeing her bump – stopped offering the menu and said “I’ll tell you what you can have.” Uh, NO. She ordered wine and pate, pretty much out of sheer stroppiness, and I love her for it.
@Anu which is why I said that if she wants to drink in the privacy of her own home, that is not up for me to judge, I am simply saying that including me in the transaction is incredibly uncomfortable.
@woollythinker As a matter of fact I DO refuse to serve people who are too drunk or who are drinking too fast. I even kick people out of the bar (that is attached to the restaurant) if I feel they are being too rowdy or too drunk. But it is much MUCH easier/less awkward to refuse to serve someone who is drunk than it is to refuse to serve someone who is pregnant. As the person with the license to serve alcohol, it is up to ME who I get to serve the alcohol to, so YOU paying ME for the service means it is, unequivocally my business what state you are in. Don’t like it? Drink a home. (For example, I don’t just not serve underagers because it is the law, I don’t serve underagers because it is IRRESPONSIBLE to do so.) The only thing is, everyone seems to be all like, “oooh you’re a bad person for not wanting to serve alcohol to a pregnant woman” and it’s fucking awkward, and it makes my job shit. I bet your pregnant friend was never a waitress, because as rude as it is for her server to “tell her what she can have”, I bet what she did made her server feel pretty fucking terrible.
All I’m asking is for some basic etiquette, aka being considerate of the other people in the situation.
Toasted Tofu: Serving alcohol to drunk people is illegal. Serving it to pregnant people isn’t, so they’re not in the same class.
I wonder, do you also refuse service to people with ascites, large ovarian cysts, or large amounts of abdominal fat, and people carrying anencephalic, nonviable, or dead fetuses?
You have no idea of knowing what is going on with a person with an abdominal bump, and it’s none of your business.
@lauredhel, cysts ect are undoubtedly why it is harder to not serve a pregnant woman than it is to not serve a drunk person. I would not presume a woman is pregnant unless she announces it somehow. And if you read my whole comment I made a point about law vs. responsibility. It doesn’t have to be illegal for me to not want to do it.
Lets use a non-pregnancy example so people can relax a bit. Caramel colour, an additive in cococola & pepsi, has recently been found to be carcinogenic. California, that meant they would have had to put a WARNING: MAY CAUSE CANCER label on their product, which they obviously didn’t want to do, so they changed their formula (for the entire US). They have NOT changed their formula in every country, INCLUDING THE UK, so I DO talk to my customers about it. I’m like “hey, I don’t know if you saw, it wasn’t really a big new piece, but they found that the caramel colour in coke is made in a process that actually makes it a carcinogen, just something to think about” and more than half the time they order the coke anyways, but for many people it is the first time they have heard about it and they are shocked and appalled by the news. Which means I have done them a service.
Now, if I was to say to a pregnant woman “Light drinking during pregnancy hasn’t been shown to cause FAS, but not many people know alcohol is actually a class I carcinogen, it turns into acedelaldehyde in your liver and travels through your bloodstream, which means your baby would be affected”
everyone at the table would be like “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TELL HER WHAT TO DO, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NEXT, DEMAND SHE TAKE A BLOOD PRESSURE TEST BEFORE YOU CAN GIVE HER SALT, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD SCREEN HER BLOOD GLUCOSE BEFORE YOU GIVE HER DESSERT??”
If we can all remember that in my original point I said that I’m not one to judge if a pregnant woman drinks in her own home, I just resent being COERCED into serving pregnant women alcohol.
@Lisa, a pharmacist and a waitress are two entirely different jobs. A person has to go through AT LEAST 4 years in a specialized program to become a pharmacist, so if something inherent to that job is against their religion, they made a poor religious choice 4 years prior. Not to mention the tiny TINY detail that a pharmacists job is delivering medicine that is saving lives and preventing illness, whereas I deliver alcoholic beverages. That is a poor analogy.
@toastedtofu, I think we have very, very different ideas of what constitutes “basic etiquette”. The rudeness here seems to me to be entirely on your side. It is quite simply not a server’s place to decide on behalf of the customer what is a good idea for them to consume. (It is not *anybody’s* place, except maybe their doctor.) If you can’t accept that, I think you’re in the wrong job. If you feel judged for behaving this way, then consider what it’s like to be a pregnant woman and having complete strangers judge your choices, by implication. “Pretty fucking terrible” is not a bad description.
I know this will come across as incredibly smug, but I am very very good at my job, just in case you think I’m one of those waitresses that skulks around looking sullen at everything. I’m not. I’ve gotten two raises and a promotion in the last year alone, I have loads of regular customers who adore me, and I give excellent service. So I’m not in the wrong job.
I’m also an intelligent woman who is considerate of other people and I don’t usually like to step on any toes. Even though this is one of my favorite blogs, I normally just lurk here and don’t comment but this is something I feel strongly about. I’m NOT a “pro lifer” fyi: I believe a woman should have 100% reproductive choice, I believe abortions should be safe, free, and easily accessed.
HOWEVER, if a woman *decides* to have a baby, I do NOT think she has the right to harm the fetus, because if she intends on giving birth to that fetus, she is harming a future baby.
Women are capable of being fiercely strong and independent, and being pregnant does not mean a woman’s brain turns to mush. BUT her fetus actually IS fragile, and lots of things can harm it, or damage it, or just simply reduce its capabilities as a future adult. The reason WHY pregnant women are judged by society is because a woman is carrying a future member of adult society, and humans have an evolutionary imperative to have a vested interest in the outcome of the future members of the human race. Sure, our social groups used to be much smaller, and yes, patriarchy hijacked childbirth somewhere in the era of agricultural settlement, but that vested interest is still there.
If I was to put white russians in a bottle and feed it to a baby, people would be fucking OUTRAGED. If it was MY baby, child protective services might get involved, if it was someone else’s baby they would probably have the legal grounds to press charges against me. If a woman asked me to put a white russian in a bottle so that SHE could feed it to a baby I would absolutely refuse, and no one would say “ohhh but she’s the mother, you’re so rude for refusing her request” I WOULD judge that woman, and the rest of society would jump on the bandwagon and judge along with me, no doubt about it. But suck that baby back into the uterus and suddenly I’m a bad person.
The difference between a pregnant woman drinking, and a baby drinking, is that a fetus can’t puke the alcohol up because it is in it’s shared blood supply. But there are no legal repercussions for pregnant women who drink, (and I don’t think there should be, because as it was pointed out earlier, poverty and nutrition are also part of FAS)
The reason WHY, in my opinion, fetuses should not have LEGAL rights, is because a) legal access to abortion has not been codified fully into our collective consciousness as a human right and granting fetuses rights is a good way to cut into abortion rights, and b) the legal rights of the mother, as an established person, should always outweigh the rights of the fetus, as a potential person, so in any case of mother vs. fetus, the mother should always win.
But, like I said in a below comment, “law” and “responsibility” are two separate things. If you were to draw a venn diagram of them, they would have a great deal of overlap, but they actually exist independent of each other.
As I have mentioned in previous comments, there are many cases where I refuse to serve alcohol to people. Even though, as it was pointed out, serving drunk people is against the law, we wouldn’t have nightclubs if that law was followed. I feel it is my personal responsibility to refuse to serve people who are drinking irresponsibly, I would feel that responsibility even if there wasn’t a law against it.
There is a big list of things women aren’t allowed to do while pregnant. Or rather, if lauredhel is reading, there is a big list of things it is merely recommended that pregnant women avoid. A responsible person would not do those potentially harmful things, even to spite their snotty waitress. And you know what? That’s what being a parent is, it’s being responsible for a life that is not yours.
Yeah but you still haven’t explained why this is any of your business.
ToastedTofu: I’m a pretty damn good doctor and parent, too, and yet I’m doing neither of these to your specifications; in fact, according to your comment, I am to be labelled an Irresponsible Person. Where does that leave us? Staying out of each other’s business, I would hope.
Tell me, when you were pregnant, did you ever travel in a car somewhere for recreation or pleasure, rather than only to earn essential money or do other unavoidable tasks? Fie on you, you irresponsible person.
(Actually, that’s a bad comparison. Road trauma takes a measurable toll on pregnant people and/or fetuses every year. Light alcohol drinking does not.)
I made the pharmacist comparison because in the US, many states protect pharmacist who refuse to fill prescriptions or dispense over the counter medicine because they fill it could potentially harm a fetus. Even if the woman and her doctor have decided that the benefits outweigh any potential cons.
But either or that can be a poor analogy.
However, I’m wondering where you gained this knowledge to know for absolute certain what is good/bad for a pregnant woman and her fetus despite medical research itself being somewhat inconclusive and more erring on the side of moderation.
@Tamara I thought I had, but I will reiterate. The choice of who to serve or not to serve is actually entirely mine. I understand the dangers of alcohol, and I assume most adults do too (unless they give me reason to believe otherwise, in which case I don’t serve them) I would no serve a baby alcohol, so I do no want to serve a fetus either. Now, I would never ask a woman with a large stomach if she were pregnant, I would agree that asking people is not my business, but pregnant women talk about their pregnancies a lot, especially to interested dinner companions. If someone asks their dinner guest when they are due, and then that woman then goes and asks me for a drink, that makes me responsible for knowingly serving her fetus alcohol. I don’t go up to pregnant women in bars I do not work at and tell them “you shouldn’t drink that”, because my realm of responsibility is in my own actions. Which is why I serve cococola with a little PSA now, because it is in my realm of responsibility.
People keep saying that it is not my place, not my responsibility, or not my business, but Adolf Eichmann used the “I was doing my job” defense too. I am in no way implying or thinking or insinuating any of you are Nazis when I use this example, I just learned the *hard* way that being a bystander is immoral too. I don’t want to be a bystander, and I resent being coerced.
@lauredhel Saying someone is a good parent does not mean that they are exempt from doing irresponsible things. My parents were amazing parents, especially for their time, but they did irresponsible shit on occasion. Sometimes it was because they didn’t know better, and sometimes it was just a lapse of judgement. I’m sure you’ve done irresponsible things, not because of anything that is unique to you, but because everybody does.
I have never, ever, been treated by a doctor who did not encourage me to always err on the side of caution, and I am naturally quite responsible. I guess that makes me lucky.
I do not drive. At all. I am privileged enough to live in a country with an excellent train network (I always ride in the middle cars) so I do not drive at all. Un-fied?
@Lisa, I understood the reference immediately, and I think it is abhorrent what those pharmacists are doing. I think if a career involves things that are against your religion, making the decision to dedicate your life to that career, and going to university to specialize in that career is a poor religious choice. I believe if a doctor decides a medication is essential/warranted then it is. Second opinions should come from other doctors, and a pharmacist does not have the training to make judgment calls like that. (S/he does however have the training, indeed the obligation to make the patient aware of all of the possible side effects, including risks to her fetus) A woman should absolutely be allowed to take necessary medicine, even if it poses a risk to the fetus. Mother’s rights outweigh fetus rights.
Alcohol, however, is not necessary, and it is not a right. In fact, it is harmful to EVERYONE. I don’t see how being exposed to something can be bad for adults but be okay for fetuses.
Drinking a week before your due date (arguably a less important stage of the pregnancy) and feeding a baby alcohol a week after it is born amounts to the same thing. I doubt a study where researchers fed alcohol to babies would pass an ethics board.
@toastedtofu, if your job requires you to do things that outrage your moral sensibilities – like allowing an adult woman the right to make her own choices – then perhaps you’d be happier doing something else. It seems like you might prefer being a great waitress somewhere that doesn’t serve alcohol, for instance. Or Coke.
We’re obviously never going to agree, so I’d just like you to gain some perspective here: a single glass of wine is not going to damage that foetus (just as a single cigarette won’t cause lung cancer); the cumulative effects of “too much alcohol” (however much that is) over an entire pregnancy may do. So you can absolve yourself of that terrible burden of guilt. Even if someone is harming their baby – and that’s a huge if – by serving them with just a glass or two, you are not. Get over yourself.
Oh, and one more thing. The riskiest time for alcohol consumption in pregnancy is the first few weeks. Way, way before anyone would “show”. If you can tell she’s pregnant (or if she’s ready to tell you), by then it’s really much less of a big deal anyway.
Potentially though any woman could be pregnant at any time when she orders alcohol. She might not be showing yet, she may even not know yet, or she may be about to become pregnant; if alcohol is so dangerous to consume by pregnant woman as you say then shouldn’t you just always refuse to serve alcohol to woman because you could “possibly….[be] implicit in damaging their fetus”?
Or what if a woman looks pregnant, but may or may not be. Do you ask? Or what if she has recently had a baby, do you ask her if she’s breast-feeding before serving her alcohol?
Do you agree that pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to fill prescriptions to woman because of their religious beliefs? Aren’t those woman as not being considerate of the other people in the situation?
Maybe us chicks should all have to sign a declaration of the date of our last periods before being served. Which leaves trans women and women with PCOS, early menopause, or a huge variety of other conditions SOL. Oh well.
I wonder if Concerned Waitstaff also supervise in the kitchen to take pains to ensure that pregnant women’s salad has been washed with extra double care. And bring us hot towels and antibacterial wash before we eat. And perhaps they should peruse our diabetes screening tests before bringing us anything with carbs. (Did you know that carbs ferment to alcohol in a human stomach? Oh no!) And take our blood pressure before letting us have salt for the table.
@lauredhel you’re rad, thank you for putting some actual perspective on this.
I had wine a couple of times during both of my pregnancies, with the blessing of my midwife. As with most things during pregnancy, it’s all about moderation and being reasonable. I never worried about my kids having brain damage (and they don’t).
Other Class 1 carcinogens include indoor fireplaces, car exhaust, salted fish, wood dust, and sunlight. All of which are allowed in pregnancy, along with liver pate and cleaning the catbox.
If by “allowed”, you mean in the philosophical sense that every woman has the right to do what she wants with her body, then yes, liver pate and cleaning the cat litter are “allowed” during pregnancy, just like smoking crack would be “allowed”. But if you mean that doctors have concluded such action would be not harmful to the fetus then you are incorrect: vitamin A buildup, listeria, and toxoplasmosis (respectively) make them all “not allowed” during pregnancy.
Crack is actually not allowed, on account of it’s illegal.
Eating liver pate is completely safe, so long as it’s made fresh and you don’t eat enough to get vitamin A overload (which would be a relatively unlikely amount for an typical adult woman to eat.) Cleaning a catbox is also safe with reasonable precautions: frequent scooping, gloves and/or good hand-washing, a scoop that’s kept clean, a low-dust litter – and, ideally, indoor cats, but that’s a religious debate we probably shouldn’t get in to here. Doctors (at least doctors who are doing their job properly) don’t “ban” any of these things; they offer advice on how to minimise risk.
Legal does not equal responsible. Crack is decriminalized in Portugal, does that mean it is A-OKAY for a pregnant woman to smoke crack there? No.
And personally, I think harm reduction (i.e. low dust cat litter) is not as good as abstinence (aka not touching cat shit AT ALL while pregnant). It takes a level of cognitive dissonance I’m not capable of.
I guess it just boils down to how responsible a person is naturally. Whether they need a law to tell them to wear a bike helmet, or if they just do it because it is safer.
There is a natural control of alcohol intake in pregnancy. It’s called morning sickness (assuming I’m at all typical in this; I gave up entirely because the smell and taste made me want to throw up, along with raw fish, pate, shrimp, etc etc. Even at 5 months now, when most things taste normal again, a few things don’t and red wine is one of them).
Surely the number of women who drink during pregnancy would suggest that this isn’t universal? After all, if we all went off alcohol then do-one would need to tell us to stop drinking it.
No such thing as typical! My last pregnancy, I still enjoyed the occasional drink. This time around I can’t bear it (or coffee). Although funnily enough, I had way more nausea last time than this.
When I mentioned (with a mournful face) that I was going on holiday to wine-tasting country while 5 months pregnant with my first baby, my (wonderful wonderful) homebirth obstetrician said “You do know you don’t have to spit it all out, don’t you?” So I didn’t…
This is exactly why Im participating in a survey about alcohol intake and pregnancy. I couldn’t get any accurate info about what’s safe and what isn’t, if anything. My first trimester pretty much spanned summer and trying to keep a pregnancy secret over the festive season and school holidays is bloody hard, esp around the tactless in-laws!
All this goes well in hand with this strange entitlement/”gifts” people share once they know you’re preggers – advice, stories, “what you should do is…”, “you think it’s going to be X but…” and the amazing *management* that is “the way you will now be treated”. Well, you all summarised it nicely as infantilising, but my instant loss autonomy was surprising and I’m still getting used to it in my 3rd trim.
I find it interesting that people (often childless) often have such strong opinions on something which they have no experience, knowledge or medical expertise to fully comprehend the implications. Personally I trust the opinions of medical research and their findings, such as the danish article and various others that confirm that a few glasses of wine a week is fine and signs indicate it actually increases congnitive function. Certainly my Mother and her sisters and a large proportion of women in the sixties were advised that they should be drinking guiness every day to ensure strong bones and teeth etc.
I don’t think getting on your high liberal horse about something that really has always been and will probably remain to be a contentious and more importantly a SUBJECTIVE issue is contributing anything to this endless debate, unless you really have read all of the baby articles and baby books and baby related medical journal articles (like your average pregnant woman has).
I would be extremely suprised if a pregnant woman who came in to a bar to have a glass or two of wine was not planning her week around it and was not more informed than the waitress bringing her order to her.
If a waiter/waitress gave me an ill researched, zealous, opinionated and rude lecture on this subject they would be a) wearing that wine b) picking their teeth off the floor and c) out of a job. Especially at the moment with my hormones raging the way that they are.
It incenses me how people think that just because they ‘know’ something which is still entirely up for debate (by medical professionals NOT waitresses) that this gives them carte blanche to advise pregnant women. You have no right, you have not earnt it, you have not learnt it so please shut the fuck up.
Toasted Tofu, I can see this is a challenging topic for you. Do you see the parallels with the way we control women’s reproductive choices and how we try and control women when they continue pregnancies, too? Can you see that it isn’t based on risk, at all, it is based on control? I know it takes a lot to unwind the thinking because our public health messages are based around this notion of control and they’re also based around ‘concerned citizens’ being encouraged to intervene.. but can you see something dodgy about all this? How it differs from other health messages, how it differs from other approaches to risk? How it differs from other ways we respond to children’s welfare, even?
Sorry I didn’t see this earlier. I think it is apparent to me that my idea of risk management is risk avoidance, while other people have a more bet-hedging approach. You are right, pregnancy risk management is different from other risk management, which I think only highlights issues of risk management in general, such as recalls not being issued if the potential lawsuit costs don’t outstrip the cost of product recall.
In all of the high-speed trains I have taken in europe, 1st class passengers sit in the back of the train. You only have to look at a few train crashes to realize that the first two-three cars are a crush zone. Everyone in the front train dies, while a few cars back they only get bumps and bruises. A train company COULD put two dummy or cargo cars at the front, but that would cost more money, so they don’t. And don’t tell me they don’t know that’s the crush zone, because all the first class passengers are seated in the back.
Public health and risk management is absolutely a class issue, which is a subject I know you are interested in. I don’t think it should be illegal to eat cake if you are diabetic, but I DO think there should be more social pressure on disease prevention or disease management. My biological grandfather is poor, old, and has amputations from alcohol related diabetes. His neighbours help him out by going to the store for him. Per his request, they bring him whiskey and white bread. Any suggestion that this is maybe a bad idea is met with things like “he’s old, let him do what he wants”.
I think drugs should be decriminalized, so I’m certainly not going to recommend cigarettes be criminalized, but I DO support trying to curtail smoking rates, and one of the ways to do this is by peer pressure. Teach kids smoking is bad and they will pester the hell out of their parents to quit. So what if the parent they are pressuring to quit is their mother? You would essentially be trying to control a woman’s actions by using emotional manipulation (her kid).
Cigarettes are actually a multi layered annalogy because they are both bad for you, and they are closely tied to feminism (hear me out)
Before WWI, there was a huge stigma against women who smoked. It was considered a sign of loose morals (read:prostitution) and it wasn’t an activity for proper (read:repressed) women. During WWI, the government handed out cigarettes to soldiers like they were sweeties, and many men picked up life long habits. Some women began to smoke too, they were riding the high from the sufferage movement, and while some fashionable flappers did smoke, it was generally a tabboo thing for women to do.
Edward Barneys, the original Public Relations man (he simply re-maned “propoganda” btw) capitolized on the cigarette as a vague symbol of political freedom. He organized one of the first ever PR stunts by geting a bunch of debutants to smoke during a parade. He told the newspapers a group of socialites were going to make a political statement. The women just marched for a while, and then at a given time they all simultaneously reached into their purses and lit up a cigarette. The story was covered by newspapers all over america, and the number of cigarettes sold each year skyrocketted.
When second wave feminism was alive and kicking during the late 60s, the first ever women’s cigarette was invented: Virginia Slims.
The cigarette company, again, capitolized on women’s feminist sensebilities. Their slogan was “You’ve come a long way baby”
Check out these ads
(sufferegettes)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EPJTEq6T8Gc/TYenBrPD7OI/AAAAAAAABYE/LyYh7zRvuaE/s1600/virgslim.jpg (the black woman doesn’t even need a “before” picture)
http://www.staylace.com/gallery/gallery22/virginia_slims.jpg (woman in the workforce!)
By dangaling the banner of control and empowerment, cigarette companies manipulated women into becoming addicts and risking their health.
The dodgy thing that I see here is women using their right to do what they want with their body (which is their right) as an excuse to do harmful things to themselves and their fetus (which is also their right) and then get mad at responsible people for making them feel bad about their suspect choices.
I’m not a cigarette company, I’m not going to make you feel all good inside and try to kill you. I’m going to make you uncomfortable and hopefully safer.
“My biological grandfather is poor, old, and has amputations from alcohol related diabetes. His neighbours help him out by going to the store for him. Per his request, they bring him whiskey and white bread. Any suggestion that this is maybe a bad idea is met with things like “he’s old, let him do what he wants”.”
Did you just argue out loud that people with mobility disabilities shouldn’t be allowed to buy whatever they want, while people who can get themselves to the shops should?
Really?
If anyone in my life tried to forcibly do that to me, (metaphorical) heads would roll.
If people didn’t want to help you kill yourself, heads would roll? Really?
Absolutely. If someone makes the decision to do things that you think may be deletrious to their health well that is just bad luck for you. They don’t owe you good health. Doesn’t matter who they are. Nor do they owe you their suffering. What part of ‘they are adults they get to make their own choices’ is difficult here?
*deleterious*
Sorry I accidentally hit send without proof reading that, please ignore my spelling mistakes, there is no way to edit comments after posting them.
Well, goodness me and bless your heart – I certainly hope you never do anything wrong in your life because I just don’t know how you’ll live with yourself….
Pregnancy aside, addressing the carcinogen argument — From the Harvard School of Public Health CME course that I recently attended: just about every meta-analysis presented showed a *decrease* in all-cause mortality (including CANCER! as well as cardiac) for women who drink the equivalent of one serving of alcohol a day. This was Class I evidence. Regardless of the properties of one specific metabolite, the overall effect is beneficial.
Here’s a fun question for everyone here… have any of you lived with or even known someone with FAS?
I have a sister with FAS, and frankly, if it means giving up alcohol for a year to ensure my baby doesn’t have these problems, I think it’s a small price to pay.
Women should be in charge of their own bodies. End of. Professionals in appropriate areas should help enable women to make informed decisions… This doesn’t suddenly change if a woman becomes pregnant.
What one woman chooses for her own body is not up for public debate, even if others would do things differently or think she is taking risks that they do not think are safe.
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