What we're NOT reading - Spring 2011

Which resources don’t make the cut

The Canadian Women’s Health Network chooses a select few publications to feature in every issue of our magazine, entitled What We’re Reading. They are reports, books, essays, movies and websites and more we feel represent the some of the newest and best of what’s being published on women’s health.  
However we are sent many, many more publications than we choose to feature. Some are excellent pieces that space does not permit us to include, but far more are pieces that touch on “women’s health” in only the most superficial way, and shed some light on what the world still considers the priority areas of women’s health to be. So as an exercise, CWHN tracked the  readings that are suggested to us for a month and share the results with our readers.
So what are the topics publishers and public relations promoters feel a women’s health organization should be covering? In reverse order of popularity:

4) Recommendations for moms - products for children instead of for women, ranging from sunscreens to bedtime stories.

3) Aging. Items related to this include techniques to deal with menopause, reduce wrinkles, and suggestions for plastic surgery, ranging from news about new and “less invasive” techniques to apps that will let you preview the results of your ‘“new body.”

2) Ways to enhance your sex life - from new research into pills to ways to psych yourself up, most of these focus on increasing your sex drive.

1) And the most popular - diet recommendations. These are by far the most common. From new diets that range from eating your food off smaller plates to make it seem like more, to eliminating certain food groups to focusing your diet around cookies, we get it all. It’s a powerful statement about our preoccupation with appearance that weight and ways to be thinner is the most popular “health” topic we’re sent.