From thoughts into words

Those of you who are following the news online will notice that there's an debate raging about a picture that depicts a semi-nude Michelle Obama on the cover of a Spanish magazine. You can read about it on the Huffington Post . As you will notice, there are two issues being addressed. One is the decision of the magazine editors to feature the portrait on the magazine cover. The second is the decision of the original artist, Karine Percheron Daniels, to create the image in the first place. With respect to the former, I have no idea what the motivation of the magazine editors was in the first place or how the image is related to the featured articles of the issue. So I can't speak authoritatively about it. With respect to the latter, it is indicated that the picture of Michelle Obama is part of Daniels' "Famous Nudes" series. Other personalities depicted in the series include Queen Elizabeth II, Michael Jackson, Eva Peron, Prince William, his wife Catherine, C...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/08/turn-tv-off.html I’ve been thinking about the impact that the media has on our self-perception as women, minorities, etc, because it’s something that interests me. Much of what I’ve encountered is negative. For instance, the scarcity of positive black role models in the TV and print media leaves children feeling that there is not much for them to aspire to. As for black females, they take away from the media the idea that dark tones of skin and frizzy hair are to be detested, as are curvy figures. This is heart-breaking, of course. But I also read something that got me wondering. It was an article about media consumption patterns among different racial and ethnic groups . According to the piece, black children spent significantly more time watching television programming than kids of any other ethnic group. That made me think about the roles we played as consumers, whether active or passive. And I did wonder whether there ...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/08/on-hivaids-religion-and-public-health.html Over the years I have lost many to HIV/AIDS: family and friends. I can’t tell you how many, though. I stopped counting a while back. However, I can tell you that, because of the impact of HIV/AIDS on my life, I know what stigma is. I know what it is like to watch people sink into depression, lose hope and die because those who matter most to them have rejected them.  HIV/AIDS as we have experienced it in the East African context has struck the family as a whole: men and women in their prime and young children have been the typical victims. Our AIDS story has had much to do with heterosexuality. So one can’t simply label HIV/ AIDS a “gay disease” as has tended to happen in the US. Our governments have had to address AIDS as a national crisis because it has stricken the mainstream. In nations such as the US, where the tendency has been to associate the disease with sexual and ethnic minoritie...