Behind the surface

I'll admit it. I'd never really thought about feminism much. Not that I haven't known that I'm only able to not think about it because of the sacrifices many women before me have made. When I went to visit my great-grandmother before leaving to go to my freshman year of college, she grabbed my hands and remarked wistfully about how I have opportunities she never did. I can tell you at that moment I tingled with gratitude from my toenails to my split-ends. Yet, those days of discrimination and oppression were over, right? I was never told I couldn't be anything I wanted to be because I was a woman. I was never treated any differently by my professors. I was accepted to top graduate programs in my field (Middle East/Arab Studies). The only time gender ever came into anything was when I was having my period or got the unsolicited lecture about "don't you know how they treat women over there?" when I would state what my research field was (because, you kno...

Some of my earliest memories of doctors involve the pediatrician we saw when I was seven or so. He put me on a diet in which I couldn't eat corn (my mom only cooked three kinds of vegetables: green beans, carrots, and corn so that eliminated a third of my vegetable choices) and had to drink these Sego shakes that tasted like chocolate and vitamins mixed together. I also wasn't allowed to eat the candy hearts my Girl Scout leader gave me for Valentines Day while my skinny sister could. At ten years old I was pushing 120 pounds and the new pediatrician I had was particularly peevish about obesity, as the nurse in a quiet, frightened voice warned me after weighing me before he came in. Dr. P scolded me in a voice that was about as scary as my browbeating stepfather. He demanded to know how much I was eating (not any more than my scrawny siblings) and how much exercise I was getting (two-mile-round trip walks to school as well as kickball at recess). "You're lying," h...