What can a woman do to reduce her risk of assault?

A man can be a bodyguard to a woman but it’s not always possible for every man to safeguard their women and children all the time. As long as the perception of the people cannot be changed through education, women need protection against the perpetrators. This can be achieved in many ways one of the ways being woman trained to counter attack the abuser.

Man and woman are born equal so they have equal responsibilities towards the society. In order to have a secure and a prosperous society, each gender has to be able to lean on each other in times of difficulties. However, things aren’t as expected and as good as we can imagine. In many societies, a woman has high risk of physical abuse compared to a man. It may not always be a woman, but today most of the victims that are depicted in media are women.

Irrespective of all the precautions, women are still vulnerable even in this modern society. When people commit heinous crime like this, a society should change their laws in such a way that an assault on a woman can be upgraded to a bigger crime with severe penalties. This may only be the proactive way of reducing the risk of assault to a woman besides educational and awareness programs for the violence against woman. 

Media Influence on Us

     I have always wondered about how our life would be without media. No radio in your cars, no newspaper to start your day with, no TV in your house and above all that no social media websites to stay connected with your friends and family. I cannot even imagine. The fact is that people were happy interacting with each other personally when there was no social media or radio or television.

As every coin has two sides, every thing has both advantages and disadvantages and media is not apart from this either. Media has a great influence in changing the way people think. We watch programs in television and also watch the commercials that come in between the programs.  We see so many commercials everyday. Those commercials have as much influence in our life as the programs does. In fact some commercials are life changing.

We hardly see and overweight model representing any dress, we hardly see any extra weight women promoting for even a kitchenware. Models we see not only promote the products but also make us have a body like theirs. Not everybody has a body like models shown in TV or in pictures.

When I was overweight, I used to feel bad for how I looked after seeing those skinny models in TV shows. Oh did I forget to tell you that I lost 35 pounds over one years span? Oh yes! I did. But I didn’t starve myself, I watched for the amount of calories I consumed and the amount of it I burnt while doing zumba. I cut off on sugar. For me media had a positive influence but for many people media has been a discouragement. Lot of women starve themselves to lose weight or to look like those skinny models, which leads them to become anorexic.

Health educators can play a vital role in educating women who wants to be skinny at any cost. Health Educators need to come up with a program that teaches women that they need to be aware of the fact that good health is more important that perfect figure. If we could make commercials which focuses less on having skinny body and more on eating proper, nutritious diet, women could stay more conscious about what they eat more than how they look.

If we look at the cover pictures in the magazine today and compare with the one from 10 years ago, we can see a drastic change in how those models look like. I was born with dark complexion and only I can tell how bad I felt about my darker skin when I used to see all those fair looking girls in the TV and hoarding boards in the streets. Only I know how bad I wished that I had a fair and bright skin. While growing up, I wanted to be fairer and also skinnier like those models. This is a perfect example of media influencing your life. Even if you compare the actresses from the old movie with present day’s actresses, you can see a vast difference. Actors were not all with six – packs and actresses were chubbier compared to them with current actors and actresses. Humans have a tendency to do or be what they see, whether it is right or wrong. It is exactly like smoking after you see your favorite actor smoking.

I can see a lot of work that the health workers and educators could do in raising awareness among people about their health. People need to know the limit to which they can get influenced by media. Nothing is impossible. If I could do it the healthy way, everybody can do it too. We just need to create positive reinforcements for them to implement the healthier schedule. 

MENOPAUSE

I had an opportunity to interview one of my neighbours regarding her menopause. She agreed to let me write about her but did not want me to use her real name. Maya (fake name) is a 48 years old woman who has been running a family business for about 10 years now. It is her fulltime job. She is a mother with two beautiful daughters. Her husband helps her with the business as well.  She shared her story about how hard she and her husband worked to raise their business along wit their two kids. “Business is getting better but I am not being able to give my hundred percent towards it these days”, says Maya.  Maya told me that she gets tired quickly and has been having hot flashes from past couple of weeks and on top of that she gets cranky all the time.

Days are not as energizing as they used to be for her because Maya is in her menopausal period. Menopause is a period when women’s hormone levels diminish and her period stops. (Renew Woman, 2013).  Symptoms of menopause are hot flashes, mood instability, memory loss, fatigue, hair loss, low sex drive, osteoporosis, insomnia, vaginal dryness, dry skin and weight gain. (Renew Woman, 2013).

Maya was not sure why was she weak all of a sudden and she was more worried about the hot flashes that she’s been getting. She found out that she was in a menopause and all the symptoms, that she was having, were of menopause after she went to see her doctor. "I am going for a Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy (BHRT)", Maya added. Maya told me that there is a minimal risk to this hormonal replacement therapy. Maya answered, “If I did not get this BHRT, I will not be able to work as efficiently as I used to and that can affect my work, the only source of income in my family” to my question on why she wants to go for BHRT. She said that she wants to be normal like before, no hot flashes, no weakness and no more mood swings. When I asked her if she has had other symptoms like, memory loss, hair loss, and vaginal dryness etc., Maya said, “Thank god I don’t have memory loss and hair loss or I would be more irritable and hard to handle”. I asked her if she knew about the side effects of BHRT, she said that she might get some side effects if she did go for it but will definitely lose control if she did not because her symptoms were getting worst.

There are millions of other women around the world who are going through menopause like Maya and are unknown about why it is happening and what should be done to be back to normal. Education about menopause is necessary. Making women aware of all the symptoms and the ways to prevent and cure it is necessary so that women can know what might be coming and how to handle the situation. It is also necessary to know that hormone replacement therapy, like any other medical treatment, has side effects too.

Reference:

Menopause. In (2013). What is Menopause?. Renew Woman. Retrieved from Menopause. (2013).  

      Retrieved from https://www.renewwoman.com/what-is-menopause/?ibp- 

      adgroup=RWMenopause&camp=Menopause&kw=what is 

      menopause&adgroup=Menopause&gclid=CI7shMDwsbUCFQqRPAodVDYAcg

Adolescents and Body Image

My Concern: Adolescents and Body Image:

   
Body Image is the how one perceives one’s body; about how it looks, feels and moves. Adolescent is the age when body goes under various physical changes this is also the time when they go through all those mood swings where they become more concerned on how they look and become more unsatisfied about how they look than like the change. Study shows that 50 – 88 % of adolescent girls feel negatively about their physical appearance. Study also suggests that 58% of the girls wants to lose weight.

            We live in a media run society.  Adolescents are more influenced by media. They want to have the body portrayed by the media. While trying to achieve the body portrayed in the television and hoarding boards, they take steps that can have negative effect in their health as well as in their personality. Most teenagers give up eating in order to lose weight. Some start smoking marijuana and some also take medicines to lose weight. All these can lead to a serious health hazard.

            I interviewed two ladies who go to Texas Women’s University. One was from Asian country and one was born in African country and was brought up to America when she was 3. They both were not comfortable in giving out their real names in my blog as everybody can read it. I asked what did they think was the most happening problem in adolescents today? One said body image and the other said smoking. The lady who thinks smoking is the major problem in adolescents said that teenagers are more influences by the society they grow up in and media also plays a major role in the habit they adopt. Their friends influence them as well. She added that anti smoking advertisements should be more convincing and more in number than the advertisements of cigarettes. 

On the other had, the lady who thought body image was the major problem explained that, due to media and various beauty competitions, teenagers are more and more interested in getting the media portrayed body. She also said that some teenagers even commit suicide because they did not like how they look and also because their friends made fun of their appearance. She added that teenagers are also using all kinds of chemicals to make them look good, which can turn out to be harmful for them.

            All three of us thinks that media plays a huge role in influencing adolescents, positively or negatively. More positively influencing programs should be made rather than making media a platform just for marketing.

Hi Friends,
This is my first time creating a blog. I hope I am doing it right. I want to start my blog by writing about me. My name is Sapana Khadka and I am from Nepal, an Asian country in between India and China. I have been in The United States of America for seven years now. Yes, it is very hard staying away from family and the friends from my chilhood but I've got to do what I've got to do. I am a Health studies major and hopefully graduate by the December of 2013. I am planning on specializing in Epidemiology and becoming an Epidemiologist in the future. I wan to help people who are in need. I belong from an underdeveloped country myself and I want to make Nepal my workplace. I came here seeking for the quality educations, which I can use there for greater success. I hope someday, somehow I will be a help in escalating my country's standard. I have named my blog as "Female" because I will be witing about the problems, achievements or anything that relates to female. I will focus more on the women from Asian countries as I, myself, belong from an Asian country. 
Thank you all for reading my blog and I hope to having a great semester together and I also hope that I will turn-out a good blogger by the end of this class.

Thank you,
Sapana Khadka