In Pushing Cool, Dr. Keith Wailoo presents a sixty-year history of menthol cigarettes becoming a racialized product. Wailoo has written a number of essential books on race, racism, and health since the 1990s, including Pain: A Political History and How Cancer Crossed the Color Line. This is the first of Wailoo’s books to deal with… Read more →
Tag: health
Why Sad Salads Are No Laughing Matter: An Interview with Emily Contois
Whether you’ve seen The Hairpin’s 2011 “Women Laughing Alone with Salad,” or not, you’re in for a treat. Emily Contois analyzes this well-known photo essay in a recently published chapter, “Laughing Alone with Salad: Nutrition-Based Inequity in Women’s Diet and Wellness Media,” as part of Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning, edited by Simona Stano… Read more →
How the “Advisory State” Shapes American Bodies and Politics: A Conversation with Rachel Louise Moran
In her new book Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique, historian Rachel Louise Moran examines the U.S. government’s efforts to influence citizen bodies, not through legislation or overt force, but through what Moran calls “the advisory state.” This political control stemmed from a “subtle but powerful … repertoire of governing… Read more →
Do This One Thing: Curing Symptoms not the Disorder
This spring, as I was preparing for my wedding, recovering from what was my fourth illness of the year, and attempting to finish the first chapter of my dissertation, my fiancé told me that he got an amazing job offer in Chicago and — surprise! — we had to decide immediately whether to stay in… Read more →
Change We Need? Why the Name of the President’s Fitness Council Matters
At the end of February, President Trump renamed the council that supports American physical fitness as the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition (PCSFN). This is not in and of itself a big deal. It is the fifth time the Council has changed names since its 1956 creation, and seemingly one of the least… Read more →
Dying to Heal: Women and Syphilis in Colonial Lima, Peru
In the early modern world, syphilis victims suffered through four stages of disease over a ten- to thirty-year time span. The first two phases manifested on the skin, beginning with painless ulcers near the site of infection (usually the genitals or mouth), which progressed to blotchy, red rashes on the palms of the hands and… Read more →
Climate Calamity: Lice, Typhus, and Gender in Mexico
By tucking themselves away in the corners of beds and the folds of clothes, insects have long evolved alongside humans. Mites, ticks, fleas, bedbugs, lice—they all feast happily on blood, leaving humans with the itchy, irritating aftermath. In the first half of the twentieth century, rural parasitic insects gained a foothold in the largely agriculture-based… Read more →
The Weight of the Presidency
In early January, President Trump had a physical exam at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a periodic rite for US presidents in the modern era. The results were made public a few days later, with fevered public interest from popular media and television commentators. Was the President, with a height/weight ratio that put his BMI… Read more →
Take a Hay Ride: Remembering Louise Hay
On August 30, 2017, Louise Hay died. Hay was a metaphysical healer who began her journey in healing at the First Church of Religious Science in the late 1960s. Her first publication was a 1976 pamphlet that came to be called, “Heal Your Body.” She became a best-selling author and publisher in the 1980s in… Read more →
A Few Things I Need You To Know Before Getting Tested for HIV, As Told By Your HIV Tester
Welcome! Before getting tested for HIV, New York State requires me to go over a few things with you. First, testing is confidential but not anonymous. Second, testing is voluntary and can be stopped at any point. Third, I can and will stop a test if I feel you are a danger to yourself or… Read more →