By Chris Lombardi

 

Dear Rielle,

I'm glad you went on "Oprah" this week. Ever since you burst onto the national consciousness in 2008, I've been wondering about you -- the former Lisa Druck, now a Southern Californian named Rielle, and since last year the mother of a lovely toddler… Read full post »

by Keri Gans

As a registered dietician, one of the questions I routinely ask my patients on their initial consultations is: “Do you know your vitamin D status?”

Why, you may ask yourself, does this matter? Over the last couple of years, vitamin D has come out of… Read full post »

The nominations have been announced and analyzed, and the awards-night hysteria has yet to shift into overdrive. Which makes this a great moment to salute this year’s over-40 female Oscar contenders.

By now, everyone not living on Neptune knows that there’s a woman—a beauti… Read full post »

Mark Sanchez scored points in last week’s Super Bowl broadcast—not for playing, but for a public service announcement about women and heart attacks. It’s an important message, but a 20-second spot didn’t leave much time for details (like actual symptoms, for instance).… Read full post »

by Patricia Yarberry Allen

Advertisers and the companies that hire them, take note: There’s data showing that more women are watching the Super Bowl than men—and the women are much more interested in the ads. (This news comes from the Harris Interactive poll done for Hanon Mckendry… Read full post »

by Billie Brown

     Attention, all you boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, wannabees and other potential treasured purchasers of seasonally overpriced hothouse flowers: We, the recipients and wannabe recipients, love and fervently want to get the aforementioned overpriced… Read full post »

by Tamar Bihari

This past weekend saw the cable TV premiere of a movie about animal behavior expert and autism advocate Temple Grandin. WVFC contributor Tamar Bihari writes about watching the film with her son, who had been diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum.

Whenever I watch… Read full post »

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and even if your hometown’s team is one of the competitors, none has completely escaped chatter about the brain-injury controversy—from CNN’s report on the long-lasting damage suffered by former players, after years of impacts like those at left, t…

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Another pre-Valentine's Day blip: a note for the editors of Our Bodies, Ourselves, whose query about women's sex lives we posted last week. We were delighted at the good news the writer reports, though due to the delicate nature of the subject she has chosen to remain anonymous. -- Ed.… Read full post »

by Chris Lombardi

This week, we're continuing WVFC's Nine Women to Run the World campaign, first with Monday's piece about Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Now, our friends at On The Issues Magazine talks about another of our nominees, Aung San Suu Kyi, in the piece below by Janet Benshoof (f/… Read full post »

For many of us, the word "date" reminds us of nervous high-school moments, our first dinner with our eventual mate, that first time after a divorce we agreed to have a drink with someone new. But almost all of us have had dates we call "bad." But what about those… Read full post »

by Kathleen O'Brien

To hear them tell it, they didn't really want it to be this way.

John Edwards didn't want to admit paternity of the little girl his mistress gave birth to because doing so would hurt his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth has Stage 4 breast cancer and hardly needs another… Read full post »

One of the nominees most frequently mentioned for Carol Muske-Dukes' Nine Women to Run the World, featured here last week, was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the 71-year-old president of Liberia. WVFC was thrilled when Christian Science Monitor correspondent Jina Moore, who had talked to Sirleaf last… Read full post »

Many of us remember the day we first ran across Our Bodies, Ourselves, as something of a revelation; perhaps you even picked up the more recent edition of the same book focused on menopause. But have you wished your voice was in there too? Now, thanks to former WVFC editor Chris… Read full post »

As I write this I am looking out of a window in an air conditioned (!) Barnes & Noble in Houston. I have just seen a crow. Once again I am reminded of how Lisa Russ Spaar can take the particular and poetically turn it into the pertinent, the… Read full post »

by Dr. Holly Andersen

Last week, two researchers from Australia announced an exciting new discovery about gender and heart disease. We have long recognized that men generally become prone to coronary artery disease earlier than women -- on average a decade earlier -- perhaps supporting the… Read full post »

by Michele Buchanan

I remember everything, or at least the things that matter. I remember every pore of his skin, the encysted bump he had on the back of his head, the way he looked like a droll rabbi when he steepled his fingers. I remember the smell of his… Read full post »

by Ainslie Jones Uhl

(read the entire Compass Rose series here.)

An attractive blonde, wine glass in hand, sidled up to my husband. I could tell she was smart. She subtly moved her gaze from one end of the room to the other, checking for eavesdroppers in the… Read full post »

By Carol Muske Dukes

I recently came up with an idea: that it would be revelatory to ask as many women who were willing to "nominate" our next world leaders: to choose who, among women, they'd put forward to lead the world. This seems more apt than ever, given last… Read full post »

by Lisa Russ Spaar

My evening commute takes me along a highway that could be Anywhere, USA — a rootless route of chain restaurants, box stores, motels, gas stations. One evening, stopped at a red light, I noticed that the "L" in the local strip-mall Gold's Gym sign had gone… Read full post »

by Alice Pettway

The continuation of Alice Pettway's chronicle of her service in the Peace Corps in Mozambique. For previous installments, click here.

The questions of children never fail to reach to the center of things. I realized this anew sitting at my table answering the letters of… Read full post »

by Diane Vacca

Attention, all candidates and wannabees: Learn a valuable lesson from Martha Coakley.

If you want to win, don’t take anything for granted. Fight as if your political life depends on it, because it does.

The electorate is fickle; just because you’re a Dem… Read full post »

by Julia L. Kay

(Many observant WVFC readers are already fans of Julia Kay, who first told us of her Daily Portrait Project a year ago and this fall shared vivid memories of many Septembers. Since then, one of her Portraits was in a Chicago showfeatured in theNew York Times,… Read full post »

by Dorene Gorman

One day I woke up and learned, at 62 years old, that my significant other,the love of my life, was having an affair with his ex-wife. I immediately threw him out and cried for one year. Soon after, I visited with friends in Asheville, N.C.,… Read full post »