Viola Davis, Emmys 2015 (Betches)
At the Emmys this past weekend, actress Viola Davis was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Series for her lead role in ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder.” Though she didn’t win on Sunday night, she won the award in 2015, and made history in the process. Davis became the first Black woman to win the Best Actress award.
Crazy that seemingly simple milestones are still only now being surpassed.
Cosmo Kramer, ‘Seinfeld’ (Pinterest)
Here’s some downer news to start your day: Sexually-transmitted disease (STD) gonorrhea has become resistant to certain antibiotics.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new treatment guidelines for the STD. Gonorrhea isn’t the only STD that’s become drug-resistant; strains of chlamydia and syphilis have also begun resisting treatment.
The common STD most affects women ages 20-24, with 820K new cases throughout all demographics cropping up per year. Worldwide, 78M people contract gonorrhea each year.
Gonorrhea is becoming drug-resistant at the same time that STD rates are rising. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) reported that rates of gonorrhea rose 5%+, which was the first increase in the U.S. in eight years.
The STD now cannot be treated with penicillin and doxycycline, among other drugs. The WHO estimates that completely new drugs will be needed for treatment within the next five years.
Teenage girls with pregnancy test (Young Adults)
When I was growing up in the ’90s, teenage pregnancy was just a fact. It was depicted in movies and on TV, and you probably knew at least one girl in your school who got pregnant.
But teenage pregnancy now seems so…dated. Times have changed. Having kids young and outside of wedlock isn’t a big deal anymore. And I feel like I’m not seeing teen pregnancies focused on so much anymore (granted, that might be because I’m no longer a teen myself).
There’s a good reason for this: the teen birth rate is decreasing.
According to the U.S Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Adolescent Health, the teenage birth rate in the U.S. has actually been decreasing for over 20 years. In 1991, there were 61.8 babies born for every 1k teenage girls. In 2014, there were 24.2 babies born for every 1K teenage girls. Quite a drop.
Even the year-over-year drops can be steep. The 2014 number is a 9% drop from 2013, where 26.5 babies were born to every 1K teenage girls. And the 2015 number of 22 babies per every 1K teenage girls is a 8% decrease from 2014.
For a longer-term view of how the teen birth rate has declined from the previous decade, CNN has the scoop:
Since 2007, the year-to-year decline in teen birth rates has been between 7% and 9%…The number of teens becoming moms has dropped by a total of 54% from 2007 to 2015.
That’s huge! We’ll see how small the number of teenage pregnancies eventually gets.
Melissa Villasenor (Remezcla)
Earlier this week, new additions to the “Saturday Night Live” cast were announced for the upcoming season. Among the three new cast members is comedian Melissa Villasenor. Villasenor’s hiring is significant because she’ll be the first Latina cast-member since “SNL” debuted 41 years ago.
How in the hell did it take Forty. One. Years?!?!?!
Villasenor’s hiring is just the latest achievement for Latinas in the entertainment industry, and she’s not the first to bust down a barrier.
Mexican actress Dolores del Rio worked in Hollywood from the 1920s until the ’40s, and achieved cross-over success with American audiences. She was the first Mexican actress to do so, and she worked with Hollywood luminaries such as Fred Astaire. (Fun fact: In the 1933 film “Flying Down to Rio,” del Rio danced with Astaire in the same film where he first paired with Ginger Rogers.)
Actress Rita Moreno overachieved with the firsts. Not only did she win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1961, but she won the same award at the Tonys in 1975. Moreno went on to be the second person ever to get the EGOT honor (that is, she won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony).
Villasenor’s hiring opens the door for more diversity at “SNL,” but more Latina achievement in entertainment.
Actress Rita Moreno poses with her Oscar after she was named best supporting actress at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on April 9, 1962. She won for her roll in “West Side Story
In 1961, actress Rita Moreno won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Anita in “West Side Story.” She was the first Latina actress to win that award.
Moreno didn’t stop there: In 1975, she won the Tony for Best Supporting Actress for “The Ritz.” And she was the first Latina actress to win that award as well.
Two years later, Moreno became the second person ever to achieve the EGOT: winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. She’s continued working steadily and blazing trails today.
Female reproductive diagram (Pinterest)
Well, this is alarming. A new study that surveyed 1K British women found that only 56% of women could identify the vagina from a medical diagram. For those of you who can’t do math, that’s 44% of women who can’t identify the vagina. And that’s way too high.
By contrast, nearly 70% of women could identify the male reproductive organs from a diagram. (Full disclosure: this was me in fifth grade health class. But then I got some knowledge.)
The study turned up some other things to note: Less than 30% of women could correctly identify all six parts of the women’s reproductive system from the same diagram. Also, only one in seven women were able to name a cancer that affects the reproductive organs. (The study was done by The Eve Appeal, a UK-based gynecological charity in awareness of September being Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month.)
The study also turned up the interesting note that women ages 65 and older were most likely to have scant knowledge of their reproductive organs, with less than one of four women able to name even one part. This might speak to a divide in sexual and health education between generations.
Not to be dramatic, but knowing this information could save your life, or the life of another woman you know.
Ursula Andress in “Dr. No,” 1962 (YouTube)
This year, the bikini turns 70 years old. How can it be that old?! And love it or hate it, the iconic swimsuit isn’t not going anywhere anytime soon.
The bikini’s invention is credited to French engineer Louis Reard. When he went to the beach, he noticed women trying to get a better tan by adjusting their suits. Sensing a hole in the market, he designed the first bikini out of 30 square inches of fabric in 1946.
Though the bikini took some time to catch on with the average consumer, it caught fire on film in the 1960s. The decade featured some instantly iconic bikini moments, ensuring that the garment had earned its place in fashion and film history.
One of the first to appear was in 1962’s James Bond film “Dr. No.” Ursula Andress, playing shell diver Honey Ryder, appears from the ocean clad in a white bikini. Bikini sales rose after audiences saw the movie, and the bikini was later auctioned off for $61.5K in 2001.
After that head-turning debut, bikinis became a wardrobe staple of the beach party genre, starting with 1963’s “Beach Party” with Annette Funicello. In 1966’s “One Million Years B.C.,” actress Raquel Welch rocked a deerskin bikini.
But why were bikinis taking off during the 1960s? There are a few reasons. One is that women’s dress standards had somewhat relaxed due to the sexual revolution. While a woman might’ve felt a bikini was too revealing in the 1950s, many women grew comfortable showing their bodies (up to a point) in the 1960s.
Though the bikini gained popularity a good 15 years after its debut, the classic women’s swimwear item shows no signs of slowing down in the near or distant future.
Micheline Bernardini in a bikini (Culturify)
You may not recognize Micheline Bernardini’s name, but you know her impact: Bernardini was the first woman ever to wear a bikini.
In 1946, French engineer Louis Reard cut up some fabric and sewed four triangles to get the first bikini. He wanted to announce his new invention to the world with a press conference. There was only one problem: he couldn’t find a woman willing to wear his creation. Reard eventually hired teenage exotic dancer Micheline Bernardini to model the bikini.
The bikini gets its name from Bikini Atoll, where nuclear weapons were tested on war artillery. The first test was completed five days before Reard announced his new sartorial creation.
iOS 10 Emoji (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Apple’s iOS update will also bring a slew of emoji changes to the Messages app. But these emoji will now be more diverse and gender-inclusive.
Women will now be represented with professions that had previously only be available for men, such as surfing, police officers and doctors. The reverse will hold true for the men, who will now have the option to use emoji depicting haircuts and massages.
There will also be new family emoji, showing single mothers and fathers with their children. A rainbow flag has also made it into the mix, signifying Apple’s support for marriage equality (insert hallelujah-hands emoji here).
This spring, Google first brought new emoji designs to the Unicode Consortium, the committee that oversees the selection, development and implementation of new emoji. Apple is also a member of the Consortium, and moved forward in developing its own emoji.
This isn’t the first time emoji have been updated for diversity. Last year’s release of iOS 9.1 included the debut of multiple skin tones. This upcoming batch of new inclusive emoji will have 100+ iterations, taking skin tone into account.
iOS 10 will debut later this fall.
HPV Vaccine (Fearless Parent)
Once they’re born, children receive a range of vaccinations against seemingly every possible disease. But one vaccination has been severely under-used: the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
According to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), HPV is the “most common sexually transmitted infection (STI).” The virus affects 14M+ people every year, and will affect almost everyone who is sexually active at some point in their lives. HPV causes 90% of cervical cancers, and other cancers associated with orifices used during sexual activity (think vagina, anus, etc.).
A 2014 study done by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of North Carolina (UNC) showed that a “sizable minority” of doctors recommended the vaccine “inconsistently, behind schedule or without urgency.”
Here’s what that translates to numerically:
As of 2014, only 40 percent of girls and 21 percent of boys ages 13 to 17 had received all three doses of the HPV vaccine, whereas 88 percent of boys and girls had been vaccinated against tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis and 79 percent had gotten the meningococcal vaccine.
But why aren’t children getting this vaccination? One reason is that doctors may be reluctant to talk about sexual activity with children, even if it’s future sexual activity. The vaccination does not rank high on the list of children’s immunizations, and isn’t required in many states. There also has not been a public health scare to drive home the importance of this immunization to parents.
The virus was only approved in 2006, and can be cost-prohibitive: the three-shot series can run up to $1K.
Children, both girls and boys, should receive the vaccination around ages 11-12. Boys can get catch-up vaccines until they’re 21, and girls can do the same until they’re 26. But the vaccine has proven less effective when given during the later years.
Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang 