An Interview with BadBadIvy

Okay, it’s actually an interview with me, with questions by BadBadIvy. In a fit of temporary insanity, I agreed over at BadBadIvy’s place to do this interview thing. The rules are as follows:

Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.” I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to
pick the questions. If you don’t have a valid email address on your blog, please provide one. You
will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions. You will include this
explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to
be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Ms. Ivy knows me in “real life,” so I figured she’d ask some doozies. Now, for questions:

1. Why did you start Women’s Health News?
There were a few reasons. I wanted to play around with blogging, and knew I needed a focus in order to keep myself productive. I’ve had an interest in women’s health for a while, and suddenly had access to all of these amazing resources (journal articles, books, even a class in the school of nursing) on the topic when I began working in an academic medical library. I wanted to force myself to learn more, to keep up more, to explain more. I wanted to share information (which ties into the whole “librarian” thing). I also wanted to talk about women’s health in a space that wasn’t all “lose weight now” and “5 foods for your heart,” but also wasn’t solely focused on a single feminist topic like abortion. I do write about abortion, but I think it’s just as important to talk about women’s rights to breastfeed, to have the births that are appropriate to them, and other access and choice issues. I want to cover the spectrum.

2. If you could change one thing about your appearance, what would it be?
Ivy put this in just to push my buttons, given how I’ve ranted about labiaplasties and the like. If I had a magic wand and no costs or consequences, I’m sure I could come up with a couple of things. The most obvious would be to become taller. I’m 5′2″. There are things in my kitchen cabinets that I simply can’t reach. I don’t see that the tops of certain things are dirty, but other people do. A couple of inches wouldn’t do it – 5′4″ is no great shakes. I think it would be awesome to be closer to 5′8″. Maybe I could just learn to walk on stilts.

One thing that some people might expect I would change is the giant (2″) thyroid surgery across the front of my neck. I wouldn’t, because then I wouldn’t have an excuse to make, “You shoulda seen the other guy” jokes.

3. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
The power to make whatever I wanted to happen, happen. Sure, I might accidentally set some lady’s shopping cart on fire when she’s blocking the whole aisle, but most of the time I wouldn’t destroy things. Then I wouldn’t have to fuss with, “Oh, I can fly. Oh, I can make fire. Look at me, I’m bulletproof.” I could just want any of those things and make them happen. It’s a multi-purpose superpower, like a “Room of Requirement” for your life. Barring that, I wouldn’t mind being Storm. Or just having a Batmobile, you know?

4. If you were suddenly crowned Dictator of the United States, what would you do to help the poor?
I don’t think dictators have a strong record of helping the poor. It depends on whether I had a good sense of how long I had to rule before the impending bloody coup. What would be the one thing that would make the biggest immediate impact? And would be undoable by the revolutionaries? I just don’t know. I’ll be thinking about this in a secure location.

5. What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you?
It might sound silly, but the time when I had my thyroid disease but prior to my surgery was the scariest time of my life. It’s not something you can really understand the feeling of unless it’s happened to you, but I used to worry about falling asleep at night because I had a reasonable suspicion that I might not wake up. I really can’t think of a second scariest moment. I’m not afraid of public speaking, snakes, roller coasters, planes, that sort of thing. Everything else that might have had a bit of scariness (like going 500 miles away for college) was also so accompanied by excitement and opportunity that it hardly counts.