Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

I think it is really difficult raising children in this complex society, and raising girls perhaps even more so. I know there is a lot of discussion about the images of women in the media and the unrealistic expectations of girls. This is a picture taken from a recent Latina Cosmo. While no personal attack on the model is intended, she looks emaciated to me, and for sure I would not want any of my daughters aspiring to this representation of beauty. I do however have nieces, but they don't live in the US and their exposure to this is not quite the same. Fortunately. I am not sure how parents counter this (and I am assuming they would try), or even if I should be parenting my sons differently or how. The only thing I know to do is to emphasize health and personality over looks.

Some time ago I had blogged about my magazine problem here . Well, this past week, Cosmo has seen it fit to provide me with, not one, but two complimentary copies of their magazine - one of the regular US Cosmo and another of the Latina edition. Now, I don't know if it is my bias or not, but my jaw just dropped when I saw this article below. Now I read a lot of magazines and I have not, in the last 5 years, seen any magazine not say to substitute brown rice wherever white rice is mentioned, except this one. And they are saying white rice is good for you because of the manganese content (which brown rice also has).  And potatoes? "High in vitamin C, potatoes can boost immunity to cold-causing bugs." This is an obvious endorsement of foods without the usual qualifiers (in moderation, better with X substitution, etc.). In fact, I don't think I've ever seen any item in this list promoted as being "good for you" except maybe coffee in some inst...