September 2003

Bad girl

by Dr. Madeline Behrendt

How does this happen?

How does a woman ‑‑ actually how do 500,000 women ‑‑ choose to have surgery that cuts out a perfectly good uterus?

How does a woman, day after day, feed her child a medical version of speed, forcing herself to feel this is the right thing, while her eyes watch the drug distort her child's growth and weight?

How did it happen, that approximately 40 million women were on Hormone Replacement Therapy that transformed a life cycle into a disorder, and then produced something to really worry about as many medicated women fell to breast cancer, stroke, and heart attacks?

How does a woman hold her precious baby still while he is injected with multiple shots of toxic ingredients?

How does a woman, year after year, take a mind‑altering pill that shuts off the very emotions and feelings needed to guide her choices?

How does this happen? Because the message sent to women through conventional outlets is, "BAD GIRL." Your bones break, your hormones go haywire, your moods are evil, you with your depression are unpleasant to be around ‑‑ and you can't even get pregnant. Bad, bad, bad! And, too many women agree.

Bad girls do this, good girls do that. Women hear these manipulative messages from the beginnings of their consciousness. In this confused world, silence is associated with goodness, having a voice is identified as bad, or another "B" word.

Over the years, the assault on women's self‑esteem has grown in momentum and scope. Those behind this "market" have profited, and felt entitled to their position and authority. They were never interested in women's personal power, but rather in women's buying power.

Women disconnected from their intuition, from their knowingness, from the power that everything female had been designed to provide them with, have fallen like easy prey. And, disconnected from any basic philosophy on health besides polar messages identifying "bad girls do this/good girls do that," women have made others rich, while they've became more empty. More "parts" of women have come up for sale.

How much can be taken away from a woman before she is no longer a woman? Uterus, breasts, menopause, pregnancy, fertility, mind, emotions, or soul?

For generations, women's bodies were uniformly coded "Medical Doctors Only." The rising Female Intelligensia today is breaking that code and its uniformity of choices, and stimulating a reconnection to the essence of what is woman. These women refuse to buy into rules made by authorities who don't represent them. They refuse to trust authorities who make choices for them, as they had watched their mothers and grandmothers suffer when they traded intuition for the commerce of medicine.

Both history and promise reveal that women are a significant part of economy and culture. Health care will shift based on women's choices. Chiropractic cannot grow and will not succeed without women connected to the chiropractic message. The WCA leadership has been very supportive of projects documenting the impact of chiropractic in women's health. These projects have been successful, and more are needed.

Approximately 80% of chiropractors are men, and their experience of a woman's life and challenges are observational. Chiropractors, are you connected to women? Are you teaching women how chiropractic supports their lives and their life's journey? When the world pushes them, when the world says "Bad Girl", do the women in your practice push back?

Medicine stimulates friction between women and their potential. This disconnection transforms into commerce (pills, surgeries and tests). In chiropractic, the friction is not the focus. The partnership between practitioner and client is about reconnection, about promoting innate potential through the detection of vertebral subluxations. What chiropractors contribute in the marketplace is this: a higher level of human experience.

Friction also exists in the media. The "Bad Girl" messages promoted in images and language must be interrupted. Many of the press responding to the JVSR research project on infertility asked, "Why haven't I heard this before?" My sincere response was to ask them, "Why hasn't this been reported before?"

Change is also needed in research funding. So much money is being channeled into "Bad Girl" studies, where women's bodies are reported to not work, nor perform basic functions through menopause and fertility.

Here's a concept, where's CHIROPRACTIC'S money? Where is funding for research based on non‑medical care, approaches that have the results and the talent to document significant shifts in health and quality of life?

As we celebrate Founders Day this month, it's a time to look forward.

Where will chiropractic be 1, 5, 10, 20 years from now? Where will you be?

It is through the efforts of chiropractors ‑‑ yes, YOU ‑‑ that women can shift from the frozen fear inspired by "Bad Girl" messages to approaches that honor and respect them. Chiropractic doesn't treat women like "Bad Girls." And that's good news for women of all ages.

Happy Founders Day!