Each week HuffPost Gay Voices, in a partnership with blogger Scout, LGBT HealthLink and researcher Susana Fajardo, brings you a round up of some of the biggest LGBT wellness stories from the past seven days. For more LGBT Wellness visit our page dedicated to the topic here.
1
Unrealistic Gay Beauty Standards
SHUTTERSTOCK / ZURIJETA
A new study of gay men found they had a clear image of their ideal body but on average they felt they needed to look even hotter than their ideal body simply to get dates. The study authors think this is probably leading to eating disorders. Gay men, this bears repeating: nobody’s perfect and that’s okay.
2
Queer Cell Phones Help With Our Health
Shutterstock / Vadim Georgiev
Apparently advertisers know we’re queer by our phone habits and can target ads to us with that information. North Carolina used this strategy to target 1-800-QUITNOW #TipsFromFormerSmokers ads for LGBT people, and quickly found it was more effective than their other advertising. Great job to North Carolina for proving that tailored LGBT health ads aren’t just smart -- they’re also cheap.
3
Family Support Helps Queer Teens… Maybe
Corbis
A new study on family support and depression among LGB (no T) teens had some weird findings: queer girls with lots of family support were less depressed but queer boys with lots of family support were more depressed. Why? No idea. More research is needed but until then we should be looking out for all our youth -- boys and girls alike.
Advertisement
4
Health Care Discrimination Gets Better With Age
Martin Barraud
A new study found that trans and gender non-conforming patients always face some level of discrimination in health care, but that it became less as people age. Young people face the highest levels of discrimination (22%), harassment (26%), and victimization (3%). So, it turns out that health care discrimination is like fine wine: it gets better with age.
5
The Sex Ed We Didn’t Know We Needed
kd diamond
We all know the deal: sex ed in the U.S. is rarely queer-friendly (frankly, it’s barely straight-friendly sometimes). A new book for queer women aims to change that (warning: the link not entirely NSFW). Girl Sex 101 by Allison Moon and kd diamond is the sassy, informative, and funny sex ed comic book we didn’t know we needed. Brilliant!
6
Supporting Trans And Gender-Expansive Children
STOCKCHILDREN / Alamy
We all know that many trans and gender-expansive kids don’t have the easiest time growing up, but we can fix that. Pacific Standard magazine’s got great advice on how to support a child who doesn’t fit the blue or pink they were assigned at birth. Lucky for us, we know there’s a whole rainbow of colors out there!
Advertisement