Yeah to Regina Lockyer! Now if we could only clone you, and have one of you in every WIC office, one in every county hospital...... I've posted before about my experiences as a WIC mom in 1980/81 -- I was totally amazed at how shabbily I was treated when people thought I was poor. Still white, still in graduate school, still wearing the same clothes and driving the same car, but pull out those WIC coupons and I became a completely different person, in the eyes of the store clerks. Someone they could be rude to, could sneer at, could accuse of trying to get around the program guidelines (by buying chocolate milk, which *was* allowed). Like why do they care? Does it make them feel better to be rude and condescending? Of course, the WIC people way back then also made me sit through little film strips about the four food groups at the same time I was taking graduate classes in nutrition at the university. But hey, if you're poor you MUST be stupid, right? And I've had my own ob/gyn treat me like an idiot until I gently reminded him that I had a Ph.D., that I was "Dr. Dettwyler" to him, and that he'd better treat me as a partner in my own health care. But why should women have to do this? And why should the doctor only be polite and respectful to women he considers *close-to-being peers*? Don't get me going..... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D. email: [log in to unmask] Anthropology Department phone: (409) 845-5256 Texas A&M University fax: (409) 845-4070 College Station, TX 77843-4352