Mannequins are meant to give shoppers a general sense of what a store’s clothes might look like on a human body. But at department store JCPenney, the mannequins are sending a different message. They are so outrageously thin that one woman actually stopped to take a picture comparing the mannequin’s leg to her own arm. It was about the same size:

Dae C. Sheridan, a psychotherapist, professor, and mother of two, was so disturbed by the unrealistic body image portrayed by the JCPenney mannequins that she wrote a letter asking the company to change its sizing. “Super-thin images of unrealistic ‘perfection’ are everywhere,” Sheridan wrote, “and lead healthy, beautiful girls to feel ‘less than.’ That internalized pressure, stress and shame leads to irrational thoughts about their bodies and a decreased sense of self-worth”:

Now, I realize that lots of people have, and will continue to walk on by, unfazed by that same mannequin. Maybe it’s because they are busy with their back-to-school shopping, maybe it’s because they are more focused on other things… but my greatest fear is that nobody notices because of the way the media, retailers such as yourselves, and popular magazines portray the female body.

Nobody notices because of the saturation of an unrealistic thin-ideal and beauty standard in our culture which teaches girls and women to attempt to “achieve” impossible proportions. People walk by, faced with emaciated chic and famine fashion, because sadly, this is becoming our “new normal”.

The term “skinny jeans” is already fraught with critique of body-image, forcing women to assess whether they are, in fact, “skinny” enough to wear the pants. And it’s not just adults who are marketed into this self-ridicule. Such products are pitched to young girls, who increasingly suffer body image problems. According to JustThink.org, “The number one magic wish for young girls age 11-17 is to be thinner,” and 80 percent of 10 year-old girls in the United States say they have been on a diet.

And, morals aside, it may be in JCPenney’s business interests to change their mannequins. The Girl Scouts released a report revealing that 81 percent of girls would rather see unedited images of models, and 75 percent “would be more likely to buy clothes they see on ‘real-size models’ than on super-skinny ones.”

Although the Obamacare provision that requires employers to provide contraceptive services free of charge contains an exemption for religious organizations that believe birth control is against their beliefs, conservative Christian institutions continue to fight against it as a perceived affront to their religious liberty. Two prominent lawsuits brought against Obamacare’s birth control mandate have already been dismissed, but that hasn’t stopped an Oklahoma-based crafts supply chain from adding their own legal challenge to the law.

Hobby Lobby, a large chain of craft stores owned by conservative evangelical Christians, filed a federal lawsuit against the contraception mandate today, claiming they should have the right to deny coverage for emergency contraception to over 13,000 employees across 40 states. Hobby Lobby’s owners, the Green family, claim the Obamacare requirement to provide employer-based coverage for that contraceptive service violates their freedom of religion and speech:

The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction prohibiting the enforcement of the mandate against the Green family and its businesses. [...]

“The Green family’s religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting abortion-causing drugs and devices,” the lawsuit said. “The administrative rule at issue in this case runs roughshod over the Green family’s religious beliefs, and the beliefs of millions of other Americans, by forcing them to provide health insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices, as well as related education and counseling.”

The Greens are using their own religious decision to avoid contraception to deny thousands of employees access to affordable birth control. They’re also misleading in referring to emergency contraception as an “abortion-causing drug.” The morning after pill does not terminate a pregnancy, but rather acts exactly as daily birth control pills do to prevent fertilization from occurring.

As President Obama put it in his own defense of the health law’s birth control provision, “it is not fair” for religious employers to deny access to contraceptive services to their non-religious employees. But challenges to broaden Obamacare’s existing exemption for religiously-based organizations — such as the anti-choice legislators in Missouri who are currently attempting to force a bill through the state legislature that would allow any employer, like the Green family, to deny contraception coverage for religious reasons — are moving the goalposts into dangerous territory.

Thanks to Obamacare, the uninsured rate in the U.S. dropped in 2011 to 15.7 percent from 16.3 percent in 2010, and 1.4 million Americans have health insurance now who did not have coverage a year ago, according to data from the Census Bureau. 2011 was the first year in more than a decade in which the number of people with private health insurance remained steady. “Our main finding is coverage increased between 2010 and 2011,” said David Johnson, chief of the Census’s Chief, Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.

A key factor that drove down the number of people without insurance — 48.6 million people last year compared to 50 million in 2010 — is a provision in the Affordable Care Act allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance plans up to age 26. A study in June estimated that 6.6 million young adults have taken advantage of this regulation. About 40 percent of the drop in the uninsured rate for those 19-25, which feel the most of any age group, is because of young adults keeping their parents’ insurance coverage.

The Census data also showed a large drop in the uninsured rate for low-income Americans who are most likely to be eligible for public insurance programs like Medicaid. The number of people covered by Medicaid in 2011 increased to 16.5 percent (50.8 million people) from 15.8 percent (48.5 million people) in 2010, and the number of Medicare beneficiaries grew to 46.9 million in 2011 to 44.9 million in 2010.

One talking point Republicans and Mitt Romney’s campaign have used repeatedly is that President Obama “raided” Medicare in order to pay for the Affordable Care Act. The health reform law did cut $716 billion out of the program, but it did so on the provider side in order to avoid harming seniors’ benefits. Paul Ryan included those same cuts in his latest budget proposal, but now that Ryan’s on the GOP presidential ticket, Mitt Romney is insisting the cuts will be undone. That still leaves Ryan needing to explain why he’s attacking President Obama for Medicare cuts he himself signed off on. The distinction Ryan has landed on is that he used the cuts to “shore up Medicare,” while Obama used them to pay for Obamacare.

Jonathan Cohn flagged a new poll by United Technologies and National Journal Congressional Connection which suggests the talking point hasn’t taken hold with the public, and voters approve of Obama’s use of the cuts:

It’s important to note that Ryan’s distinction on the Medicare cuts is rather spurious as policy substance as well. Under trust fund accounting, both Obama and Ryan’s Medicare cuts have the same effect: They reduce payment rates to health care providers, netting seniors more benefits per Medicare dollar, and thus extending the life of the program’s trust fund.

But the Congressional Budget Office uses unified budget accounting, which assumes government spending will ignore the exhaustion of the trust fund. This is the methodology that produced the long-term predictions both Obama and Ryan have relied on to sell their respective laws and budgets. And under this accounting method, their Medicare cuts also make room in the budget to accomplish other goals.

Those goals are where Obama and Ryan differ. Obama uses that new room to expand Medicaid and to fund Obamacare’s support for Americans on the exchanges to buy health insurance. Ryan uses that room to offset his massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and as part of his mix of spending cuts to ostensibly eliminate the debt – assuming his tax reform works, which it almost certainly won’t. In other words, Ryan’s route “shores up” Medicare only if you buy the assumption that his budget shores up the government’s finances as a whole.

Paul Ryan has staked his attack on the assumption that voters would approve of his use of the Medicare cuts, but not Obama’s cuts. This survey suggests that assumption was wrong.

Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) outrageous comment that “legitimate rape” doesn’t often result in pregnancy is just one prominent example of radical anti-choice politicians’ lack of awareness about real issues that confront women. State Rep. Jim Buchy (R-OH) is just the latest anti-abortion lawmaker to reveal his inability to understand what’s at stake in the fight for women’s reproductive freedom.

After an Al Jazeera reporter asked Buchy why he thinks some women may want to have an abortion, he fumbled for an appropriate response before admitting he had never thought about that question before:

BUCHY: Well, there’s probably a lot of — I’m not a woman so I’m thinking, if I’m a woman, why would I want to get — some of it has to do with economics. A lot has to do with economics. I don’t know, I have never — It’s a question I have never thought about.

Watch it, courtesy of the Rachel Maddow Show:

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The fact that Buchy has never once considered the many reasons why a woman may choose to terminate a pregnancy — because she is a teenager who did not intend to get pregnant, because giving birth could risk her health, because she doesn’t want to carry her rapist’s child, because she is unable to financially or emotionally support a child, or because she is exercising her legal right to determine her own reproductive choices for her body, to name just a few — is problematic in light of his political stance on the issue. Buchy is opposed to all abortions except to preserve the life of the woman, and he has voted to prevent insurance companies from covering abortion services.