Word: hermans
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...John's living room, with furniture, knickknacks and all. (Ooh! Ah! Hmmm.) Someday John will write one of those obligatory star memoirs, the kind in which he won't be able to decide whether to remember his wild youth or forget it. ("Let's see, was I Pee-wee Herman or Mother Teresa?") Skip the book. The pictures he has bought may give us the best picture of him we are ever likely...
...retrospect, pediatricians and psychologists say, there have been hints for the past decade or so that something strange was going on. But it wasn't until 1997 that anyone put her finger on it. That's when Marcia Herman-Giddens, now an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, published her famous paper in the journal Pediatrics. Herman-Giddens noticed in her clinical work that more and more young girls were coming in with breasts and pubic hair. Intrigued, she launched a major study of 17,000 girls to get a statistical handle...
What was striking about Herman-Giddens' report was the onset of secondary sexual characteristics: breast buds and pubic hair. Significant numbers of white girls--some 15%--were showing outward signs of incipient sexual maturity by age 8, and about 5% as early as 7. For African Americans, the statistics were even more startling. Fifteen percent were developing breasts or pubic hair by age 7, and almost half...
...Pediatrics study is also limited because it does not include enough Asian- American or Hispanic girls to draw conclusions about these groups. Herman-Giddens agrees: "We in the public health and medical community really need to get data on American girls of all racial and ethnic groups." They also need to get data on boys, who haven't been studied in any systematic way. Herman-Giddens is pursuing the question now but says it isn't easy. "With girls," she says, "you can see breasts budding. With boys, the equivalent sign is an increase in size of the testes...
...brain that are jump-starting development. Drew Pinsky, a physician and co-host of MTV's recently canceled Loveline advice program, is a proponent of this notion. "MTV," he asserts, "is absolutely one of the factors in early puberty." But even though the idea sounds nutty, says Herman-Giddens, "it would not be scientific to dismiss it. If someone cuts a nice juicy grapefruit in front of you, you salivate. Seeing things can affect us physiologically...