I love my boobs. I even love the plethora of words to describe them: melons, knockers, headlights, hooters, jugs, bazoombas ... My girls are small but perky and look fantastic in strapless dresses and T-shirts. I plan to keep them forever. So last year when the United States Preventative Services Task Force changed its recommendations regarding breast cancer screening, I naturally felt a little sore about it. Their statement suggested that women wait until 50, instead of 40, to begin receiving mammograms, and that the testing occur only once every two years, instead of yearly. I was more perturbed that the federal panel recommended against teaching women to perform self-examinations. And apparently, I’m not alone.

The health care reform debate generally seems like a mud-slinging slop fest, but at least it made some progress for women. Today, the Senate passed an amendment to mandate insurance companies to provide coverage of mammograms, pelvic exams, and other preventative services for women. It’s unclear if it covers birth control, though. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) put forth this amendment (estimated to cost $1 billion over the next 10 years) to fund possibly life-saving prevention measures.

“We have gotten ourselves into a big, deep hole in the way that we look at health. Women have to take control of our healthcare back. We are in a system where they get money when we’re sick. That’s never going to work for us. So when someone says, ‘You don’t need a mammogram until you’re 50,’ you take charge of that. I don’t trust any of that.”

—Melissa Etheridge, breast cancer survivor, on the new recommendation that women not get screened for the disease until they’re 50 [People]

“Early detection” has been the rallying cry for many breast cancer survivors and organizations, and for years that meant getting a yearly mammogram once a woman turned 40. Now, however, those guidelines have changed. Most women should start breast cancer screening at the age of 50 instead of 40, 50- to 74-year-old women should have mammograms every two years, and doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts regularly, according to the United States Preventative Services Task Force, an independent committee of prevention and primary care experts appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Kylie Minogue, who just turned the big 4-0 last week, has made women want to wear more spandex, sing at the top of their lungs, and dance like there’s no tomorrow. She’s beaten breast cancer and has also proved that Billboard hits aren’t the only charts she’s been affecting. Since openly talking about her battle with breast cancer in 2005, the Australian medical establishment is crediting her with a 33% spike in mammograms for women between the ages of 25 and 44. (If only gay men could get their moobs screened, you know the numbers would have skyrocketed!) [CBC News]

Latching onto the earth-shattering news that women love a good party, an Orlando radiology clinic is hosting mammogram parties to encourage women to get the breast cancer check-up. So, yeah, we appreciate the sentiment—i.e., let’s try and make women feel like coming to get their boobs flattened between two metal plates is, like, super fun if you’ve got a Cosmopolitan in your hand—but it seems vaguely trivializing. Like women won’t get life saving check-ups unless there are little bite sized finger foods, pink streamers, and Fergie on the stereo. There are some things we want to be sterile, quiet, and devoid of female stereotypes—this would be one of them. What’s next? Manis and pedis while you’re in the stirrups at the gyno? Facials at the dentist? Brazilian waxes during a colonoscopy? [CBS News]