Doctors, Liars, and Women: AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo

Doctors, Liars, and Women: AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo

AIDS, activist video, documentary, woman filmmaker,

Acquired for research for my doctoral disseration, then monograph, AIDS TV. Digitized for my VHS Archives class, Fall 2018. One of the central pieces of AIDS activist video that forefronts women's activism with a strong critique of media representation at its heart. Made by my longtime collaborator Jean Carlomusto with Maria Magenti who went on to be a lesbian filmmaker of some renown.

"This spectacular David and Goliath story unfolds on the streets of New York, as the first action of the Women’s Committee in ACT UP takes on Cosmopolitan magazine. In January of 1988 Cosmo published a dangerously misleading article on the transmission of AIDS for women. Written by psychiatrist Robert E. Gould, the article claimed that, “There is almost no danger of contracting AIDS through ordinary sexual [heterosexual] intercourse.” Jean Carlomusto documents the women who stood up to the mammoth magazine conglomerate and questioned Dr. Gould and his qualifications with perseverance, dedication, and bravery." (MoMA)

1988

00:22:57

Jean Carlomusto and Maria Magenti, GMHC

https://brooklyn-cuny.yuja.com/V/Video?v=11269356&node=50148124&a=60797881