Publications by authors named "Valerie Rubinsky"

Abortion is a politicized and stigmatized health procedure that has received considerable attention in popular discourse in the past year. The present study investigated how often people ( = 235) talk about abortion throughout their lifespan and within the past 12 months, with whom they have these conversations, and which conversations were most memorable. Key findings from the present study, framed through the Theory of Memorable Messages and the Social Ecological Model, include that most participants had at least one conversation about abortion in the past 12 months.

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With the rise of beauty salons and barber shops serving as sites for health promotion, it is essential to consider other similar contexts for health dissemination, including body waxing salons. This research draws on interviews with 13 body wax specialists from the largest waxing salon chain in the US to understand how health messages are navigated between waxers and their clients. Interviews revealed that body wax specialists respond to health-related conversations in three ways: (1) offering support and building rapport, (2) communicating in ways that threaten the waxer-client relationship, and (3) staying silent.

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Extending prior research on the communicative intersections of bondage, domination, and sadomasochism (BDSM) and disability communities, the present article presents preliminary findings on sexual and boundary-setting communication overlaps in relational minority groups and partnerships with disabilities. Both disability and BDSM communities engage in preparatory, open, and boundary-setting sexual communication that prioritizes shifting physical, emotional, and relational needs. Highlighting reflections from partnerships navigating chronic illness, pain, and neurodivergence, our findings extend previous recommendations for boundary-setting to focus on relationships with disability, identifying intersections as including (1) reflecting upon needs and boundaries amidst shifting symptomatology, (2) (re)write sexual and intimate scripts to prioritize (dis)ability, (3) (re)negotiate relational needs and set expectations, and (4) bring awareness to the role of mental health and medication.

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Using Owen's Thematic Analysis, we reviewed the Reddit posts of participants in two online communities regarding consensual non-monogamy (CNM) during the January 2021 peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 5,209 comments, 465 unique users in the /polyamory and /swinging forums on the social media platform Reddit referred to the pandemic with two themes emerging as most salient. In the first theme, participants described, interpreted, and responded to the social limitations of the Covid-19 era, with particular attention to limitations on CNM identity and behavior during the pandemic.

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Five years ago, we reviewed the state of memorable message scholarship in communication, with special attention to the utility of memorable message research in health communication. Since then, works advancing the theoretical and practical applicability of the construct have continued to emerge. In this article, we discuss the trends in published memorable message research over the last five years.

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Despite the prevalence of uncertainty in medicine, many physicians experience anxiety as a result of medical uncertainty and are reluctant to discuss uncertainty with others. When pediatricians do disclose uncertainty to parents, they are managing both the parents' and their own feelings of uncertainty. The current study applies uncertainty management theory and multiple goals theory to explore pediatricians' communication about uncertainty.

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In recent decades, women's use of contraception has evolved. Women not only utilize contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, but also to manage menstruation and other factors related to their personal agency. Despite an abundance of available contraceptive options, many women struggle to navigate and address their contraceptive needs.

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Informed by scripting theories and Relational Dialectics Theory, this qualitative study used interviews, focus groups, and friendship pods conducted during the summer of 2020 in the COVID-19 pandemic to explore how 29 cisgender women and gender minorities made sense of, communicated about, and maintained their intimate relationships during COVID-19. Findings reveal a discourse of scripted intimacy reflecting normative relational patterns such as the heterosexual life script and the discourse of co-created intimacy, both of which legitimized and challenged the existing relational scripts by generating new ideas of what intimacy could look like in a relationship. Sub-themes included tensions of stability v.

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The present study presents a typology of identity gaps (Hecht, 1993), or cognitive, affective, and behavioral discrepancies between and among different parts of the self, that emerge in sexual partner communication. A total of 504 individuals in relationships they identified as or others ascribed as less common or less accepted than other kinds of relationships, including LGBQ, transgender and non-binary, BDSM, polyamorous, and interracial relationships, described instances in which parts of the self were in tension amid their intimate partner communication. These identity gaps occurred in tension with personal identity, or sense of self, or communal identity as a member of particular sexual and gender minority groups.

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Parents of children with visible illnesses and physical differences, such as vascular birthmarks (VBs), often fear that their child will be stigmatized by others. Despite their use of various strategies to minimize this stigma, parents still frequently receive comments and questions from others about their child's condition. In the current study, we explore the source, content, and valence of these messages using a memorable messages framework.

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Menstruation is a salient, and sometimes scary, communication topic for young women. The present study reports on the early communication experiences about menstruation from 165 women using open-ended survey data. Through the framework of supportive communication, findings reveal that a discrepancy occurs between the health and practical information and needs to which young people who menstruate desire access, and their social and emotional needs.

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This study investigated the content of memorable body messages that college women recall receiving in their childhood, and the relationship of those messages to state body image satisfaction, self-esteem, rape myth acceptance, and likelihood to report rape or sexual assault. Memorable messages were mostly about body size, body type, body parts, haptic messages, body positivity, and development. Mothers were the most frequent source of memorable body messages during childhood.

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Knapp, Stohl, and Reardon's (1981) seminal work reported that some messages may be "remembered for a long time and have a profound influence on a person's life" (p. 27). While the foundational concepts of this framework have offered a meaningful contribution to memorable messages research, this article seeks to unpack the past three decades of the literature specific to the field of communication.

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Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) women exist as a population with an increased complexity in the relationship between themselves and their sexuality. For the LGBTQ community, sexual behaviors are often silenced or erased. This exploratory qualitative research examines 186 memorable messages that emerged from 91 LGBTQ women and gender minorities who participated in a national study.

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