There's a return of antiquated-sounding illnesses in various parts of the country -- measles, mumps and whooping cough outbreaks are in the headlines.

And there are two distinct front lines in the public policy effort to get as many children vaccinated as possible. On one side, there are pediatricians concerned about a rise in preventable childhood diseases because of parents reluctant or refusing to vaccinate their children.

On the other side, there are parents with religious objections or other concerns who don't feel their worries are taken seriously by the medical establishment.

And never the twain shall meet, it seems.

Dr. Dyan Hes, medical director at Gramercy Pediatrics in New York City, received a call from grandparents who are at their wits' end. Their granddaughter has refused to vaccinate her 11-year-old, so they are bringing her to Hes' office to see if she can talk some sense into her.

"I'll ask her what her fears are," Hes said. Normally, she meets with prospective patients in her private practice and tells them upfront: "All my patients are vaccinated."

"We became pediatricians because we want children to be healthy, so it's never our intention to harm your child," she said. The previous fears about links between autism and vaccines have been completely debunked, she said. "I don't separate vaccines. I don't alter the schedule because no study shows there are reduced complications from doing so," she said.

While the overall childhood vaccination rate in America is still high -- at 90 percent or higher -- for many immunizations, there are pockets of unvaccinated children in certain communities.

One mother, who says she doesn't like to talk about her concerns about vaccinations publicly because of the reactions it can trigger, says her son began having seizures after getting the measles, mumps and rubella shot when he was barely a year old.

"Every doctor I've spoken to will get upset if you say the vaccination caused it. They will say it might have triggered it. He may have been predisposed to seizures already," she said. But the experience changed her view on vaccinations and has influenced some of her family members against getting their own children immunized.

This mom says she doesn't believe in combination shots, prefers to wait until children are a little older than the recommended age and avoids shots altogether when the child has a cold or any other illness.

Even though her husband is a physician, she says medical practitioners tend to have a view of "you're either with us or against us" when it comes to vaccines.

That may be due to cases such as the measles outbreaks in New York City and Texas this year. If trends continue, this may be the worst year for measles in America in a decade. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report earlier this month stating unvaccinated children or those with unknown vaccination status made up 92 percent of the 159 reported cases of measles between Jan. 1 and Aug. 24 this year.

"We don't really see childhood mortality anymore because we have vaccines," Hes said. "People don't remember what it's like to be in an iron lung because of polio." They haven't seen encephalopathy or death as a complication of measles.

Parents who don't vaccinate their children are exposing the larger public to risk, including babies too young to be immunized, she said. Hes has patients with cancer and other illnesses who cannot be vaccinated; having those kids share a waiting room with an unvaccinated child with measles could be fatal, she said. "Most of the parents forget that they are vaccinated, but they are choosing to expose their kids."

But for the mom who believes her son had a negative reaction to the MMR shot and never got another immunization for him, a position like Hes' will never sway her.

"I'm not trying to argue with someone who has spent years studying medicine," she said. "But they should try to understand where the other person is coming from. No one wants a sick world. Everyone wants what's best for their child."

A doctor scarcely has the time to answer every vaccination question a parent might have during an office visit. And the vast amounts of information online can range from reliable to completely false. But if the goal is to get as many children vaccinated as possible, the medical community needs to find a way to address parents' concerns about the risks -- without alienating the very people they seek to help.

We don't like when a sexist contest provokes a racist response.

Come on, Miss America viewers, you're better than that.

Those upset with the crowning of Nina Davuluri, Miss New York, as the first Indian-American to win the crown took their displeasure to Twitter, referring to her as Miss 7-11, Miss Al Qaeda and other asinine slurs.

Bigots and idiots, which so often go hand in hand, described Davuluri as a foreigner, an Arab, a terrorist even. Stupid, stupider, and stupidest.

Do we really look to anachronistic beauty pageants to measure societal progress? After all, it wasn't until 1984 that the pageant crowned its first African-American, the famously dethroned Vanessa Williams, who is also the pageant's most successful alum. 1984? Good grief.

Surely we recognize this as a contest in which a young woman saunters across a stage in high heels and a bikini and asks to be judged for how she looks in it. Males have preening competitions, too. Where is our Mr. America? And why don't we care how he handles the burning controversy of Julie Chen getting her eyes done?

This year's pageant was a spectacle replete with bizarreness, such as Lance Bass of the '90s boy band 'N Sync grading a contestant's soundbite about the United States intervening in Syria.

It was a pageant rife with contradictions: The winner, who confesses struggling with bulimia, was investigated by the organization for allegedly calling her predecessor "fat as

."

Physical beauty, a personal and subjective standard, of course, relies on its beholder. It transcends the categories that may divide us. A society's beauty ideals say much about its values and aspirations. And as those beauty ideals evolve, they hold a mirror to larger societal shifts.

The most intriguing underlying question throughout the Miss America pageant is: Who gets to represent us? Who do we hold up as a pinnacle female, a representative of our country's beauty, ideals and, ahem, talent (loosely defined)?

For some, it wasn't the two finalists -- both of them Asian women representing the coasts -- who looked like "real" America to them. It may have been the tatted blonde from the Midwest.

Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, became the first Miss America contestant to show off tattoos during the swimsuit competition: the insignia of the U.S. Army Dental Corps on her left shoulder and the Serenity Prayer along the right side of her torso. (Donald Trump, owner of the competing Miss Universe franchise, publicly derided the popularity of getting inked and says his pageant doesn't encourage tattoos. He, of course, knows a thing or two about embracing questionable aesthetic choices.)

Vail's tattoos weren't the only first. Miss Iowa, Nicole Kelly, was born without her left forearm. Her confidence spoke to the changes in how we view people with disabilities.

There was Miss Florida, Myrrhanda Jones, still looking glamorous as she sported a bejeweled knee brace after tearing her ACL during a rehearsal. Perseverance is a sexy accessory.

In 2010, Rima Fakih became the first Muslim American to wear the Miss USA crown. There was an expected backlash to that choice, as well. The xenophobia prompted those who typically roll their eyes at pageants to defend the winner. Some base level of ignorance will likely always be with us.

When someone tweets that Davuluri should be wearing a red dot on her head, that insult hits close to home for many Americans of South Asian heritage.

In its 87-year history, the pageant has risen and fallen in popularity. For years, it was dropped by a major network because so few viewers were interested in watching. Then, in 2011 and 2012, the telecast was the highest-rated nonsports event in its timeslot across networks. While I wouldn't want to watch the show with my young children, I'm tempted to selectively share the stories of a few contestants -- the ones whose imperfect lives overshadow their flawless faces.

As ethnic and racial lines continue to blur in this country, as our national identity continues to evolve, moments in pageants like this capture our imagination.

Yet, there's this ridiculous message the pageant peddles: We enjoy judging women on their looks and bodies, and we will set as a body ideal a standard impossible for the vast majority of women on this planet.

But there's another revelation at play: Whether Muslim or Evangelical, whether brown or white, whether you twirl a baton or shake it like a Bollywood star, you can rock that tiara for this country.

The Facebook chat started out innocently enough.

First, he wanted to know if they knew one another from school, and if they were friends. Then he set up the ask.

"You can't tell anyone about this, and if you do, there will be consequences," he wrote. She asked what was wrong.

"Can u send me a pic of your boobs and

?"

Followed by: "Wanna see a pic of my

?

The 14-year-old recipient of the requests said no.

"Please," he wrote. "Pretty please."

She kept saying no.

"I'll do anything to get the pics of you naked."

She eventually pointed out that he was going out with another girl, which he acknowledged. The chat ended abruptly after that.

Bonny Ghosh, 34, the mother of the New York teen girl, discovered the conversation during a routine check of her daughter's social media and cellphone accounts. Ghosh had always made it clear to her daughter that she would periodically check in on her tech, and requests like this one have gotten surprisingly more common.

What used to be an uncomfortable conversation between parents and their children about real-life sexual activity must now include topics like digital propositions, sexting and pornography.

In fact, a child's earliest sexual encounters and exploration could very well occur online.

Ghosh first found an inappropriate request from a classmate when her daughter was in sixth grade. Since then, there have been a few instances where male users of Kik, a free texting app, have sent her daughter pictures of naked male anatomy, seeking reciprocity. Her daughter has not been enticed by any of the offers.

"There is so much emphasis that daughters should protect themselves, that they should never send a naked picture of themselves, and my daughter is savvy enough to know better," said Ghosh. But, she added, "I am wondering: Are other parents having the same conversation with their sons?" For instance, did the boy who sent her daughter the explicit request realize that she would save the messages? (In cases where she knows the student involved, Ghosh calls his parents to let them know.)

A recent viral blog post by a mother of four sparked discussion on this very issue. Kim Hall of Austin, Texas posted an open letter to her sons' female Facebook friends, warning them they will be blocked from the Hall family's sites if they post sultry selfies. Hall, who has three sons, titled the post "FYI (If You're a Teenage Girl)" and it has now been viewed more than 5 million times. Among others, it raised the question of whether parents hold their sons and daughters to the same standards when it comes to their behavior online.

For Ghosh, the messages indicated to her that it was time to have a no-holds-barred talk with her daughter about the new age of sexual activity.

She took a few weeks to think about what she wanted to say. She didn't want her daughter to feel judged or ashamed for being curious, which is normal during the teenage years. But she wanted her to understand the consequences that come with any sort of sexual activity, whether in real life or via a phone or computer.

"My fear is less about her getting pregnant. What I worry more about is her emotional well-being," she said. She brought up examples from the news and from within her daughter's social circle in which girls' reputations have been maligned by online images and rumors. They talked about the motivation behind such requests and how this kind of behavior has nothing to do with affection or love.

The boy who asked her daughter for naked pictures on Facebook turned out to provide a textbook example of the lesson Ghosh wanted to impart.

Five minutes after her daughter shot down his request, he made the exact same plea in a message to her best friend.