In the corner of the tiny waiting room is a huge machine to weigh yourself on. The TV is running non-stop promotional ads for weight loss products. There is a wall of brochures for people to take. I pick up the one which promises that exercise is a “silver bullet” for fatness. Silver bullets are more expensive versions of regular bullets. They are used not because they are cheaper (they’re not) or more effective against regular targets (they’re not), but because the magical silver is the only thing that can harm werewolves and other fantastical hard-to-kill monsters.
My fat body is a fantastical hard-to-kill monster which requires a magical solution to kill. My employer wants to kill my fat body with a silver bullet. I don’t even cry in the car. I just feel numb.
Need I say more?
Clarissa's Blog 
I can see why her mental health is ailing though.. doctors can be very cruel.
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She thinks her employer wants to kill her because she saw the expression “a silver bullet” in a brochure. Which the employer has probably not even read and definitely did not aim at her personally.
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Maybe she has unconscious ideations that she is a werewolf or vampyre?
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The last two sentences in the article show who is the real vampire and who made her this sick.
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I don’t think she literally believes that.
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Irrespective of what she believes, a stable person wouldn’t write such a paragraph. Does it seem entirely normal to you?
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oh no, not normal.
I just know that health problems, cold doctors, and a castrating mother can cause these problems, or make what mental health problems existed before much, much worse.
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“I just know that health problems, cold doctors, and a castrating mother can cause these problems, or make what mental health problems existed before much, much worse.”
– Oh, I agree completely.
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That’s a prime example of cognitive distortions. She’s not wrong that the doctors were being dismissive to her because of her weight. She’s not wrong that the nurse was more concerned with the weight loss spiel than taking the throat culture. It’s just not helpful as a mental habit to use the brochure as some part of some additional mental cudgel against herself in metaphor land.
Personally, I find it much harder to avoid cognitive distortions when I’m ill and in a lot of physical pain. And she’s ill and in a lot of pain in 6 of the 7 episodes in her post.
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I’m sure the need to seek out misery is a contributing factor to all this sickness. She sounds like a fairly young person, why is she suffering of all these endless ailments? Mens sana, as they say.
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I wonder, if she is unhealthy why doenst she just get healthy? Fat in of itself doesn’t mean your unhealthy. Lots of shit going on in that brain.
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Judging by the length and poutiness of the post, she seems to believe that her reactions are not only completely normal but even admirable.
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You’ve read her stuff for a while, are you surprised?
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No, that’s the first time I read her. This isn’t the site’s owner, it seems to be a guest post. But yes, this is a general theme of the blog.
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My Momma had the best advice when I was a kid. Son, nobody can walk on you unless you lie down. I think the author of that article is prone. 😉
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“My Momma had the best advice when I was a kid. Son, nobody can walk on you unless you lie down. ”
– Great advice.
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My mother’s verson that (originally about ghosts but later amended to other people’s opinions).
“They can’t hurt you, but if you’re too afraid of them you can hurt yourself.”
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I looked at the post and I would feel horrible too in her place, paying lots of money to bad doctors, who can’t see illnesses because of fat.
// I’m sure the need to seek out misery is a contributing factor to all this sickness. She sounds like a fairly young person, why is she suffering of all these endless ailments?
That’s where we disagree. Sometimes younger people may be ill too, not because of doing something. Her entire family got disease X, and were treated, while she got “it’s your weight, you’re too young.”
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Please, can you answer about Kotlety recipe (the parts of birds used and the proportions of cous cous to meat) ? We want to tried the recipe too and do it right.
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I use white meat, so it’s breasts. The proportion of cous cous can vary. When you mix it with the meat, it should not be overpoweringly visible. It should be between 5-8% of the whole mix, I’d say.
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Reading questions about cous cous in this context is really, really weird.
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This is a person who believes that doctors exist to dispense huge amounts of drugs and forget about her one she is drugged to the gills. She is incredibly lucky in constantly meeting doctors who actually try to figure out the causes of such completely abnormal state of health (unless she is 70, of course). I only wish I were so lucky to meet this type of doctors. For now, all I get is doctors who are probably so hassled by drug-lovers like her that they find it easier just to stick a scrip in your hands and not to analyze what is actually going on.
It doesn’t even occur to the little fool that these are people who have a number of degrees, who went to school for a decade, who have expert knowledge. She believes, in her arrant idiocy, that what she learned from stupid websites qualifies her to supervise and correct their very highly qualified work. I meet such people in my work, too. Like this student who was upset last week that I kept speaking in Spanish.
This story is the perfect example of what the US culture has become: the contempt for knowledge and science, the compulsion to find a magic pill that will remove any discomfort, the belief that everything about a person “just happens” and that an individual has no power over her way of being, etc.
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At least some of the medical professionals she dealt with seemed to do the exact opposite of what you’re saying – use her weight as an excuse not to dig deeper in what’s causing her health troubles (for example, the diverticulitis episode, where her cousins, which I assume are of similar age, get diagnosed easily while she doesn’t).
On the weight thing, though, it’s truly fascinating what profound influence a mother’s attitude towards her weight/appearance/eating habits can have on the daughter. I gained a lot of weight when I was 14, and lost a lot of it when I turned 18-19, which is precisely the ages at which my mom gained and lost a lot of weight. Before anyone cries genetics, I’ll have to mention that my mom was on some TB treatment that caused her to gain a lot of weight during the years she was on that medicine and I was not.
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From what I know – vaguely, I confess – diverticulitis is caused by what one eats and is treated with a diet. I’m sure that Americans have managed to invent a drug for it. I mean, they invented a drug to treat shyness, so why not this? But elsewhere it is treated with lifestyle change, diet change, and definitely weight loss.
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It’s just someone writing something on a blog. Why does this get you so worked up?
BTW: Some of us mere Americans are getting a wee bit tired of hearing people who showed up here yesterday, or even who have never lived in this country, expounding on the many deficiencies of our country and people. How rude. Mostly we put up with your misunderstandings and rants because we feel sorry for you, but it’s tiresome and does not solve any problems.
With due respect for what you have been through, Clarissa.
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Gosh, Hattie, I just wrote something on my blog. Why does it get you so worked up? 🙂 🙂
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Yep, diet modifications is how you fix diverticulitis. However, the ER personnel insisted she was too young to have diverticulitis and should just lose weight, which probably means they weren’t explaining to her what foods she needed to avoid, what lifestyle modifications she needed to do and so on. Also, being in that amount of pain generally means infected diverticulitis, which should also be treated with antibiotics to get rid of the infection. It’s truly a shame that she didn’t get both the antibiotics needed to treat the acute problem and the diet and lifestyle advice needed to treat the underlying causes.
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I’m again reminded of musteryou’s idea that a lot of current ‘feminism’ is simply traditional, femininity. Reading as much as I could of the original post (admittedly not very much) I kept thinking about mournful old bromides about a woman’s lot in life being suffering and the importance of reputation.
Absent a tyrannical husband and a flock of demanding children a body has to find suffering where they can….
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Current feminism is really very boring indeed. Identity politics is psychological corruption. I just pointed out to some guy that when Richard Dawkins, in a mode of rightwing identity politics, makes fun of Luce Irigaray, by pointing out (as this black Zimbabwean presumes), her alleged lack of intellectual acumen, this is not different from when the white minority leader, Ian Smith, counteracted the protests of blacks storming parliament by singing, bobbejaan Klim die Berg. Some say he meant nothing political by it, but the Afrikaans words mean “baboon climbs the mountain”. It could be a funny joke under the circumstances, or it might not be, but many ignorant male people are now reinforced in their views that women cannot be philosophers. And, of course, Smith suggested that blacks would be ready to rule in about 1000 years.
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I wonder why someone downvoted this?? A Yankee who doesn’t understand irony? Or someone’s feeling are hurt by the suggestion that deliberate bias exists? Yankee go home.
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“Current feminism is really very boring indeed”
If you don’t have a dog in the fight, then it’s actually frequently hilarious (the main reason I look at most mainstream* feminist sites is for schadenfreude and giggles (sort of the same reason people watch ‘reality’ tv).
I have really low tastes a lot of the time.
*whatever else our hostess is, she’s not mainstream….
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How can anyone see a benefit in taking a side when the writers just want to split a few hairs? I mean the concerns are so minor.
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Very minor! One would think casserole-makers are massively persecuted after this article, which, of course, is absolutely ridiculous.
All of these writings could be gathered into one collection titled “Life traumatizes me.” It’s like these folks never had any real problems to dramatize trivial daily events in this way.
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There is a real possibility that the lack of having had adventures does produce a traumatic sense of lack — almost a feeling that one lacks personhood. Modernity may produce these sorts of overregulated people who have to dig deep to find anything to say.
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“Reading as much as I could of the original post (admittedly not very much) I kept thinking about mournful old bromides about a woman’s lot in life being suffering and the importance of reputation.”
– Oh yes. I actually struggled through the entire thing (with breaks) because it exercised a strange fascination over me. This way of being is the exact opposite of mine and I find it very bizarre.
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It’s excrutiatingly boring.
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That was quick!
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From comments on Ian’s blog:
The background checks precluding felons from ever having the ability to support themselves brings to mind the counter intuitive, perverse new habit of credit checking potential employees. They want and need a job to pay down debts, but the debt keeps them unemployable. I am always at a loss as to how there isn’t a groundswell of support to end these practices
http://www.ianwelsh.net/grace-and-the-cycle-of-abuse/#comments
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The credit check is done solely to see if the candidate is a real person and if s/he engaged in criminal practices. If employers discriminated against people in debt, nobody would be employed at all in North America.
To the contrary, not having any debt makes it harder to get a job. I have no idea why some people are pretending that this is not a well-known fact.
As for felons, would you personally hire a murderer? A rapist? A burglar? A drug peddler? I would not even consider it in any circumstances whatsoever. So I don’t expect anybody else to do it.
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Here’s something I don’t get:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-turner/cool-girls-die-alone_b_4400215.html
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It’s yet another example of why mental health is important. The piece is obviously written by a deranged person. She’d make a casserole if she weren’t afraid? Yes, and her employer wants to kill her with a silver bullet.
Why are people not ashamed of being such idiots? Why do they publish these endless screeds instead of reading something, thinking for a while, gosh, even making a casserole?
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She needs to be a mummy, entombed in Egypt, but political correctness wanted her to deny her reality. It made her very unhappy with herself, despite promising coolness.
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The worst part is that this article is culled out of a book. Now all we will hear for months will be inane efforts to turn this garbage book into trending news. Are women concealing a desire to make casseroles? Are nasty feminists preventing women from fulfilling their purpose in life which is to make casseroles and buy floral aprons? Is it true that women who make $600,000 per year all hate their jobs? Are women with a functioning brain destined to die alone?
Every month there is some garbage piece like that getting published and lazy journalists who have no other skill but to chatter idiotically about nothing turn it into a big news story.
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I sense a distinct separation developing between those who can actually think and those who can’t do so at all, with a huge gap inbetween. It’s too easy nowadays to find sugar treats for the mind and to enjoy superficial pleasures of complete certainty. I, for one, can no longer be bothered correcting, assisting or encouraging people to think more deeply, if they are inclined to think in this pattern. They can take the easy path and whatever that brings for them. To go deeper takes considerable pain and heartache, and these are all too underestimated by the glib morons who just like what they like. So let them hear the same thing over and over about how women just want to be mummies, that life as they know it can never be altered — whatever they like. Even if they want to believe I am the source of their problems, let them believe that too. There is no obligation on my part to play the role of educator, which is what they demand I try to do whilst maintaining their role as the wilfully ignorant. But really, let them be ignorant. The lie that the majority want to preach is that we are all in this together, but that is not nearly so much so as they would like me to believe. They can proclaim that the average Joe has every right to correct a female philosopher for her seeming intellectual paucity in their eyes, and I will clap them on the back. “Well done! You have made a pronouncement!”
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Oh, there’s nothing to get. It’s just another shaming article with the requisite buzzwords aimed at quasi-hipsters with money who secretly watch TLC. You could do a find-and-replace with different nouns and different writers in five years and the article would be the same.
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“You could do a find-and-replace with different nouns and different writers in five years and the article would be the same.”
– Oh, I hope something changes in 5 years! But I suspect you are right: pieces like this are here to stay.
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