anyone else notice the disappearance of the section on mamaVISION asking for donations?
i think one of my very first arguments with mamaVISION was over this section. she started asking for donations and i was horrified- her readership is young and impressionable, and there’s no reason they should be paying for her blog. she claimed to have a lot of big ideas past just paying for the upkeep of her blog, claimed she was starting some kind of movement, and i just thought the whole thing was ludicrous.
recently, she made some changes to the style of her blog, and with those changes came the disappearance of the “mamasFOUNDATION” section. she didn’t say anything about removing the section, and i don’t know how many people apart from myself even noticed.
as soon as i noticed the disappearance of the section i considered posting a blog, a sort of victory dance, pretending i had personally killed the section and beaten mamaVISION in some way. but instead i did the mature thing and tried emailing Heather and asking what happened to the section. i gave her a long time to reply, but now that it’s been a couple weeks i think it’s safe to say i won’t get one. that’s not a criticism- i do believe she gets a ton of email and could easily have innocently missed mine or put off replying and forgotten.
however, i did want to pose the questions here on my blog: what happened to the foundation? what happened to the money? is mamaV gonna give in and pay for her own blog like a normal mortal, rather than expecting her readers to subsidize her?
i know from something she wrote on her forum that she’s in the process of changing jobs- perhaps with her new job will come a reduced focus on mamaVISION and all her overblown ideas about starting a “movement”? even though it’s not as dramatic as my having vanquished her, i’d still welcome it if that’s the case. hopefully the book deal is dead and the blog will stay just a blog. hell, if that’s the case then i might not even feel the need to keep my dissent up over there. if it’s just a blog then no real harm done, right?
update: for those of us hoping the foundation and book deal were dead, no such luck. the button is back, and the book is forthcoming. ah well, if mamaVISION gets huge i’ll get way more attention as her #1 critic so i should be all for it! oh, and as a moderator on a pro-ana forum, i should be even MORE all for it, because my forum will have all sorts of new people coming in if her hysteria gets more attention in the media. (oh, and thanks to my anonymous commenter for reminding me this post needed an update)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anorexia, eating disorders, mamavision, pro-ana, proana
why don’t we really think about this question. this claim of mamaV that she is trying to use “tough love” on proana.
i took a quick look on wikipedia for their definition of tough love. It’s a very short entry, but it says that tough love is when one individual treats another individual harshly in order to help them over the long term, as with parents of a drug addict that withold financial support until their son or daughter agrees to enter treatment.
How, exactly does that term apply to mamaVISION being on a crusade against pro-anorexia in general and everyone that participates in pro-ana in particular? I’ll give you a hint- it doesn’t. This tough love thing is complete and utter bullshit. A smokescreen. An excuse for mamaV to say and do things that are completely out of line, showing absolutely no compassion or understanding, and not caring who she hurts. “Tough Love!” she cries, as if the phrase alone excuses any offense. An offense, like (for instance) in her most recent post where she reposted a cry for help from a bulimic mother who couldn’t stop puking and went on to call her and any other mom like her selfish, vain, and unconcerned about her children.
Now, the concept of tough love isn’t proven- there’s no evidence tough love is an effective way of helping someone even if you’re using the original definition of tough love. However, I think we do have some evidence of how well the tough love approach works for mamaVISION because some of the moms from the livejournal group found mamaV’s post. As of yet, none of them have seen the light and repented after reading her blog. Quite the contrary- they have reacted with profanity and threats. One way of seeing this would be that they were bad people and bad moms all along- but that’s not what I think. I think when you attack people they get angry and defensive and become all the more extreme in their positions. That’s what I would expect to happen when most anas see mamaVISION and that’s what actually does happen as far as I can tell- proanas threaten and swear and accuse mamaV of jealousy. Not because they’re necessarily bad people, but because she’s attacked them and they counter attack in the only way they can think of.
and remember people: eds = bad brain health. thinking and intelligence are very much effected leading perfectly nice people to sound way more irrational and dumber than they would if they were eating normally. it even makes them start thinking things like “there’s nothing wrong with me, you’re just jealous” even if that is a completely ridiculous idea. i’m sure reading my blog you can’t imagine my being even smarter and more rational when my eating is healthy but trust me- it’s true. even for me.
ok, here’s the latest over at mamaVISION: she has a problem with anorexic moms.
what a surprise. as usual, she pretends a distinction between “proana” and anorexic, so i suppose i should have said she’s against proana moms. but that’s utter bullshit. read her latest (and no, i refuse to link to the woman, if you don’t read her don’t bother) and you can see for yourself- her real problem is with mom’s who have emotional issues.
according to mamaV moms with eating disorders are vain, selfish, and care nothing for the welfare of their children. they will horribly warp their children and are entirely to blame for their own problems and their childrens’ problems.
now, to be completely honest, moms with eds make me uncomfortable. some part of me cries out that they ought to be in recovery and doing whatever it takes to be well, for the sake of their children. but the TRUTH is that having children doesn’t magically fix people’s eating disorders! if you can get over the initial predjudice (and i have it too, believe me) you’ll see that women with eating disorders are going to marry and have children, and once they do they aren’t all going to be able to kick their eating disorders. they’ll probably try to recover, or they’ll convince themselves they can hide it from their kids.
alcoholics (the non-sober kind) make lousy parents too. as do people with mental illness, quite often. some people do a better job than others. but to just stand up and say “you’re a bad, selfish person for having children and being bulimic” is just so blind and insensitive. sure i think moms with eds should be in recovery, but if they aren’t i don’t think it’s because they don’t care about their children. it’s because they, like all of us with eds, are scared of recovery, stuck in their habits, and able to delude themselves that their problems aren’t hurting anyone but themselves.
well, this is a weird one. apparently, according to jk rowling (and she would know) the wizard Dumbledore from Harry Potter, is gay.
dude, this reminds me of how i feel when people suggest that ernie and bert on sesame are gay- why cheapen these beloved childhood characters by giving them a sperfluous sexual orientation? so, my first reaction was annoyance and anger because honestly, why on earth should we care if dumbledore is gay?
on reading the article it seems that the back story of dumbledore’s character is actually a little bit enriched by the explanation that he was in love with a certain dark wizard. which might help change things if i had more respect for jk rowling as an author and for her depth of characterization. but i don’t. the harry potter books are fine for kids, but they aren’t as good as the really great children’s books from my own childhood. the harry potter series is no chronicals of narnia or “little house” set. none of the potter books compares to alice in wonderland or wrinkle in time, either. so since jk isn’t really all that as a writer i don’t give her the respect i would if a really great writer came out with a bit of background that enriched a character and made him come more fully alive.
i’m gay, so i suppose i should be all for this. but to me childhood was a time before these things mattered, and i don’t see why there’s this need to give characters a sexual orientation. obviously, if two characters are married and have children then they must be straight. and having teen characters dating members of the opposite sex and having their first kiss or whatever is fine. having gay teen characters would be fine too, or gay adults, gay parents. but to go and tack on gayness to a character when it isn’t part of ANY of the action makes no sense to me. let dumbledore stay a monk, if it didn’t hurt the story in the original what can it possibly add now?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorders, forum moderation, pro-ana, proana
on my old pro ana forum our admin disappeared, so the majority of the regular members decided to create a new place with new admin and moderators, in order to escape the problems that went with having a completely unregulated site. i was asked to moderate by the girl who created the new forum, and i accepted. on the old site i guess i was a fairly influential member (i was asked to moderate, afterall) and on the new site i am probably the most influential person there right now. that’s not to say people don’t or can’t disagree with me, but i think it would be hard to name someone whose opinion carried more weight on the new site- especially since my opinion can be backed up with the moderator’s power to lock, delete, and move anything anyone posts at any time.
this leads to some uncomfortable questions in my own mind…
what are my responsibilities to the people who use the forum? is it just to do my best as a moderator to deal with conflicts and rule breaking, while sharing my personal opinions and my own struggles with my eating disorder how ever i choose to do so? or do i have a larger responsibility to the members who use my site?
there are girls on my forum who are quite young. since the group was made up of people from someone else’s forum i obviously didn’t deliberately do anything to bring in these 13 or 14 year olds, but would that comfort their parents if something were to happen to them? if i share something true about myself, for example if i share the fact that before yesterday i had thrown up every single thing i’d eaten for 3 weeks straight, how will reading this impact a 14 year old reader? as an ordinary member, it wasn’t hard to tell myself that i wasn’t responsible for any body else’s problems. the site would exist without me- and besides, i was often a voice of moderation, common sense, and health compared to some of the other members. but now that i’m a mod it isn’t the same equation. i have a choice about whether or how to make the forum grow. i’m torn between wanting it to be successful and not really believing that ANY pro ana site, even the milder type, are harmless.
since that 14 year old girl can also read how i’ve lost about 15 pounds in that 3 week period, will they pay attention to the fact that i’m a bit worried about how out of control things have gotten lately? or will that girl just see that puking = weightloss? i can’t help but think that if i was the mother of a child that was on this forum i’d be horrified to find a 29 year old woman who clearly knew better standing idly by while my child discussed her plans to, say, acheive a bmi of 13 or restrict her intake to 200 calories a day or less.
i don’t think it’s my responsibility to end the proana movement. i couldn’t if i wanted to- and there are sites these children could be visiting that are so much worse than mine. but it is probably my responsibility to watch what i say and think about who might be reading it and looking up to me as someone who is in a position of authority and has lost a very large amount of weight in a fairly short time. it is probably my responsibility to make it clear what my views are about anorexia and proana. i don’t think i’ve been living up to this responsibility and i’m not so sure i’m going to start now. but the responsibility is probably mine, nonetheless. if not me, who?
When I was on the phone with my brother, he said that if there’s a way for me to be healthy and be thin, he thinks it’s a good thing. In response, I said that I can’t be happy when I’m overweight, and if he ever sees me and I’m overweight he can know that inside I am miserable. He said “well, you know, that’s really a problem in itself, I think.”
I guess I just don’t really know anymore. I said it without really thinking I was saying anything too surprising or important- I actually thought it was absurd that he or anyone else wouldn’t realise that being fat = being unhappy. My dad seems to see things the same way my brother does- back before I’d started losing the weight he got very frutstrated with me for refusing to take care of my appearance, and he said stuff about how if I looked nicer I’d feel better and how he hated seeing me unhappy but I couldn’t just put everything on hold until I lost weight. To me it was, again, totally incomprehensible. How could I look nice while being fat? Wearing nice clothing would be like putting a pretty red bow on a nasty old garbage can or something. It wouldn’t change how I looked (fat and awful) or how I felt about myself (bad).
I don’t really know what I think, now. For me, being overweight means that I have been compulsively overeating for a long time to get that way. Overeating to me is just terrible- a bleak trap of buying and eating food and thinking of nothing else beyond what I will eat or how disgusting and fat I am. If that is the case, then I don’t see how I could ever be expected to feel good while that’s going on, right?
So, maybe in a way I am right to equate fatness with unhappiness because it is directly connected to binging and binging = unhappiness. On the other hand, when I began losing weight and restricting I didn’t feel much better- slightly better, because I had hopes of weight loss, but I was still absolutely obsessed with how fat I was and how badly I looked. During those first few weeks was actually when my dad and I had the argument about my appearance, actually.
So, I guess in so far as being overweight = binge eating for me, it’s understandable that I think of my being fat as automatically meaning I’m also miserably unhappy at all times. But below that level I have way too much of my self esteem tied to what my weight is, and it’s gotten a lot worse from how things were when I was in OA. When I was last in OA I was way happier and less concerned with how I looked, I was just starting to have trouble with binging, and my weight was the same it is now.
has anyone else noticed how many mainstream products and services seem to be most useful for abusive partners or stalkers? i just saw an add for ADT home security that mentioned their new service that installs cameras and allows you to remotely view your home while you’re away, which is what made me think of it.
isn’t that creepy? i mean, think about this service for a second- sure maybe it is a remote possibility that you could see a burglar in your home and call the police, or see signs that your house had been broken into. but practically speaking, wouldn’t it be more likely used by a parent that wants to see what their children are doing at all times or an abusive spouse that wants to watch his/her partner’s every move?
another example is the cell phone service that allows you to see exactly where someone is when they’re calling you. i sure wouldn’t sign up for that one unless i was under duress! it seems almost completely useless unless you’re trying to check up on someone or catch them in a lie or something. otherwise you could just call and ask where someone is, no need for a dot on a map to show you!
as a survivor of domestic violence i have to say i find this trend disturbing. our society is overly surveilled already (different issue) but to have products marketed at the individual stalker seems realllllly scary!
well, i was feeling absolutely certain that my original goal of 120 would just be the beginning and that i was going to throw the idea of returning to recovery out the window- until my brother called yesterday.
and, well, basically i didnt want my weight loss to be a surprise to him so i told him what was going on, along with the usual assurances that it was only temporary and i was going back to OA as soon as i reached my goal weight.
either on purpose or by accident he completely reminded me how hard it is on my family when i’m doing badly. they worry, and they talk behind my back and try and figure out whats going on and what they should do about it and then they worry some more. i hate putting them through all that just because being thin isn’t good enough for me and i have to be teeny-tiny.
but mostly, i’m not ready to stop. and since i am under 130 pounds now and my goal weight will be reached in a month or less, this is a problem. i’ve set a new goal weight already, 120 is history for sure. i’m not aiming for an unhealthy weight or anything (yet) but its much more about not wanting to stop than it is about wanting to look a certain way or weigh a certain amount, unfortunately.
on the other hand i have made myself three promises to fulfill when i reach my original goal weight of 120:
1) i will buy myself some new clothes, so i have clothes that fit. conveniently this should be just in time for thanksgiving!
2) i will make every effort to cut down and then stop purging. i have been absolutely out of control with b/ping for the first time in my life, and it’s too hard to stop before i reach my gw. but when i do reach gw i will do whatever it takes to end this cycle. the only reason i got into it was because i was having such good results weight-loss wise but once i reach 120 i am just going to have to accept a little short term weight gain followed by a slower rate of weight loss. no matter how hard, i will force myself to accept it.
3) i will go to an OA meeting. absolute minimum of once, but hopefully i can start going more regularly. not because i’m ready to do recovery, but because hopefully being there will affect me so that i’ll become ready.
so thats the news. i’ve lost 50 pounds and now i’m close to my goal i don’t want to stop. hmmm… i think i’ve heard this tune before, somewhere.
Filed under: Bush, Democrats, Republicans | Tags: Bush, Democrats, healthcare, politics, Republicans, SCHIP, veto
ok, i’m a few days late but i’m going to post about something that really ticked me off.
a few days ago our president, George W. Bush, made a speech in which he spoke about his veto of SCHIP funding. For anyone who doesn’t know, SCHIP was designed to provide insurance for children whose parents worked and were not so poor that the kids could qualify for medicaid, but were still too poor to afford health insurance for their children. The Democrats would like to expand SCHIP so that it covers as many ninsured children as possible- and maybe even cover their parents too, while they’re at it. The Republicans would prefer to stick to insuring children, and to make sure people who have access to or ability to afford other forms of health insurance don’t get on to SCHIP because it’s cheaper or better coverage. Now, I agree with one of those sides, but both seem reasonable to me and what happened was that the Democrats and the Republicans got together and enough of them agreed to pass a bill that was a compromise between the two sides.
So far, so good, right?
Only, for some reason George W. Bush decided to veto the bill. As far as I can tell, he wants to look like he’s controlling spending and he wants only the absolute poorest children to be covered by SCHIP, and if it means some children who are lower middle class whose parents can’t afford coverage will have to be uninsured, too bad. Anyway, obviously I’m ticked off by the whole veto thing, and I hope very much that congress will be able to override (call your congressman! get involved! look this stuff up, because your state may be important!). But what really stood out to me was this quote, from his speech:
btw this is the speech:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071003-3.html
and this is about the efforts to override his veto:
