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[pauraque_bk]

Stayed up waaaaay too late last night chatting with sioniann, xylodemon, shaychana, bloodybrilliant, and fivil. Hoped they wouldn't think I was kind of butting in since sioniann was the only one I actually knew. Can we have regular fandom chats? I love them so.

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Stuck it to the man by joining a GLBT-friendly guild. Take that! (Also somehow went up a rank this week, which surprised me, since I did like a third of the honor I gained last week. Too bad the necklace I've got is better than the Senior Sergeant reward.)

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Must go to library. Argh, natural light!

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ETA: Oh, oh, I wanted to link this article: Beautiful Madness. Nonsensical tripe about a woman who was cured of her schizophrenia, but -- GASP -- gained weight as a side-effect! OH NOES! "The treatment had reversed a Faustian pact in which Nia had been beautiful and mad, and replaced it with another - in which she was fat and sane. But was it really a blessing that Nia seemed to have no conception of what she had lost?"

This would be funny if it weren't sickening. bigfatblog did a post about it; the comments from 'joey' are me.


ETA2: Argh, the CD player I've had since the Precambrian Era just died. If fandom was planning to buy me an iPod, now would be a good time.

Comments

[pauraque]

I'm not familiar with the publication either, but the article is presented as factual.

If there had been any discussion of actual health problems caused by her weight gain, I might be more inclined to go easy on the writer. Has she got diabetes? High blood pressure? A heart condition? We don't know, because the article doesn't offer that information. What we are actually told is that "her features are being corrupted", that her beauty has been savaged, that she now "looks mentally ill". Her newfound sanity is called into question merely because she values her peace of mind over her appearance (not her bodily health, most definitely her appearance).

This is offensive to me. It puts down fat people by saying they are ugly and look crazy, and it puts down people who suffer from mental illness by saying that they, too, are ugly, and that their physical appearance to others (not to Nia herself, mind!) is more important than their own sanity and happiness. You don't even have to read between the lines to get this, it's right there on the page.

I don't think this is a matter of pounds or metabolic processes. It is the attitude the writer takes that is offensive.

[florahart]

Oh, yeah, the writer is an idiot. I just got hung up on the rapid weight gain and how THAT was really an INTERESTING story, and probably the actual story the doctors in question cared about, if it was about the problems inherent in trying to treat this person when the treatment did other Bad Stuff. As I say, obviously the author wasn't concerned about this at all.

Weird.