Fibroadenomas — seven of them. “Basically, you have a little family in there.” I’d rather hoped I’d develop my someday-family in my uterus, not in my left breast. I suppose I should start picking out names.

someday, I will own a hedgehog.

Outsourced to the great Dr. Szwarc. If you’d like a more knowledgeable take on one of many, many alternative treatments out there that claim to cure unending lists of ailments, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at just this one article from Junk Food Science, which regularly examines questionable science reporting and conventional wisdom in its inimitable manner.

All I can do is share this, because it made me smile.

When my daughter was born premature and I looked at her with a feeding tube and nasal canula in a plexiglass box, I trained myself not to say she was little or pretty. I trained myself to say she was my big strong girl, because I thought that for her to make it in the world, she would need me to see her that way.

It was in the context of raising feminist daughters, but it works just as beautifully in the context of eliminating ableist privilege.

Thank you, Thomas.

(Small bit of irony: Firefox’s spell check does not recognize “ableist” and instead recommends “ablest.”)

Yes:

… an alleged lack of patriotism will be the main line of argument against Barack Obama.

And the thing about this argument is that’s not the end of it.

There’s been a lot of talk recently in the feminist blogosphere of dogwhistles. And I would argue that this line of attack is exactly one. The “unpatriotic” whine is usually wrapped up in arguments about Obama being a secret Muslim, a black nationalist, Communist, etc. By extracting out the most innocuous (of the set, not on an absolute scale) and repeating it, the upper punditry and co. can signify to the bottomfeeders that they’re on their side, without explicitly saying so, and while maintaining plausible deniability against accusations of racism.

Two cents.

What is it? Oh, it’s just the foot of Schwarzenegger & co. on our backs.

Dammit, this will never cease to make me angry. For the most part, the disabled already live in poverty, and they have no way of changing that. You usually can’t magically become un-disabled. And disability is, by definition, the inability to just “work harder” to make ends meet. It’s the inability to work enough to live.

And here we go cutting their benefits left and right (including, apparently, again, COLA for the blind and disabled). With an inflation rate of 4.3%. So that we can ease the burden on those poor yacht consumers.

Deep breaths.

I really can’t do much but sigh.

A front-page article on Jan. 14 reported on an ad campaign for the first medicine approved for fibromyalgia, a chronic disorder characterized by widespread pain and fatigue, “whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.”

“I am outraged that a reputable publication such as yours would publish such a nonsensical article about fibromyalgia,” wrote Joanne Nuckton of Tucson, who was angry that anyone would doubt her constant pain, inability to concentrate and “profound” exhaustion. “I request that you publish an article which states a different point of view,” she said.

The article by Alex Berenson, a business reporter who covers the drug industry, did state the view of someone with fibromyalgia and doctors who believe the condition is real and even undertreated. In fact, it gave slightly more space to them than to the skeptics, including the physician who first wrote the guidelines for how to diagnose fibromyalgia in 1990 but no longer believes it is a disease.

The article’s opening lines — “Fibromyalgia is a real disease. Or so says Pfizer … ” — veered toward sarcasm and may have intensified the negative reaction. Berenson explained that with the article headed for the front page, “we wanted something snappy” at the top.

But even had the first paragraph dropped the attitude and adopted the straightforward, down-the-middle tone of the rest of the article, it might not have satisfied those with fibromyalgia symptoms, because any suggestion of a controversy, to them, is a suggestion that their suffering is all in their heads.

“There clearly is something very different and very wrong with these patients, but the statement that we know what is happening or we know how to treat it is just vastly overrated,” said Michael Lockshin, a New York rheumatologist and editor in chief of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Lockshin said “there is fairly hard science coming up” about how the brain processes pain signals that may offer better understanding. But, he said, “the science is really inchoate right now.”

That seems like the perfect time for a newspaper to give a balanced presentation of what divided experts believe. I think The Times did. Lockshin put on his editor’s hat and said he thought so too.

If you actually looked over the research (and you’ll find more than enough to occupy your time here and here), rather than just picking out two opposing “experts” to interview, you’d find ample evidence that fibromyalgia is an actual physiological disorder, and little to support the idea that fibromyalgia is fully psychosomatic (beyond the extent to which any symptom we feel can be amplified by mental stresses) or “overexaggerated.”

And there’s more to giving fair consideration to an idea than splitting the paragraphs between pro and con: the attitude of the overall reporting makes a great deal of difference. When you start out with a frame of “the drug company just made this disorder up to pad their profit margin!” you aren’t going to be able to manage a respectful article, no matter what you say after that. Keep in mind that we’ve had a name for the disorder for decades now, and the major drug companies didn’t start paying attention to us until the beginning of this decade.

And thanks for that off-hand slap on the cheek, there: “It doesn’t matter what we say; those hypochondriacs would just bitch at us anyhow.” Actually, you’ll find that if you drop the contrarian-for-the-status-quo attitude, and look at things with an open mind and a curious heart, you’d get far better reactions. I suggest looking to the Los Angeles Times for an example of quality reporting on the subject. Your attempt, on the other hand, fell short. You might consider why. I don’t think it’s on the reader’s end.

my humble new home may make an actual difference in who wins the Democratic nomination.

I’ve dreamed for a while now of casting my vote in the primaries, and in fact finally crossed to the dark side—registered Democratic when I moved here—specifically to enable such an action. But I had figured the whole time that my vote wouldn’t make much of a difference, anyhow (especially being a tentative Edwards supporter and all).

So, um…. woobama?

School Popularity Affects Girls Weight, NY Times

I’ll let the more experienced cover the article as a whole. But I just wanted to pick out this bit:

And as part of other anti-obesity measures, school officials should consider implementing programs to help girls build social skills, they added.

…….

*faint*

Ugh. There’s so much in this one little quote, I just can’t think of how to address it all.

There’s the fact that apparently a girl’s position on the social ladder only begins to matter to adults the moment she starts showing a little chub. No mention of the social ostracization, including the emotional harm—all the way up to and including depression and suicide—and the physical harm involved (ask my friend Mike what he faced as an unpopular child in school).

There’s the fact that, for goodness’ sake, these are children! My husband was a very chubby child, but he grew up to be 5′9, 120lbs, and plateaued at 140 when he was weightlifting. I was a chubby little girl, and grew up to be 5′8″ and 125lbs at the highest before I got on my current medication.

There’s the fact that you can’t just swoop in and “teach” a girl “social skills.” The hierarchy that exists in elementary, middle and even high school is far, far more complicated than adults give them credit for. Girls who are perfectly “skilled” socially are still ostracized. Even if a girl is a late bloomer in the social skills department, her position on the social ladder may be cemented enough that it doesn’t help her any. And popularity can be based on absolutely random shit sometimes that has not a thing to do with whether you have social skills.

There’s the fact that maybe the girl is perfectly happy with the friends she has, and doesn’t particularly want to be friends with the girls she perceives as “popular.” I knew I wasn’t high on the popularity list in high school (and I was beyond skinny, by the way), but I had no delusions that I would lead any better a life if I was. I had amazing friends and I wouldn’t have traded them for all the prep cred in the world.

And finally, to state the fucking obvious, there’s the fact that maybe, just maybe, these children are unpopular BECAUSE they are fat.

*head.* *desk.*

Update: Just wanted to add a slightly different perspective: Could it be that, besides popular girls being selected in part for their body type, they also feel such intense pressure to remain thin that they’ll do anything to keep that status? As usual, it’s a double-edged sword here.

New toy: the laundry basket!

“O HAI” …

… “can I come play?”