by Shaker FK, a fat woman with disabilities who lives in the US somewhere between the coasts.
[Content Note: Fat hatred; disablism.]
The insurance I receive at my job has introduced a pedometer initiative. People can sign up to receive a pedometer to "get active" and the pedometer reports back to the main office how many steps are recorded per day. People who rack up a certain number of steps per day get money put into their account to use to defray medical costs. People who don't participate, don't get money. It's not presented as a tax on people who can't/don't walk, but it essentially is.
Additionally: The incentive money isn't based on a raw number of steps per year (which could at least defray costs for temporarily-disabled people, if not for permanently-disabled ones). There are "activity tiers" that you have to reach in order for the day to 'count' – the minimum tier is 7000 steps. If you only get 6999 steps before midnight, you don't get points for the day. High tiers get more points – the next tiers are 12000 and 20000. The whole system is setup to be difficult to attain.
You may be thinking: What about people who can't walk? That's a good question. We have to get a doctor to fill out a specific form from the insurance company establishing that we are disabled, and then we have to fill out an "activity form" every single day to certify that we're paying attention to the Proved Link between Activity and Our Health. If we do that, we are given the points for the minimum tier – the higher tiers are literally closed off to us once we register as disabled. Again, this isn't presented as a tax on disabled people or an undue burden – the whole thing is marketed like a favor to us.
And if you're temporarily disabled, like sick or with a broken foot, you are just screwed because a doctor won't sign a notice of disability over that. So in addition to your medical expenses for being sick/injured, you get to be taxed for not "being active" those days.
And you probably already know this, but pedometers are notoriously controversial as measurements of activity – the women at work who do REALLY high intensity yoga, way harder than a novice could do, get basically no "steps" on their pedometers because they're not shaking it enough. I don't know that you'd call that a tax on women, but it's effectively working out to precisely that at my workplace.
Oh, and I should mention that there's a clause in the registration process for this that if you "cheat" on your pedometer, they'll fire you. Even though you wouldn't think that insurance issues should be tied to employment at the workplace providing the insurance.
Anyway, I think I mentioned that wearing a pedometer wouldn't work for me because of my disability. I couldn't get my doctor to sign the lawyer-speak disabled notice (despite the fact that I have a handicap license for my car AND handicap parking at work), so I've had to rig up a motor to "bounce" the pedometer to the necessary steps per day to get the minimum tier. And even then, I have to remember to do this every single day when I get home from work, or I won't get the healthcare money that several of my co-workers get just for walking to their desk from their car. (Not that all of my co-workers park their cars 7000 steps from their cars. But some do.) I do have to confess that they look healthier than I do, though! Clearly I should have been more active in the womb and I wouldn't have been born disabled!
I don't know what more to say about this except that it stinks. And it makes me feel angry, that I have to choose between being a 'cheat,' or beg for recognition of a visually-obvious disability, or just pay more for my already-more-expensive healthcare. I don't like being confined to those choices.
Today in Accessing Healthcare While Fat
The Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by pawprints.
Recommended Reading:
Happy TENTH (!!!) Blogiversary to Mustang Bobby! Go have some cake!
Echidne is also celebrating her tenth blogiversary today! Congratulations all around!
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Chauncey: [Content Note: Violence; racism; eliminationism] The White Gaze Kills (Again): Renisha McBride Was Killed Because Black Americans Do Not Have the Luxury of Being Strangers in Need of Help
Flavia: Yay! Permission from a white cis dude not to identify as a feminist!
Digby: Factoid 'o the Week
BYP: U.S. Census: 1 in 6 Americans Live in Poverty
Aura: [CN: Racism; violence] It's Been 50 Years Since Malcolm X's "Message to the Grass Roots"
Resistance: [CN: Racism] Since 1910
Jenn: [CN: Racism; zombie imagery] Where Are All the Zombies of Colour?
Daily Dose of Cute
Ha ha nice try, sister. You are jealous of my opposable thumbs AND my middle finger.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[CN: There's a lady being chased in this video.]
Ray Parker, Jr.: "Ghostbusters"
This week's TMNS brought to you by songs on the first mix tape I ever made.
TV Corner: Scandal
[Content Note: Discussion of violence. Spoilers for the most recent episode of Scandal.]
I know this dress was in last week's episode, but OMG THAT DRESS.
THAT DRESS FOREVERRRRR. (Check out Trudy's amazing photoset here.)
Welcome to my first ever recap of Scandal, which is just one of my favorite shows on television right now! And I am so glad I'm finally caught up so I can do recaps and never have to worry about spoilers again! Yay!
When last we left our tremendously terrifying friends, Olivia had just found out that it was pretty likely that Fitz had been given orders to shoot down the airplane on which her mother had been a passenger. And ahh she wasn't too happy about it! On the list of reasons why Fitz is maybe not the best boyfriend material—which is already a very long list with many compelling entries!—PROBABLY KILLED MOM goes right to the top.
This episode opens with Olivia recalling saying goodbye to her mom for the last time, and it is very sad and very hard not to think of how different Liv's life might have been (72% fewer friends who are murderers) if her mom hadn't died. (Or at least is presumed to have died!) In flashbacks, Command (aka Olivia's dad) has a mustache, and he is still very handsome and still definitely the worst.
Liv heads for the White House, because she's got questions and she wants answers and I WANT THE TRUTH YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! People are always looking for answers and truths in D.C. True fact. Naturally, Team Fitz assumes that Liv has arrived to accept the job offer extended by Mellie to get Fitz's ass reelected, even though Fitz barely even wants to be president and would trade it all in a second to spend the rest of his days making mad love to Liv in a quaint New England cabin in between bouts of jam-making. But Liv is there to get answers about Remington. Answers Fitz won't give her because "I don't know what you're talking about" in a voice that means "I totally know what you're talking about but I am going to clench my jaw and stare at you with half-mast eyes and refuse to tell you."
How does Tony Goldwyn do it?! He makes me SO MAD but I love him. I get it, Liv. I get it.
Liv tells Fitz she's going to go work for Phoebe from Friends, who is also running for president but is a lady and a Democrat. (I love Lisa Kudrow with so many hearts!) She needs Team Pope's help, because she's polling behind Governor Reston (who, for real y'all, would never be a viable candidate even in this fucked-up garbage country after the shit that went down with his wife) in the Democratic primary and the liberal donors aren't investing in her.
Congresswoman Phoebe is SUPER PISSED that Liv is trying to make her into something she's not, because she apparently hasn't really wrapped her head around what it is, exactly, that Liv does. Which is make people do things they don't want to do in order to get and/or keep power. GET WITH THE POWER PROGRAM, PHEEBS! As an aside: One of the things I LOVE ABOUT THIS SHOW is how it's almost always women who are most resistant to Liv trying to make them into something they're not. The men are usually all, "Oh okay! Whatever I need to do to win! I have no ethical qualms about anything! Thank you very much for the excellent advice, Olivia Pope!"
Anyway! Liv sets up an interview for Rep. Phoebe with, of course, James Novak, who is Cyrus Beene's adorably stupid husband. And, just before the live broadcast, she shows the candidate (what is later revealed to be a fake) Reston advert, suggesting that Rep. Phoebe doesn't have what it takes to be president. AND OOH BOY IT MAKES HER SOOOO MAD. She immediately launches into a feminist dialectic when the interview begins, and IT IS AWESOME. No female candidate in the real world could ever get away with that shit, which is why I love television and why I love this show the end.
Meanwhile, Vice President Sarah Michele Palinbachmann is plotting behind Fitz's back with her own super annoying dude fixer (who isn't fit to fix Olivia Pope's breakfast BOOM!) to leave the ticket and launch her own independent Jesus bid. Naturally, Cyrus is one step ahead of her, and the megachurch megadouche who VP SMP thought was on her side was really playing her and reporting back to Cyrus. FOILED AGAIN, SALLY!
In other news: Something something Harrison is trying to keep some dude named Adnan Salif out of the country, while Cyrus is totally trying to get him in the country, which will be bad news for Harrison for reasons we don't know yet. Something something Quinn is learning to shoot at the firing range, and Charlie shows up to help her NO QUINN DO NOT ACCEPT HELP FROM CHARLIE!
I love Huck more than kittens, but I am kinda mad at him for opening a can of murder-worms in Quinn and then abandoning her when he realized it was a bad idea.
In other other news: Liv drunk-dials Command and has a truly heartbreaking phone call with him. She's scared to ask him questions, because she's afraid he'll kill her friends. She wonders if he'd prefer to talk about the weather, or how she can't get close to people because her mother died when she was 12 and her father is a terrifying monster. He responds by letting her ask one question and promises he won't murder anyone for her asking it. This fucking guy. Can you even IMAGINE if this guy was your dad?! GODDAMMIT.
In other other other news: Jake tries to get info for Olivia, but the lady from whom he was trying to get it nearly kills him. Luckily, she is stopped by a bullet in the brainpan care of a shadowy dude who is following Jake, on the president's orders. Jake goes to see Fitz, and Fitz gets all petulant and accuses Jake of trying to get into Liv's pants. "You don't own her; I do!" or whatever. Jake manages to not roll his eyes, and is still supercute.
At the end of the episode, Fitz shows up at Liv's apartment BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES and torments her with fantasies about going on the campaign trail together. He tells her that there's nothing she could do that he wouldn't forgive, and I imagine she considers saying, "WHAT IF I KILLED YOUR DAD?! OH WAIT NEVERMIIND I MET HIM AND I WOULD HAVE BEEN DOING YOU A FAVOR!" Instead, she tells him she wants answers and then tells him her mom was on that plane and she was only 12 and get the fuck out.
I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR.
Until our next incredible lovemaking session. SIR.
The Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons
[Content Note: Disablism; violence; guns.]
Today, the Obama administration will "complete a generation-long effort to require insurers to cover care for mental health and addiction just like physical illnesses when it issues long-awaited regulations defining parity in benefits and treatment."
Terrific! That is excellent news!
Less terrific is the justification the administration is offering for enacting this basic right for people with mental illness, because it's apparently not enough to straightforwardly say that parity in physical and mental health ends a contemptible bit of discrimination:
The rules, which will apply to almost all forms of insurance, will have far-reaching consequences for many Americans. In the White House, the regulations are also seen as critical to President Obama's program for curbing gun violence by addressing an issue on which there is bipartisan agreement: Making treatment more available to those with mental illness could reduce killings, including mass murders.Wow. Here is some long-awaited access to mental health care—and a heaping dose of demonization to go along with it!
In issuing the regulations, senior officials said, the administration will have acted on all 23 executive actions that the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced early this year to reduce gun crimes after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.
People with mental illness are much more likely to be victimized by violence than be perpetrators of violence. And yet here we are again, conflating people with mental illness with "mass murders."
Related Reading:
• In Pursuit of Doing Something Meaningful.
• An Observation About Mental Illness.
• Today in Terrible Ideas.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today.
Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of strongest storms ever recorded, hit the central Philippines this morning, killing at least three people and sending more than 100,000 people to seek shelter in evacuation centers.
President Obama has personally apologized to people who are losing their healthcare coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act and says it will be fixed.
[Content Note: Sexual assault] Reports of sexual assault in the US military have "spiked dramatically, rising an unprecedented 46 percent during the last fiscal year, the Pentagon said Thursday. ...It was not immediately clear whether the surge of complaints represented an increase in assaults, an increase in the percentage of people reporting them, or both, according to the Associated Press." Yesterday, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and "a team of bipartisan lawmakers kicked off a two-week push...to pass the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), an amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Act will move the decision of whether to prosecute a crime out of the chain of command and give it to independent military prosecutors."
[CN: Antisemitism] Respondents in a survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights of nearly 6,000 Jewish people in eight European Union member states report that "antisemitism is on the rise, with three-quarters of those polled reporting an increase over the last five years and growing fears over online abuse and hate speech."
[CN: Antisemitism; Christian supremacy] In related news: Former President George W. Bush is slated to give a keynote address next week at "the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, a group that trains people in the United States, Israel, and around the world to convince Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah. The organization's goal: to 'restore' Israel and the Jews and bring about about the second coming of Christ."
[CN: Gender essentialism] A thirteen-year-old Kansan boy was suspended from school for carrying a purse.
CBS says their Benghazi report was wrong. Whoops.
This is definitely my favorite headline of the day: "Urine-Powered Robot to Acquire Human-Like Heart."
Although this is a close second [CN: home invasion; threats of violence]: "Burglar Invades Old Lady's House Only to Find She's a Competitive Axe-Thrower."
Growing Support for Raising Minimum Wage to $10
This is truly a pathetic proposal:
The White House has thrown its weight behind a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to at least $10 an hour.First of all, I laugh mirthlessly in the general direction of anyone who can say with a straight face that a minimum wage of $10/hour is "a decent wage for a day's work" that will totes allow people to "support their families and make ends meet." A paltry and insulting sum that will still be wholly insufficient for meeting all basic needs in most parts of the country is more accurate. Never mind what it will be two years from now.
"The president has long supported raising the minimum wage so hard-working Americans can have a decent wage for a day's work to support their families and make ends meet," a White House official said.
President Obama, the official continued, supports the Harkin-Miller bill, also known as the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, from its current $7.25.
The legislation is sponsored in the Senate by Tom Harkin of Iowa and in the House by George Miller of California, both Democrats. It would raise the minimum wage — in three steps of 95 cents each, taking place over two years — to $10.10, and then index it to inflation. The legislation will probably be coupled with some tax sweeteners for small businesses, traditionally the loudest opponents of increases to the minimum wage.
...Under that provision, small businesses would be able to deduct the total cost of investments in equipment or expansions, up to a maximum of $500,000 in the first year.
And, you know, fine—give small businesses a tax break, but how about closing all the goddamn loopholes exploited by massive global corporations and using the billions of tax dollars we ought to be collecting from them, which they instead keep as profit that does not get passed on to their workers, and using that money to subsidize a real living wage that small businesses can't afford to pay their workers?
Capitalism is garbage in a whole lotta ways—but one of the worst is that it is built on the damnable lie that everyone earns what they deserve. And there are far too many high-earning people in the US who believe that they work harder behind a desk than every single person who works a behind a counter. Bullshit. BULLSHIT.
Question of the Day
What is currently your most frequently worn pair of basic runaround shoes? You know, the shoes that are so comfy or cute or practical or necessary or whatever that you just wear them all the time, except when (if applicable) you're obliged to wear other shoes for work or a formal occasion or whatever.
Mine are my purple slip-on Docs:
Doc Martens are not the cheapest shoes (and OH THE ANKLE SHREDDING THEY GIVE ME while I'm breaking in a new pair!), but their heels are terrific for accommodating my shitty back and they last forever. I have a pair of brown leather three-holes that I bought in college, in which I've walked countless miles, that are still wearable and I've only had to replace the laces. Twenty years ain't a bad return on investment.
Photo of the Day
![image of a protestor in a black hooded robe and silver skull mask holding a handwritten sign reading: 'Grim Reaper [hearts] Obamacare'](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes6/POTD_Obamacare-Tex_2726289k.jpg)
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 7 November 2013: A protester wears a costume and holds a sign across the street where President Barack Obama is visiting the Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas. President Obama is visiting the charity to thank local volunteers that are working to sign people up for the health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. [AP Photo/LM Otero]Sure.
Quote of the Day
"I feel like there is a finite amount of Scandal to be told. So I know what the end of Scandal will be, and I feel really good about that. And I can see where the end point is. And I don't think I'm going to change that. ...I know how long I think it will be. But we'll see."—Shonda Rhimes, creator and writer of Scandal, which is one of my favorite shows and I never want it to end but I am ON BOARD with wherever Rhimes takes us for however long!
As an aside, I've never written about Scandal, because I was so behind for SO LONG. But now I am all caught up! So, are there enough fellow Scandal-heads around here that would like recap threads? If so, I will totally do them!
And, either way, if you love Scandal, you should definitely be reading Trudy's stuff on the show, which is stellar.
Hooray! Boo.
[Content Note: Homophobia; transphobia.]
NBC News: "The Senate approved historic legislation Thursday to expand workplace protections for gay, lesbian and transgender Americans. But the bill faces a bleak future in the GOP-led House. The final vote was 64-32. Ten Republicans voted with all Democrats in favor of passage. ...Despite the bipartisan vote in the upper chamber, the legislation appears unlikely to get a vote in the House. Republican House Speaker John Boehner opposes the bill [and a] spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said there are no plans for the House to take up the legislation."
The spokesman indicated that Cantor did have firm plans to stick his fingers in his ears and say LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.
House Republicans are the fucking worst. THE FUCKING WORST.
My contempt for the privileged, insensitive, indecent, hateful, bigoted heapshits of that reprehensible caucus is so colossal that I fear it may throw the very earth out of its orbit if I spend too long contemplating the vast fuckery of denying basic protections to people rendered vulnerable by broken laws conceived by self-interested men.
Just kidding. I have been seething about it for SO MANY YEARS and the world still spins as ever.
While I'm on the Subject...
[Content Note: Pranks.]
Another thing about pranks is that, while there are certainly people who genuinely consider the individual preferences and needs and idiosyncrasies of the person or people whom they're pranking, a lot of pranksters calculate whether their target(s) will find pranks funny based on whether they personally would find them funny.
I don't know this because I'm a mind reader. I know this because I have heard eleventy-twelve people defend pranks with, "Well, I would have found it funny if someone did that to me!"
In fact, often people who try to get pranksters to empathize with the pranked-upon will ask, "How would you like it if someone did that to you?" and comes the inevitable indignant retort: "I would have loved it!" or "I wouldn't have minded!" or the always popular "I would have thought it was HILARIOUS!"
Which is maybe even true in 0-50% of cases.
But, as we all know, there are a lot of pranksters who say that sort of thing, but hate nothing more than to have a trick played on them.
And then there's this: A lot of people who say they wouldn't mind if someone played the same prank on them as they played on someone else are imagining exactly the same prank, rather than a prank of the same nature. By which I mean, if you're not, say, a guy who enters sweepstakes all the time with real and meaningful fantasies about winning, then being told you won as a prank might not have quite the same affect on you. But that's because it's not exploiting your individual and specific vulnerability. If someone played a prank that exploited your individual and specific vulnerability, you might really fucking hate it.
Anyway.
The point is: There's a lot of projection inherent to a lot of pranking. And imagining that what is safe and fun for you will definitely be safe and fun for someone else is never a good idea.
In conclusion: Fuck pranks.
Reproductive Rights Updates: Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, & National
Hello all! I'd like to start off apologizing for my absence lately. Offline life has been in upheaval for months and has only really just now settled down. So, if you were glad I was gone: too bad for you now! Muwahahaha!
In Iowa, a judge recently temporarily halted the Board of Medicine's ban on people being able to use teleconferencing for medication abortion services (which, as you can imagine, mostly serves rural citizens).
Polk County District Judge Karen Romano ordered a temporary stay on a rule passed by the Iowa Board of Medicine, which effectively would ban use of the first-in-the-nation video-conferencing system. The medical board said its rule was based on concern for patient safety. But Planned Parenthood supporters said the rule was a political attempt to limit rural women’s access to legal abortions.The Board of Health is insistent that they are so, so right (they are not so, so right) and the fight will continue in court. The Des Moines Register editorial board strongly believes in the judge's ruling and wrote a kickass editorial yesterday.
[...]
Romano wrote that medical board members “have not supplied the court with any evidence whatsoever that telemedicine abortions are unsafe or negatively impact patient health.”
The judge expressed sympathy for Planned Parenthood’s argument that the medical board’s rule singled out the private agency’s video system, which has similarities to other health care providers’ systems.
“With respect to the lack of an in-person meeting, it is peculiar, as petitioners point out, that the board would mandate this for abortion services and not any other telemedicine practices in Iowa,” Romano wrote. “There is simply no evidence the court can rely on to come to the conclusion that the telemedicine abortion procedures, which have been offered for five years without issue, do not ‘protect the health and safety of patients.’ ”
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In Missouri, a federal grand jury has indicted Jedediah Stout with regards to attempting to torch Planned Parenthood clinics early in October.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment Wednesday against Jedediah Stout in connection with arson attempts at the Planned Parenthood center in Joplin on Oct. 3 and 4.He is still being held without bond.
Stout, 29, of Joplin, had been charged with the failed attempts to torch the Planned Parenthood building at 701 S. Illinois Ave. in a complaint filed Oct. 21 in U.S. District Court in Springfield. The indictment handed up Wednesday replaces that initial complaint.
[...]
Court filings have indicated the existence of some physical evidence allegedly linking Stout to the Planned Parenthood attempts.
When police stopped him a few blocks away after the second attempt at the Planned Parenthood center, he reportedly had a lighter in his possession, and an officer reported that one of his hands smelled of fuel.
Investigators said they have tied Stout to the purchase of a backpack and other components of the device that was used in the first of the Planned Parenthood arson attempts through manufacturing tags, uniform price codes and surveillance footage at a Wal-Mart store in Joplin.
They also allegedly found his fingerprint on a bottle containing accelerants that failed to ignite in the Oct. 3 attempt at Planned Parenthood.
This is another reminder of what people who work--and volunteer--to provide reproductive health care must face when it comes to their workplace.
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Assvertising, Part Wev
Video Description: A young white man sprays with a garden hose a GIANT white baby sitting in his driveway. Cut to the man walking across a grocery store parking lot and dropping his bags to run across the lot and stop a cart from running into the giant baby sitting in a parking space. Cut to the man opening his garage door to say good morning to the giant baby. A woman's voice says in voiceover: "In the nation, we know how you feel about your car. So when coverage really counts—" Cut to the giant baby crying next to a spraying fire hydrant while the man looks on with angst. "—count on Nationwide Insurance." The baby then turns into a blue muscle car which has hit the hydrant and has a crumpled hood. "Because what's precious to you is precious to us. Just another way we put members first." Cut to the man at a car repair shop, where the car is now a giant baby again, playing with a tire. "Because we don't have shareholders. Join the nation." Cut to info for Nationwide Insurance.
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I hate this commercial. I don't have any insightful commentary about why I hate it, lol. I just HATE IT SO MUCH. And I bet some other people hate it, too, so let's talk about how much we hate it!
Or tell me why you love it! Or have no feelings about it at all!
Daily Dose of Cute
"Hello, Two-Legs. May I trouble you for a biscuit?"
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today!
Abbas Araqchi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, reports there has been "a significant step forward at nuclear talks in Geneva, saying Tehran's proposed plan for resolving the decade-long impasse over its atomic programme has been accepted."
The FDA has announced it will "require food makers to gradually phase out artificial trans fats [which] provide no known health benefit." There is, of course, a caloric benefit to cheap foods with artificial trans fats, which is a "health benefit" to someone who is experiencing food scarcity, but artificial trans fats are not the only and certainly not the best fat to provide even those calories: As one example, "McDonald's switched to zero-trans fat cooking oil in its iconic french fries in 2008."
There is a dangerous condom shortage in Kenya.
[Content Note: Fat hatred] Time makes a fat joke about Chris Christie, because of course it does. And, yes, I realize "elephant" is a play on the iconic GOP logo, but that doesn't make it not a fat joke too.
Democratic Illinois State Senator Don Harmon hopes to move up the effective date of marriage equality in Illinois, from June 1, 2014 to "an immediate effective date, which means as soon as this new bill is signed into law."
Netflix has picked up four Marvel live-action series and a mini-series, featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage, which will debut in 2015.
Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston think that Scarlett Johansson should get her own Black Widow movie. I agree!
Everything About This Article Is Perfect
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
And by "perfect," obviously I mean terrible. Even by the Daily Fail's rock-bottom garbage standards.
Single women should ditch Facebook because the 'perfect lives' of their friends are bad for their health, a relationship expert has warned.A few thoughts, from the cluttered pathways of my feminist brain:
Author Zoe Strimpel [who wrote "Man Diet: One Woman's Quest to End Bad Romance"] says the social media site bombards singletons with pictures of 'perfect' weddings and babies which causes envy and voyeurism.
She said: "What [Facebook] does is it enhances the sense that your life is lacking and specifically, when you are single, you focus in on all those pictures of perfect weddings, perfect babies, perfect couples."
1. There exist single women who want to be single. Like, forever.
2. There exist single women who don't want to be single forever, but in the meantime don't feel that their lives are "lacking."
3. There exist women, single and partnered, who don't ever want to be married.
4. There exist women, single and partnered, who don't ever want to have babies.
5. There exist women whose visceral reaction to images of their friends' happiness is joy, who have no instinct toward a self-destructive jealousy, because they don't measure their own worth in increments born of competition with other women.
6. There exist women who recognize that many people either consciously use social media to cultivate the illusion of a perfect life via carefully curated imagery in service to a specific narrative, as well as many people who simply censor anything that isn't happy, celebratory, upbeat news because publicly sharing bad or sad news makes them feel uncomfortably vulnerable, or because they are obliged to maintain family connections with people who exploit any cracks in their emotional edifice, or because they were entrained by family dysfunction to conceal negative emotions, or any one of a million other reasons that just makes it easier to not broadcast the hard stuff—and the women who recognize these realities aren't likely to then interpret the Appearance of a Perfect Life as evidence of an actual perfect life against which they measure their own lives and always come up wanting.
7. There exist women who recognize some people do have pretty awesome lives, any number of which might be better in some ways than one's own, which doesn't inherently demean one's own life—and might be a source of inspiration rather than cause for envy.
8. There exist women who have found that not judging the women in their lives, not auditing their choices and not valuing them based on their won achievements according to some arbitrary cultural standard of Things Women Should Do and Have, creates a safe space in which other women can share the good, the bad, and the ugly, because they don't feel obliged to maintain a pretense of perfection in order to be cared for and about. And so those women don't even have the problem of the Perfect Parade in the first place.
But I'm no relationship expert with a published book called Man Diet, so, hey, sure—ditch Facebook. That's terrific advice, I'm sure.
