Too Beautiful To Be Fat
A mentally ill girl who is "too beautiful to be in a psychiatric ward" goes on medication which stops her from hearing voices in her head. But this isn't a good thing, because the medication has MADE HER FAT! Here's a quote from the original article:
"But more disconcerting to the young psychiatrist was Nia’s apparent indifference to her predicament. While those around her worried about the beauty she had lost, she seemed unconcerned. Was she really as well as her family suggested? Had she really rejoined the image-conscious world of her peers?"
And here's a quote from I Blame the Patriarchy, which is where this story comes from:
"But then 'tragedy' strikes. The drug that works also makes her fat. This a horror the doctors find intolerable. Her beauty is 'destroyed.' So they take her off that drug because in a patriarchy a hot girl cannot be fat."
"But more disconcerting to the young psychiatrist was Nia’s apparent indifference to her predicament. While those around her worried about the beauty she had lost, she seemed unconcerned. Was she really as well as her family suggested? Had she really rejoined the image-conscious world of her peers?"
And here's a quote from I Blame the Patriarchy, which is where this story comes from:
"But then 'tragedy' strikes. The drug that works also makes her fat. This a horror the doctors find intolerable. Her beauty is 'destroyed.' So they take her off that drug because in a patriarchy a hot girl cannot be fat."
posted by mo pie at 10:14 AM
8 Comments:
Good god! 42 pounds in *three weeks*? Granted, the article does take a pretty crappy tone regarding the weight gain with the whole "she's too beautiful" thing, but putting on 42 pounds in 3 weeks is unquestionably a cause for concern. It would be absurd for her doctors to not be alarmed.
I actually do agree with you on that, Anon. And you would think that anyone, no matter how body positive they are, would be concerned if they gained so much so quickly.
But the tone of the article is what got under my skin as well. "So beautiful! So fat! So tragic!"
I was shocked when I did the math on her weight gain -- I don't even know how it would be possible to gain that much that quickly. Does the medication have the additional effect of messing with the metabolism?
Mo -- I agree that the tone of the article was extremely irritating. I am curious to know what she experienced later down the line...it seems like the article got cut off just when it could have been really interesting. Even if she didn't care much about her looks/weight before, I wondered if it would start to bother her after a while. Unfortunately, I'm sure people treated her differently after the weight gain (especially since everyone was so shocked that her beauty was "destroyed" by the fat).
All in all, it's a sad statement that a psychiatrist would even question the need to keep her on drugs...not because of the potential health concerns related to the weight gain, but because of her looks. The implication that being fat is just as bad as being mentally ill is disconcerting.
"...the junior psychiatrist was struck by the patient’s beauty: shoulder-length brown hair, slender in hipster jeans and a fitted T-shirt. Apart from her distracted eyes she didn’t look unwell. He felt himself giving her more time than usual, fascinated by the experiences she related..."
This is what I find is more troubling. That the level of care increased because he was "fascinated" by her. One has to question whether it was the "experiences" she related (all in her head) or how those experiences were coming from someone with such striking beauty.
There's a discussion going on about this over at Big Fat Blog. Some posters over there think that this is fictional and not an article at all... It's worth checking out that discussion for a different take on it.
The editors of Prospect have addressed the true/not true issue in their March Letters column.
You can read the BFB entry on it hereabouts.
you can gain tons of weight fast
on those meds. I went on them at
age 14 for pms and gained 25 pounds
in 2 weeks! no joke! Everyone expected me to just deal with it.
My hunger was insatiable. I downed
a dozen muffins from tim hortons
then went back an hour later for
more!!! I threw out the pills. I
had the hardest time losing the weight but my appetite went back down.
I'm a fat girl; no doubt about it. But even I'm alarmed at the very sharp weight gain. However, throwing out the meds is not the answer, finding something else that works is. You have to stick to psychiatry- believe me, I know it's not easy. I was being prescibed a different antidepressant every two weeks for close to a year only to find out that I'm actually bipolar. Over the time, I gained a lot of weight on meds, then, I lost a lot of weight on meds. Now I'm on Lithium and I'm ok. But if Lithium didn't work I'd try Zyprexa and Tregetrol and Depokote untill I found something that worked. Anything is better than mental illness.
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