The curve is more powerful than the sword.
Mae West

one spoonful at a time...

an excellent article in The New York Times Sunday magazine about a mother's yearlong battle with the anorexia that took hold of her 14-year old daughter, Kitty. she used an oftentimes controversial family-based treatment called the Maudsley approach:

This treatment was created by a team of therapists led by Christopher Dare and Ivan Eisler at the Maudsley Hospital in London, in the mid-1980s, as an alternative to hospitalization. In a hospital setting, nurses sit with anorexic patients at meals, encouraging and calming them; they create a culture in which patients have to eat. The Maudsley approach urges families to essentially take on the nurses' role. Parents become primary caretakers, working with a Maudsley therapist. Their job: Finding ways to insist that their children eat.

the Maudsley approach has less to do with unraveling the why anorexia affects a particular individual, and more on the how to get the individual to eat.

Maudsley practitioners say that focusing on the cause is secondary, ultimately, because once the physiological process of starvation kicks in, the disease takes on a life of its own, unfolding with predictable symptoms, intensity and long-term consequences. Anorexics become almost uniformly depressed, withdrawn, enraged, anxious, irritable or suicidal, and their thinking about food and eating is distorted, in part because the brain runs on glucose, and when it has been deprived over a long period of time, when it's starved, it goes haywire. It's important to get the patient's weight up, fast, because the less time spent in starvation, the better the outcome. Adult anorexics who have been chronically ill for years have much poorer prognoses than teenagers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26anorexia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

happy thanksgiving, y'all.

salted caramel + pecan cheesecake

what am i thankful for? too many things to list, but off the top of my noggin:

friends that make me laugh and let me cry.

family that sometimes makes me cry, but i choose to love (and laugh at) anyway.

down comforters.

dark chocolate M & Ms.

the corona of curls that surrounds my nephew's head.

the smell of toasted pecans and caramel on my fingertips.

THIN is in.

i love my friends. they know my heart (and neuroses) so well.

three of them have sent me info about the new HBO documentary THIN by photographer Lauren Greenfield. it premiered last night on HBO. unfortunately, i gave away my television about a year ago, so i didn't get to watch it, but i've already added the DVD to my amazon.com wish list (ahem). if you do have a television and HBO, check your listings, as i'm sure they'll be airing it a number of times in the near future. (probably not, however, the film to sit down and watch after Thanksgiving dinner with the fam or...maybe it is...with an entire pumpkin pie in one hand and a can of Redi Wip in the other).

if everything i've read about it is true, it promises to be an incredibly powerful piece that not only explores the struggles of individuals with eating disorders, but also sheds a harsh light on the dysfunctional, often enabling environments of the clinics that claim to cure them. it's a complicated disease, and i'm not sure putting a bunch of eating disordered girls/women together is the best way to hasten healing. isn't it sort of like sending the "bad kids" to the military academy when everyone sends their "bad kids" to the military academy? they often come back worse having adopted a whole new set of "skills" from the other inmates.

anyway...

the best part is, the film is just part of a larger project -

THIN is the centerpiece of a multi-faceted campaign designed to explore issues surrounding body image and eating disorders, including a companion book, traveling exhibition of Greenfield's work and a website. An educational resource guide for the documentary THIN has also been developed to accompany the film for use by individuals, educators and community groups nationwide. It will reach approximately two million high school students and 15,000 college professors directly with a downloadable guide available online. For more on the THIN campaign - the book, exhibit, educational guide and DVD - visit hbo.com or thindocumentary.com.

guilty, ridiculous confession:

i have to say, i did experience the tinklings of jealousy when i first read this. i mean, this is MY PASSION! this is MY MISSION. I'M supposed to save every single solitary young woman from lifetime of eating disorders and a screwy body image! now, HBO's gonna save everyone, and i have to find a new Life's Meaning. fuuuuuuck. this is so not fair. i mean, i already had my epitaph written and everything.

good lord. get over myself. unfortunately, there's plenty of work to be done. one film won't do it, and neither will one weeny little one-woman show.

check it out.

watch this film.

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com

this has been sent to me by at least 2 people. i'm guessing many of you have seen it, but for those of you that haven't...eye-opening and educational. i was even shocked by the neck-lengthening. you'll see what i mean. no wonder we (women and men) have so many issues. we're presented with a standard that does not even exist in nature.

soon, in addition to our own personal trainers and therapists and life coaches, we'll all have our own personal Photoshop touch-up artists.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. - Mark Twain

what does a flawless face indicate?

wanna see something funny?

me...trying to throw a football.


even funnier...me, up close, trying to throw a football.


funniest...my face when trying to throw a football.


ex-lax anyone?

just discovered the photos from last year's Laskey family reunion in ann arbor, michigan. the entire clan toured the U of M stadium, we all tossed the football about, and this was my pathetic attempt. my cartwheels were much better, but of course nobody took a picture of that extraordinary feat of acrobatics. hmph.

dysfunctional cocktails

went to see my friend do stand-up comedy last night at a gay bar called Therapy.

a cocktail on the drink menu:

THE ANOREXIC
Bacardi Silver, Sugar-Free Red Bull, a Splenda Rim

hurl. they really should change the name to THE BULIMIC.

it's not just for kiddies anymore.

this woman, Liz Hickok, has done an entire series of San Francisco landscapes in Jell-O.

i love her.

http://www.lizhickok.com/portfolio_jello.html

i wonder if anyone would be just as impressed with the "landscapes" in my fridge. hm. impressed probably isn't the word they would use.