It’s shocking to me that so many women in their thirties and forties lived through ED and cutting in their youth but will not countenance the possibility that social contagion and mental health comorbidities could have anything to do with the gender issues in girls today.
Right, I wonder this often. I'm in this age group and cutting was *the* thing. Yet, there were zero kids saying they were trans. Don't they think it's strange that so many kids are now saying they identify that way...?
I have a lovely set of neighbours, kind people. They have a 16 year old daughter who is desperately thin, wears the biggest and baggiest clothes possible, tries to disappear into the background whenever you even say hi to her, and in the last year started identifying as non binary. Her parents very pointedly call her "they" whenever they can (which makes conversations extremely confusing if I'm watching the house for parties (as if she would!) when they're away). I feel so sorry for her as she just seems so unhappy.
I know that's only one anecdote but my couple of teacher friends have lots of similar stories.
Same same same as my small world. It drives me mad to be able to say nothing. But it is so obvious. They moms will see the picky food, eating, and recognize other signs but are perplexed it seems or enthusiastic about the gender or NB stuff.
Full agreement. I forced myself to accept gender nonsense for years, because I thought that's what I had to do to be a good person. Being gay, I felt doubly obligated to go along; after all, did I want to be a traitor to the community?
I now realize that I have no moral duty to accept untruths, but it was a long road getting there.
I deal with school age kids who are too unwell to attend school. It mostly used to be physical but increasingly is mental health. Every single girl in the past year on my caseload has been autistic with huge levels of anxiety and social phobia and all but one identified as a boy. Ages 12 to 14. It's really alarming. Many also self harm or have disordered eating. But they're just being their authentic selves, right.
The last time I brought up mental health comorbidities as a possible caution to someone on the left IRL, they were like "of course and all those mental health issues are caused by their GD and that is why they need help right away!". There seemed zero willingness to consider that perhaps the causation might be going the other way.
My relative was clinically depressed and also an alcoholic. Therapists told him he had to control his alcoholism before they treated his depression as alcoholism can cause depression. Why don’t activist even consider that treatment of other mental health issues should come before affirming care?
Alcoholism can cause depression, but also people drink to cope with mental health problems. If someone is drinking as a coping mechanism and you take that away without treating the other thing, they will either relapse or find another (often worse) coping mechanism. I think it's hard to determine in each case which problem came first or which one to treat first. And I think the same is true with gender dysphoria.
We see this all the time in the addiction world. People come in with a ton of psychiatric diagnoses but it turns out to be just (and this is a diagnosis in the DSM) "Substance-induced mood disorder". Or "substance-induced psychosis". Take away the substance and the problem goes away. But we also see the other side, where someone comes in with no history of mental health treatment at all and they break down crying immediately because of something they've been holding in for years.
Because activists want as many people to transition as possible. Because they aren't activists for human health and happiness, they're activists for transitioning.
As a sufferer of both those afflictions, those therapists sound horrible and cruel. It's not either or.
Certainly one affliction may limit the extent to which treatment for the other can be successful but we don't start giving diabetics medicine only when they get their diet under control.
There are a lot of people in eating disorder subreddits who also identify as trans/NB. Many of them claim that it is the root of their ED. It very well could just be their stress manifesting in two particularly fashionable ways.
I spent a year at a coed “therapeutic boarding school” in north GA—which ended up being shut down and having its assets seized and various other things because it turns out these people were not on the level; they were fleecing families and mistreating their children, but that’s a story for another day! Lol—and there were a lot of girls (maybe 30% of the girls there, or maybe even slightly more than that) who were there for EDs, cutting, or both. It was my first and still only firsthand, up-close experience of knowing people living through those things. And my God was it an awful, soul-crushing thing to witness. Those were some of the most deluded and broken people I’ve ever seen, and I have *seen some shit*. Most of them were very pretty, very sweet and good-natured, but they were convinced they were fat cows who wouldn’t/couldn’t ever be loved by anyone; they wouldn’t eat even when they were sat down with a plate of plain pasta or chicken soup or whatever and told not to leave the dining hall until they’d at least eaten SOME of it—and they still wouldn’t eat it (or they’d eat it and then immediately go throw it up).
Most—though sadly not all—of the women I knew back then are pretty ok now as far as I can tell, but man I bet they’ve got some fucking scars deep inside. Because frankly, *I* was left scarred just from witnessing it up-close for a whole year like that—some of these girls were friends of mine, after all, so yeah it was impossible not to get psychologically invested in them. I’m not trying to defend their denial about social contagion etc., but maybe I *am* trying to explain it: I think the wounds from that stuff are still pretty raw for some of the women I know, so I’d imagine coming out and “judging” other women for their modern social contagion stuff would cut awfully close to the bone; it’d be like judging their younger selves by proxy, almost, which I would imagine might bring those feelings back. And based on what I saw, one would NOT want those feelings coming back even for a millisecond.
I dunno, that’s my somewhat informed armchair diagnosis of that situation. But I’m a guy, so there’s only so much I can know about female psychology (which is to say: I can “know” what women are willing to tell me about their psychology). Anyway, I’m jabbering on too long now, but yeah, that’s my best guess on that. Curious if other people think I’m full of hot air on that.
This is why the gaslighting around the affirmation model was so important. The people involved in pushing youth gender medicine to the forefront understood that making trans an identity tied to gays and lesbians as well as making transition a necessary treatment to prevent suicide would be crucial.
Otherwise, many people would have made the obvious connections right off the bat.
I think it’s down to the changing social conditioning women and girls are put under. In the 90’s and 00’s eating disorders and cutting were framed as ‘bad’ because they were visibly unbeautiful in a space where the worst thing you could be was unbeautiful. They made you look ill, they made people sad and girls were never ever supposed to do that. Trans ideology is framed as the opposite- to mutilate yourself now means you’re Happy and Joyful, you’ve gone from being a problematic and depressed teen girl to a literal female eunuch. It’s been framed as a sure fire way to ‘cure’ yourself. All your scars are hidden, just smile in public and don’t break the spell
This is a bit of a side note but there was a dude in the mid to late 1990s who wrote a book about the increased incidence of childhood obesity and obesity in adults in the US. It was/is historically unprecedented.
He was doing the rounds promoting the book and he had at least two interview incidents where he responded, I'm not here to talk about anorexia, which impacts a very small percentage of the population, particularly compared to childhood obesity. He would ask why the media was so obsessed with anorexia.
Because ED/cutting weren't social contagion for them, they all just decided to do those things because that's who they really were and how they really felt, haven't you heard?
I didn’t cut or have an eating disorder either, but I knew girls who did. It’s hard to imagine that many women who came of age in the nineties and early 2ks didn’t know someone.
Huzzah, new episode! Watching that video of the mom in the show notes made me think. I recently visited a friend with a son who's about 12 and got to meet a bunch of his friends' parents etc. I was really surprised at how common the "picky eater"/"texture issues" complaint comes up. This could be biased/faulty memory, but I don't remember having any friends who were "picky eaters" and if my memory of youth is accurate, saying something like "I can't eat peanut butter I have textural and sensory issues" would have gotten you roundly mocked. It seems like the majority of parents I know have at least one "texture issues" kid.
Can't help but wonder how much of it is permissive/overly deferential parents who tell the kid that that's what they're experiencing when in fact little Jimmy just doesn't want to eat his spinach because it does not taste like candy. People can't have just spontaneously developed an aversion to perfectly edible food en masse in the past 20 years, right?
To add to what you said, it seems very odd that glamorizing this for the views made the child feel more comfortable. What is it teaching her? It's so odd that this "affirming" model is taking hold. The more this little girl listens to how she has this problem, the more it solidifies in her tiny head that she does. I understand it's probably tough but this is doing no favor to this child.
I think it’s relevant that she has an older sibling with autism (and food issues) who no doubt monopolizes much of the mother’s time and attention. The little girl’s food rejection may have originally been genuine or just mimicry of the sibling, but “now I’m special too and have so much of mommy’s attention” is a hard feedback loop to break.
I thought this the whole time watching the video. She’s glowing from the attention. This is common for kids, they want to be the centre of attention. Hadley’s comment about this really made me realise how important this is in anorexia
Kids also get these ideaes from each other. I had one that claimed "texture issues" at some point (middle school?) after an entire childhood of being a normal eater. I felt like kind of a jerk at the time, basically ignoring it because I'm harsh about people cultivating neuroses. I may have even rolled my eyes. At 21, she's a perfectly normal eater. I just don't get the draw. I mean, I hate the texture of bananas. Does it mean I have texture issues? I've never thought about it that way. I'd be embarrassed to say such a thing. I just don't eat bananas.
I have realized, after 57 years, that I’m actually a picky eater. I never thought about it before! I announced this to my mom, who laughed. “We’ve always known that!” She told me. She never told me, and I just didn’t eat stuff I didn’t want. More for everyone else!
Maybe it comes from being descended from Irish famine survivors, or living with my grandpa who went hungry during the depression, but complaining about the food put in front of you was a big no no. You’re grateful, you eat it, and you move on.
This was my family totally. Contrast with the way my stepsister was raised; she is 20 years younger. I remember we were driving to a steakhouse for my dad's birthday once and my stepmother announced that her kid needed to get White Castle because steakhouse no good for her; my dad managed to seethe with rage in a manner only detectable by his snappy retort "well there's a dumpster, why don't we just stop there." I don't remember if my stepsister ate anything that night, all I know is that we didn't go anywhere but the steakhouse.
Right, I don't like cherry/grape tomatoes..I guess it's a "texture issue" but I feel like that terminology elevates a matter of taste into some sort of disorder that must be accommodated.
I have found myself using the phrase "texture issues" more often in recent years to justify my dislike of bananas. As soon as I say those words, I feel like people are much more likely to think "OH, it's a real THING." Same with ARFID vs picky eater.
I'm just going to push back a little bit on that, Molly. Here in Denver we've had a huge influx of Venezuelan migrants, including little kids. The families have had to rely on food banks, which tend to carry wholesome but awful food, like canned green beans. Some subset of the little kids have wound up in the hospital because they just won't eat what's put in front of them, no matter how hungry they are. The food is so different, and so unpalatable, that they really don't eat.
But I'm mostly with you on otherwise healthy kids who are not undergoing the traumatic transition to a new country that doesn't have arepas but does have canned green beans.
Well, it's probably fair to surmise that having been dragged across seven countries and the Darien Gap and pulled away from everything that's familiar may have been traumatizing and may have contributed to their difficulties with food.
I have a friend who runs a food bank. Clients are recent immigrants from a variety of countries. My friend surveyed them to find out what they thought of the food and what they preferred. The overwhelming response was that don't eat canned food and preferred fresh. Unfortunately, canned food is what is donated and is of course non perishable. Anyway, my friend worked hard to get some semblance of what they wanted.
When did a staple like canned green beans become awful? A little olive oil, salt and pepper, with or without heating them, and you've got a tasty and nutritious side. I mean, if you boil them for more than a minute they start to taste bad but that's an issue with preparation.
It's also the abundance culture in the US. If you grew up in a culture where food was scarce or you had to grow it to eat or it was rationed, this just didn't happen. When I first moved to the US and people were saying, oh I hate mushrooms because of the texture, I was shocked, but then I understood it's a privilege culture thing.
As the parent to “picky eaters” I endorse this. We (as a community) give our kids so many snacks that they can afford to be picky. It makes me crazy. Then I’m made to feel crazy when my husband is like “they need a snack”
Well? They just had breakfast 2 hours ago and I want them to eat the nutritious lunch I have prepared so can you not give them the protein bar that happens to have a pile of sugar in it? And on school days, I send them a small snack and good lunch but school serves muffins for breakfast* and other kids give them cookies from their snacks so my kids don’t eat their lunch.
*in California, every child gets a free breakfast at school.
Yes, I could do things differently to make my kids less able to be picky, but I only have so much control over my children’s diets and it’s not the fight I’m willing to tackle most days.
This is actually part of the diagnostic process for this condition though. Lots of children with Autism who have it have to have feeding tubes and stuff. It can be incredibly intense. My little boy is really really restrictive in what he eats and for a year I just gave him what everyone else was having for dinner and didn’t make a fuss either way. The little fucker didn’t crack once and actually reduced his list of foods. We lost pasta due to me giving him some with too much going on. I discussed it with a friend who works with young people with eating disorders and she told me to just give him what he feels comfortable eating and his growth is back up on track. He is only little but listening to him talk about why he doesn’t like things is really interesting. The other day he asked me if the ham in the sandwich I was making him was noisy ham. Wasn’t sure how to answer that one!
Yes! There are absolutely kids who will starve themselves, the idea that you can just send the kid to bed without dinner one night and they’ll become perfect eaters is insane. Kids with legit mental conditions can have insanely high resistance and parents have to balance making sure the kid gets adequate nutrition (we always made sure to have either kasha or quinoa at every meal since we knew our kid would eat it).
The key with this anxiety stuff is that the kid needs to be firmly but compassionately pushed into trying new things. If every meal turns into a screaming match with their parents it’s only going to make things worse. The kid needs to be brought onboard with the program and to have good therapeutic help. It’s definitely true that there are parents who are way too accommodating of their kids anxiety but the armchair diagnosticians who declare “in my day we just spanked our picky eaters until they ate properly” drive me nuts.
My older son absolutely would starve himself- his food aversions were that strong. He lived on a very limited diet for many years. We figured out how to expand his diet over years but I just laugh when people say kids won’t let themselves starve. Most kids will not. Some definitely will.
A lot of parents threaten this, but from personal experience (as an exceptionally picky eater and undiagnosed autistic), they'll mostly crack if you really do just refuse to eat things you don't like, commit to it, and follow through. It's brinksmanship.
Yeah, I was very picky as a kid, and while I was sometimes made to eat things I didn't like, my parents mostly left me alone. My mother said I would just refuse to eat if she didn't let me have something I liked, so she decided not to worry about it too much. There were usually some leftovers in the fridge I could have if I didn't like what was served.
I hated things like deli cold cuts, wonder bread, hot dogs, and peanut butter and jelly, so basically all the standard kid lunch foods. My school lunches tended to look like a charcuterie plate— a little salami or summer sausage with brie or gouda, olives, and a piece of fruit.
Do you have a bad sense of smell? I have always preferred really strong flavors like that - stinky cheese, garlic, onions, don't care for overly sweet things like caramel - and as an adult I discovered that my sense of smell is sub-par. I assume the two are related.
My daughter is going through the diagnosis process now and she is very very "picky". Loves Red Leicester cheese but not cheddar. Will eat pasta with Bolognese but not consider any other sauce. She started eating burritos this year (but only if made with beef chili and rice) and it was a total breakthrough. She will eat raw carrots but not any fruit except raspberries and blueberries. Yet she loves olives of any kind but won't even consider broccoli or cauliflower. She used to eat curry but had it too often so it's off the menu now.
My daughter would only eat beans as long as she believed they were nuts. Once she found out, she never had one again (though she will still eat green beans). Infuriating.
This is really interesting, and makes me feel a bit jerk-ish for assuming my friend's son was just being dramatic and excessively picky. Is there any rhyme or reason to the choices?
This is a bit of a tangent, but my friend's kid is also really into abominable YouTube channels about fancy rich people that are basically just videos of 20 year olds getting into sports cars, eating at fancy restaurant, and buying expensive clothes and watches. I noticed that the kid seemed to like foods that were coded "fancy" like filet mignon, lobster, Thai food (which is definitely perceived as "cool"), etc., and the things he didn't like to eat all seemed declassé, poor-coded, or mainstream.
I'm probably overthinking this. But seriously watching 20 minutes of that kid's YouTube consumption made me fear for the future and be curious about all kinds of strange youth culture I know nothing about since I don't have kids yet.
I mean, being dramatic and excessively picky can certainly be part of it! But there are foods that will just make him throw up.
I really don't know what the connecting factor is. He loves tuna, salmon, octopus (Spanish ones from a tin), chicken nuggets (but only the ones from McDonalds), grilled cheese (how Dad makes it), fried shrimp (only from Culver's), PB&J, Doritos, and Cheetos. Won't eat pizza with cheese on it (again, has to be Dad's). Everything has an asterisk.
Do you think this has to do with the little bits of peanut residue that linger in the mouth after eating them? I like nuts (and peanuts) but I can imagine that the residue could be an issue.
It's not myopia-- it's that for us, the unpleasantness of eating (or in some cases smelling, touching or just being near) the food in question outweighs the unpleasantness of being hungry.
It's just utilitarianism with an unusual landscape of utility weights (which are, after all, completely arbitrary).
I would also like to push back on that. We all know that there actually are children who would starve themselves to death, children who need to be hospitalized and force fed because they have anorexia. If we can accept that children would starve themselves over body issues why would we refuse to believe that they can do it for other reasons?
Yeah exactly. People get super judgy when it comes to parents. I have two kids, one of them would literally throw up if given something that had the wrong texture until age 2 and yet is not at all a picky eater at age 5. The other ate everything we put in front of him until the age of 3 and then became incredibly difficult to feed. We keep trying different things and over the years we’ve significantly expanded his palate but this idea of “oh you just didn’t scream at your kid enough when he was little” is just not healthy.
The difference between “a picky eater” and an actual mental health condition is pretty huge. The older kid will literally track what you’ve touched and then scream at you to wash your hands if you touch one of the “bad” foods, similar to what you’d do if you saw someone touching raw chicken. That isn’t just being a picky eater, it’s basically a variant of OCD and the kid needs to be a willing participant in the treatment so having an antagonistic relationship with food and parents is not going to help.
FWIW I share the objections to this dumb social media account but I am 100% on board with this kids treatment, it sounds like the therapists know exactly what they’re doing.
Your last point is where I land and it disappointed me that Hadley (who I thought was a pretty good guest host overall) basically copped to thinking that the kid’s condition may have been a phase that the mom exacerbated or indulged despite the pretty detailed account Katie gave of what led to the diagnosis.
Would I be surprised to hear a B&R story where a mom turns her kid’s picky eating into social media fodder and lies about a rare diagnosis to lend the story mystique? Not at all. But that’s not what this seems to be and so there should be more benefit of the doubt to the parent, at least on the diagnosis/treatment front.
How did this work on you guys? I was/am very picky but we have 3 meals a day and I am not going to not like everything all three meals.... If I was so picky as to miss a meal, I can make it up in other places.
It worked fine on us as kids...I mean, we were never literally forced to eat anything we really didn't like for reasons of taste and were gagging over, but there were six of us in my immediate family and not a lot of money around, so food waste was a big no no. You absolutely had to eat your vegetables though, or no dessert. If you'd complained about texture I think mum would have laughed you out the room. We do all eat a lot of veg as adults!
I have the same thoughts. One of my brothers is “on the spectrum” and another had sensory issues as a kid in the 90s (tags cut out of shirts, sweatpants only, no Halloween costumes, etc.) However we grew up on food stamps so there was no picky eating allowed in our house. You ate what was on the plate—canned spinach, canned beets, generic govt meat crumbles, etc. I remember a few basic childhood disagreements about food but never these meltdowns and outright avoidance that ARFID parents describe.
One theory I have heard is that it could be due to early childhood allergies or intolerances or even foodborne illnesses putting kids off of certain foods at young ages. But again, what has changed since 1993 that is functionally preventing kids from eating?
Also, very noticeable that ARFID folks seem perfectly capable of eating, essentially, junk food.
One of the most amazing statements I heard was a parent claiming that their son was an "extreme supertaster" and therefore couldn't eat chocolate. But he loves extremely spicy Thai food. But eggs are a no-go.
I was just thinking "oh my god the dog has trained you"
I learned from her that Cheerios have that “almost something” taste for a reason. It creates something called “chasing flavor”, where you keep eating it, trying to intensify the flavor. You never get there, but you eat more than you would have if it had a strong taste.
I always think about that when I hear some of these stories - the people whose dog will only eat if they put the food in a certain dish, or at the table etc. not saying there aren’t kids with neurologic or mental health disorders who have genuine issues with food avoidance or rejection, but a lot of times it sounds like the way the issue is handled maybe reinforces instead of reducing it.
Being a supertaster is specifically about being extremely sensitive to bitter and sulphurous tastes. It doesn't really have anything to do with spice tolerance. So having issues with chocolate and eggs, but not with Thai food, actually seems pretty consistent.
I don't know if I'm a supertaster -- I love dark chocolate, so probably not a full one -- but eggs have always smelled like sulphur to me, even when fresh and no matter how well they're cooked. As an otherwise vegetable-loving kid, I hated cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) for the same reason. I'm otherwise an adventurous eater and have learned to enjoy those as an adult, but eggs still set off my gag reflex as if trying to make myself eat something rotten.
It's honestly a bit embarrassing -- brunch gets inconvenient -- and not something I like to draw attention to, but the aversive response is so intense and visceral that it's not something I've been able to train myself out of despite occasionally trying.
I think your idea about allergies or intolerances may be part of the explanation. Not all food allergies are life threatening or even severe. Food allergies have risen in the US since 2000 thanks to the biggest pediatrician's group in the US telling parents they should delay introduction of foods like peanuts until 18-24 months. Women were even told to avoid these foods while pregnant. The animal and epidemiological evidence showed the opposite at the time, so I'm not sure why they made that recommendation aside from lingering sympathy for Puritanism. Not being exposed to soil bacteria and parasites also probably raises the risk of food allergies (and autoimmune disorders) and that may have played a role now that kids are spending more time in structured activities and less in unstructured activities.
What I find a little off putting is that, typically, eating disorders at their root aren’t *about* food. Being a picky eater is dramatically different than anorexia, and I worry that people are inclined to conflate ARFID (which actually does seem to be food-driven) with other conditions that have deeper causes. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong though.
But think about the similarities: this child’s ARFID keeps the whole family focused on her. She obtains an illness identity, and everyone is dancing to her tune. That sounds precisely like an eating disorder.
Honestly, that doesn’t sound at all like my experience, though admittedly my experience is entirely subjective and based on unique and non-replicable circumstances. Personally as an anorexia patient I just wanted to be left alone, and that was a common thread among the women I was in inpatient and outpatient treatment with. But that was a long-ago era and different locale so again might not be representative.
I really remember going on a school camping trip and two of the children having a list of foods they ate including which type of crisps etc. and that was 30 years ago. I think we just have a name for it now and we are all just aware of the minutiae of each other lives because of social media. Of course that’s making it worse probably but I’m sure in 1993 parents were quietly buying safe foods for their children and not making a fuss about it. The autistic children I know who have this condition are both non verbal and their families are very offline. It’s just another thing they deal with.
Haven’t listened yet but I do think kids were always picky eaters. My own mom said I once said ‘I’ll eat it if you don’t make it again’. Kids have different taste bud receptors so don’t enjoy bitter tastes the way adults do. This is said to be why kids (generally) hate vegetables. I know I’ve also never liked the texture of raw tomatoes even tho I love the taste. Eating a tomato in a salad causes me to wretch. Whether that’s a gag reflex from some associative disorder (like the way the smell of oysters can make some people feel sick) or something else I don’t know.
I think now people are just prone to put labels on things whereas before it was ‘I don’t like it’.
I think your last sentence nails what bothers me about this - "I don't like it" is a me problem, "I have a texture issue" is a you problem that implies that you must provide me with something that does not agitate my serious texture based condition.
Mate, my ma was never providing me with anything other than the 10-12 recipes she knew. 😂 That woman had a full time job dealing with the very worst in society, her kids were getting what was on the plate and that was it.
Good point for my fave ‘it’s a you problem’ food story. University (london), going to Brussels for an EU institutions trip. All day travelling, arrive at this big city centre / conference hotel. About 80 students. Students had declared ‘regular diets / vegetarian / vegan’ (that was it - no nut allergy / halal / I don’t like corn options available. I’m sitting with a girl who is vegan. The waiters come out and serve the normal diet folk first - a slice of cold beef, a piece of lettuce and a slice of cheese. Shitty but the hotel is t going to care. Then they serve the vegetarians - they get the lettuce leaf and cheese. The vegan beside me gets the same, she starts complaining in bad French that she is vegan, can’t eat the cheese. The waiter looks at her, looks at the plate… just lifts off the cheese and walks away. Gal had a single slice of unseasoned lettuce for her dinner.
Yeah the idea that picky eating is some kind of new phenomenon is... bizarre. Nonsensical, really.
It's exactly the same phenomenon as people who want to gatekeep the definition of autism. "Back in my day, autism meant you were beating your head bloody daily! None of this social anxiety crap!" That kind of thing. The reason there are more people diagnosed now is that we're actually looking for it and have recognized that there's a spectrum of developmental issues here.
Your last sentence is the answer. Everyone has a few foods they don't like and texture is a very common reason not to like something. It's just that now we have this quasi-medical label for it that's permeated our culture. Same thing with diagnosing people as narcissists rather than just calling them self-involved assholes. Language has shifted towards describing everything in medical and therapy terms.
As a child I couldn't eat anything with a jelly texture or fat, especially on a meat, there was always fat on it. Or anything like a pulled pork texture, meat strings. And I am 45 and grew up in Soviet Union where they weren't all that permissive. My mom once managed to buy a crab I think and it was a huge deal, but I couldn't eat it. There was some screaming and crying, she was literally trying to push that crab meat into my mouth, didn't succeed though.
But I did get over it, eventually, so now I am a vegan and never ever tried any seafood other than fish, so all good lol
I have a very strong aversion to bananas, as does my sister. As in we will vomit if we eat it. When we were growing up in the '80's and '90's this was a bit extreme, but we were allowed to pass up bananas because it if the kid is vomiting it's not worth making them eat it. Aside from that, we were basically told that if we didn't like what was served, we didn't have to eat it but we weren't going to get anything else. Some of this may be that people are more comfortable talking about food aversion. I also wonder if some of it is that parents didn't get the helpful tips about getting kids to try new foods and overcome aversion.
The other thing that may be going on is a change in the types of stress. Right now a lot of kids whose early years were in the pandemic (in the West Coast we didn't go back to normal until early 2023) and it simply wasn't possible for the parents to protect their kids from all of the social dysfunction in that time. There also seems to be a trend toward talking to kids about threats that are existential or far away rather than immediate and that may be driving it.
I have a similar policy with my kids: I try to serve several different items at family meals, and hopefully the kids will like some or all of them, but if they ask for food that isn't on the table, I say, "That's not on the menu." I do wonder if this approach--old-school and borrowed from my own mom!--might eradicate a large amount of the "picky eating" in the culture.
I say this with humility because there are other possibilities. My moody kid used to have huge tantrums around food that vanished after we finally got the mood disorder adequately treated. So I don't think pickiness is always the parents' fault.
100% right on that last point. I was a somewhat picky eater, but part of it was an extreme reluctance and resistance to one of my parents and refusing to eat new foods and having strong reactions to them was a way of fighting back and having some control. It’s not always about the food.
All of my kids have mild sensory preferences around clothes, which I accommodate because it's no big deal and I'd rather fight other battles. For their cousin who's an extremely picky eater (as in, the kid eats about 6-8 foods), I think both that the kid really does have sensory issues and that those issues can be accommodated and magnified much more easily in our modern American culture than they could have been even in my parents' childhoods, when groceries were a much larger proportion of a family's household expenses.
I did know kids (mostly adolescent girls) who were picky eaters when I was growing up, which is perhaps unsurprising, since I grew up in the heyday of eating disorders.
Culture can really exacerbate underlying tendencies.
I think that’s fair enough, but I have to admit that I grew up in one of those households where I hated eating meat, but had to eat it every night and eat it all. And if I didn’t like it, my stepfather would give me something to cry about, which is also a whole bullshit belief that I’m glad has gone by the wayside.
No I don’t believe in bending over so backwards that a household can’t function but being aware that food shouldn’t make somebody feel uncomfortable on a daily basis and there should be some attempt to be mindful of peoples preferences. I think it’s good thing. And I did have some sensory and texture stuff that made me really uncomfortable and I could never literally discuss it because it would just be mocked. I guess the thing is is that it wasn’t so great before this and maybe we should find something in the middle which happens mostly, just not on social media or in wealthy communities.
One of my closest friends has/had a daughter who is just rail thin and was always falling off the bottom of the growth charts and would just never eat anything unless it was just so from about the age of 2 or 3.
Eating there is always this weird production where everyone else is eating normal food and she is getting strawberries and string cheese.
And while on the one hand I can understand how when you child is eating so little they are unhealthy you are desperate to do anything to get them to eat. On the other hand how their whole house revolves around her eating definitely does not help the problem. I think in some sense they took a temporary problem and made it a permanent problem by their reaction to it.
When you say, the whole revolving around it and it was a production do you just mean she was eating different food? Cutting up a few strawberries doesn’t sound like a big deal if your child isn’t growing
I don't live there, we are close friends but I have eaten lets say only 20-30 meals there over the past several years (we live on opposite sides of the country).
No its not about the level of effort, obviously string cheese is easy! It is about how the whole house there revolves around the kids and their drama. Bedtime was this huge production with her and their other son, long past the time my kids grew out of it (my wife still spends a lot of time on our kid's bedtime, but it is a choice, they will absolutely just go to bed if you tell them to with no production and that happens regularly). Meals there always needs to be an alternate plan for what she is eating, or literally the whole meal needs to be crafted around her.
I think one time I was visiting I don't think I ever saw her eat one "normal" thing. We are having bread and green beans and chicken, she is eating cut up strawberries and string cheese. Another time we are eating salad bar and shrimp and cut up fruit, and she is eating macaroni and cheese. Or whatever.
Just a lot of discussion about her needs and her pickiness etc.
It doesn't seem like there is any unifying theme to her behavior than playing absurd power games for attention with her parents. And she has been doing it for 10! years. And now their younger kid is in therapy too and has an ADHD and other diagnoses.
I don't know maybe I am just blessed with sane kids, it is so hard to know. But I detect this real pattern among parents I know where the ones where they let the kids push them around, the kids are just a mess. And possibly that causation is "bad kids make bad parents", and it isn't really the parents fault.
But there is some decent part of me that strongly, strongly believes that if she had just come and lived with us for a month when she was 3 or 4 none of this would have happened because we simply wouldn't have put up with her shit. Kids live inside the boxes you craft for them, particularly at that age.
IDK parenting it hard, and it is dangerous to be judgy because different children are different. And yet I detect pretty clear patterns among whose kids are "normal" and whose are a "handful" (or in therapy at 7) and it definitely isn't about how conscientious and well adjusted the parents are. Or how nice or good of people they are. To me instead seems to be more about how willing the parents are to for lack of a better word "let your kids know who is boss".
Don't let your kids win a fight with you ever. It is fine to recognize your are wrong and apologize, to have them reason you out of your position. But they should never bully you out of your position, or wear you down emotionally so you give in. Once they understand they can manipulate you, you are setting yourself up for failure.
To add to this, I know many families who have dealt with weird sensory issues and whose kids have mostly overcome them by the time they are about 5/6 years old, and the unifying theme among all of them is that they never made it their whole personality. They just did the PT/OT/whatever kind of therapy and didn't adjust their entire family dynamic around it and their kids learned to cope and got better. I have also been blessed with normal kids and have a hard time judging families who haven't, but it seems to me like there is a sweet spot in between, "we just parent old school and don't take any shit from our kids" and, "little Johnny only eats buttered noodles and grapes cut into eighths" where the issues are real but can be overcome with a bit of outside help and no-drama consistency.
You have just described my parenting style as well. In fact, my husband and I used to joke that our friends should give us one of their sons (being a whiny, picky eater was the least of his issues) for a week, and we would return a new person. With him, it was definitely a way to manipulate his parents and make the household revolve around him. Fun fact: As an adult, he is STILL unlikeable.
My sibling is autistic and was an extremely picky eater growing up. Mom worked around this by coarsely chopping the offending foodstuff while meal-prepping so he could easily pick it out at dinner. As we got older our parents would ask him to try one or two bites of whatever side vegetable he had left on the plate before moving on to dessert.
I feel like there was usually a back-up meal to microwave if he tried a couple bites and couldn't handle it. We helped out in the kitchen a lot and I think knowing exactly what was going to be in a meal, and knowing he wasn't going to starve if it freaked him out, made it easier for him to try new things.
I feel like it worked well! He's a fairly adventurous eater as an adult.
I was an extremely picky eater, and so is my son. His friends seem to have no such issues. I think there will just always be some kids who are shitheads about food.
Now, I would never have him diagnosed with whatever acronym that was. I just get him to eat what we can and know that he will probably grow out of it, like I (sort of) did.
I just know I'd die of happiness if my son ate a tenth of the things I see the other children eat. There are no fruits or vegetables he will willingly eat, and he throws up if he eats rice. He's pretty much an ideal child in every other way though, so I guess I'll keep him.
Also just to follow up, I'm willing to admit that people frequently have "texture issues" with various ethnic foods - Konjac, the big chunk of fat on a caribbean pork chop, the weird bite of liver, etc., but that kind of stuff just gets put in the "I don't like it" bucket whereas the "texture issue" bucket is mostly comprised of foods that are commonly eaten in America.
It’s probably not as black and white. I’m a moderately picky eater from a long line of picky eaters. My 80 year old aunt (who grew up in very modest circumstances with no candy at all) won’t touch tomatoes, cucumber, poultry or anything she’s never eaten before with a ten foot pole. She lives alone now and only cooks what she likes so it’s not a problem for her any longer. My wife, who would have met the criteria for ARFID as a child, had her restrictive eating issues beaten out of her by her (physician) parents. She will now eat anything but doesn’t really know what she likes any more and can’t tell when she’s full, so tends to overeat. So yes, permissive parenting does affect how we deal with it, but restrictive eating itself is definitely not a new phenomenon.
To Hadley’s point about professionals who have kids identifying as trans causing a chilling effect in their own workplaces about addressing the issue, I was recently told by a literary agent that he couldn’t ever represent me if I wrote a book about trans issues because he had colleagues whose kids identify as trans.
Really enjoyed that. I’ve always loved reading her whether in the Guardian or the Times, and she’s just as funny in podform. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her in audio form before. Nice to hear her voice!
I’m impressed that she can be so sanguine about the whole Guardian debacle - she was really screwed over by the management team who should have stood up for her.
Has anyone heard any of Julie in Genderland yet? It’s a 10 part podcast that’s just out, featuring Julie Bindel talking to parents, detransitioners and others. I’m 3 eps in and it’s eye popping even for someone who thought they were fairly well versed in trans issues. The overstep of UK social services alone ought to be a national scandal.
been saying this for years, adopting a nonbinary identity is just the newest way for girls to try to “opt out” of going through female puberty. i literally bound my chest for years in the early 2000s, i didn’t want breasts or hips because those things represented fat to me (along w everything else that sucks about being a woman.) you can see a lot of these kids have ED as well anyway, i really think it’s all the same root problem in many cases
Yeah IMO nonbinary actually makes a lot of sense when viewed as a way for girls to escape being female without necessarily committing to hormones and surgery.
Being fine with what happened to Woody Allen is probably my most divergent opinion from K&J on the pod. Dude is a creep who gives off the vibes of someone who would do gross exploitive things and everyone near him said, ya, absolutely it tracks. Sorry skeezy 80 year old rich guy, you have to retire instead of making another movie about an older getting with a younger woman.
Everyone's entitled to their "vibes," of course. But I do hope that facts matter more than vibes when it comes to judging other people to have done terrible things. Otherwise, we're all just religious fundamentalists or QAnon devotees by some other name.
I agree! And (because) it usually ends in disaster. In this case it ended in what 2 investigations determined were false accusations likely coached out of a small child by a vindictive and abusive mother. Fortunately, it also ended in a long, happy marriage and two grown, healthy kids.
I’m old school, I guess. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t end up as badly as it might have, because if he’d followed the rule she might have been happily married to someone else, her mother would not have found nude polaroids of her on her own mantel, and Woody Allen might not be even now be being called a creep on a podcast comment thread (he’s a creep). He did a bad thing. I don’t care that it worked out for him in the end.
Considering that her mother physically and emotionally abused her, I doubt Soon Yi cares too much that she found those pictures, but I know that Allen wishes they hadn't entered the relationship the way that they did. I don't know if he's a creep, anymore (maybe he is, but absent evidence, we don't know). I don't think what someone did decades ago should define them if they don't do that thing anymore. The idea that "once a (X), always a (X)" is for people who don't believe in parole or the human capacity to evolve and improve.
It’s definitely messy behaviour, but as long as messiness in your personal life doesn’t interfere with your work and doesn’t escalate to illegality, I don’t think it should destroy someone’s career. If making messy, stupid (but legal!) decisions in your personal life is to be a career-ending sin, we’ll have to write off most creatives, artists, and performers.
Nah, like I said, not interested in your “well akshually” defenses of him. The vibes are backed up by a little thing called getting involved with a step daughter once she was legal age after building a career on self portrayal where of being a creep.
I don't think what they did was the right thing to do, but she was never his step-daughter. Not that facts would matter, as a devotion to "vibes" tends to deprioritize anything which might create nuance.
Listening to this podcast was the first time I have ever thought that Woody Allen may have gotten a raw deal.
I don’t think many people have ever believed the pedo thing. It was just too thin and out of character. Particularly since it has been wildly obvious since Manhattan that his thing is older teenaged girls. He was inappropriate with the actress Hemingway around the time the movie was filmed.
I just think going for the daughter of your girlfriend is gross, so it hasn’t bothered me that people have wrongly branded him as a pedo. But I guess that’s wrong.
I've interacted with several of Mia Farrow's many, many children on various different occasions and they are universally very strange. I feel like no one has ever questioned how she's able to get an endless supply of kids to adopt and how that living situation could possibly be functional.
I believed Dylan's accusations when they were published in the NYT, as did a bunch of my friends and family at the time.
Having read more about the case since, I think I was credulous and wrong to believe the accusations on the basis of a newspaper column. I bet a lot of people didn't read more and still believe the accusations.
Yeah, marrying his step daughter is creepy as shit NO MATTER WHAT CONTEXT. A good person would never do it- it’s like the Louis CK thing. CK is very funny and I used to enjoy his material, till I realised it wasn’t surrealist “what if” it was a confessional.
Mia Farrow was 21 when she married Frank Sinatra, age 50, in 1966. I've never heard of a woman gasping and fainting over that relationship. This is sexist hypocrisy.
Yes, but Farrow was a grown adult and not getting together with someone from her extended family. But that said, she’s been kind of inconsistent about her views on the subject, considering she was friends with Roman Polanski long after her accusations against Woody Allen in the early 90s.
Thing is, he didn't marry his step daughter. He never even lived with Mia Farrow and didn't have even a friendly relationship with Soon Yi until she was an adult.
I think it's very important to have a firm grasp of the facts if one is going to judge another person as having done something terrible.
They kept separate apartments, but they were very much together for years and years. They have two bio kids together! They didn’t just meet for coffee a few times and casually date.
As for a friendly relationship with Soon Ye, he regularly picked her up from High school and spent a lot of time with her. I’m sorry, it’s gross behavior.
I don’t give him bonus points for waiting until she was 21 before banging her.
The fact that they are still together could point to it being true love.
Remember Mary Kay Letourno and the middle school student she had sex with? They stayed together too, for many years, and it was just a testament to how much she fucked up that poor kid.
I don't mean to imply that they entered into the relationship in a healthy way. They've both said as much. I only mean to push back against claims that he's a pedophile. It was a bad situation made worse by bad, impulsive choices and I'm glad to see that their relationship has been better/healthier than most would have been in those circumstances.
Listen here bigot, you haven't considered power differentials. A man who dates a woman even a single day younger than him is clearly engaging in abuse! It's gross and makes me feel ikky and so that means it's bad. He has way more power and in a fair and equal society a women would never willingly accept this. The same is also if he earns a single dollar more than her and while I'm at it we should consider race too. White people have all the power so we can't just let them date non-whites either.
I remember Mary Kay Letourno and that in the end, they stayed together and even had a family. And, no, I don’t consider that a symptom of long-term damage, even if the circumstances where they first got together are rightly considered an abuse of power. But at a certain point, busybodies need to step the fuck aside and not second-guess other people’s consensual relationships or sexual practices.
He didn't exactly turn around and hate on her or call her an abuser, either. It sounds like a situation that was, to use Jesse's favourite word, complicated. In stories like this, many folks tend to cherry-pick out only the most damning details.
He had a sexual relationship with his son's sister which also involved cheating on his son's mother. That is a huge violation of family boundaries. Even setting aside the allegations of abuse (which are just about impossible to unravel at this point), that's behaviour that shows he has no concern for the emotional security of his own child, let alone anyone else in that household.
Besides the fact that the allegations of abuse were unraveled by two separate, professional and public investigations which both concluded that there was no evidence that abuse occurred and much evidence that Dylan was coached by her mother, and that the son whose sister he cheated with has a very good relationship with them both (see the link below), yes, he absolutely did a very bad thing 33 years ago, I completely agree. What does this tell us about who he is today?
How has Allen behaved in the last 30 years? The last 20 or 10 years? Certainly, no one here knows for sure, and there's been no evidence of similarly irresponsible and unhealthy behavior.
It's reasonable to judge behavior and actions, especially when someone is harmed in one way or another. But, *absent any relevant evidence*, I don't believe it's reasonable to judge the character of person decades after they behaved in irresponsible and even harmful ways.
Yes,those investigations did take place, as you say, but Dylan Farrow continues to maintain as an adult that the abuse happened. That doesn't make me jump to the belief that Woody Allen is definitely an abuser but it does make think, combined with his willingness to trample over normal family boundaries in a way that I consider abusive to his child, that he might be. I don't think anyone will ever be able to know at this point.
I agree with you that none of us knows how Allen has behaved for the last 30 years but does that really mean we can't make a judgement about his character based on what we do know? I mean, as far as I'm aware, Roman Polanski hasn't sodomised any more 13 year old girls but I still think he's a bad person.
I very much understand and respect your perspective, but I don't know these people, so I don't expend any energy having any opinions as to whether or not they're good or bad people. I only know what they did decades ago. This could be partly because I often work professionally with folks who have been released from prison and try to help them start over. I always tell them that I don't care what they did so much as I care what they're doing.
I think the very worst thing about all of it is that Dylan sincerely believes she was abused. I have nothing but sympathy for her. My opinion is that, based on the investigations and our growing understanding of false memory syndrome over the last 25 years (along with the physical and mental abuse endured by her siblings), Mia Farrow is primarily responsible for the pain Dylan experiences. Of course, I'm old enough to have been mistaken about many things and I could be mistaken about this.
Well, if you buy into Elizabeth Loftus theories on memory, even a small suggestion that an event happened during childhood can trigger a false memory, never mind being raised in a family situation where you’ve been told since you were 7 that this happened to you. I’m sure Dylan Farrow believes this happened to her, but that’s not enough to make it an open and shut case, imo.
As to Polanski, on one hand, his victim, Samantha Geimer has long since forgiven him and wants the case dropped and the press to just leave her alone. On the other hand, there are several other allegations against Polanski, some for even a more serious degree of sexual assault than the Geimer case.
Sorry, but Soon-Yi is no victim, as much as busybodies want to force her into that role. That said, it was a pretty horrible thing to do to his ex-wife. I don’t think that rises to anything remotely criminal (though I suppose there’s a kind of victim feminism that sees hurting a woman’s feelings in any capacity as abuse), but I wouldn’t blame someone for seeing that as a negative judgement on his character. I also wouldn’t blame someone for being relatively indifferent - “that’s between him and his family”, etc.
Half agree. Do I think he's a pedophile or a criminal? No. Do I think he's a disgusting slimeball for cheating on his wife with her newly-legal daughter? Hell yes, and for that reason I have zero interest in him or any of his work. However, I understand that some people are able to look past that, and that's their prerogative.
It's reasonable to dislike how they entered their relationship (as I do), but I do think it's relevant that he was never married to Mia Farrow, never lived with her, and Soon Yi was never his daughter, legal or otherwise. I totally get the "creepy" vibe, and very much respect your prerogative to ignore him and his work. On the bright side (!), they've been together for over 30 years, married for 27, raised two grown daughters and seem to be very happy together.
Good for them. Still don't like him. I never called Soon Yi his daughter. Cheating on a woman with HER daughter is nasty enough on its own. I don't care what their relationship was like afterwards, that's creepy as hell.
Allen never cheated on Farrow. Farrow screwed Frank Sinatra and lied about the pregnancy. She was, and still is, despicable. Woody Allen is still a genius with a wife who loves him dearly.
Yes, he did. The divorce was initiated after the affair came to light. And I never defended Mia Farrow or her cheating. What she did was wrong, too, but not as wrong as banging your girlfriend's daughter. Come the hell on.
I think they were both pretty messed up in their own way and it’s questionable whether they were fit to raise a family. That said, being a train wreck in your personal life isn’t enough for me to judge someone negatively as an artist. In fact, “Husbands and Wives” is a good example of a great film coming out of bad personal circumstances.
Your standards are different than mine, and that's fine if it works for you. Avoiding "creepy" men is a survival skill for women, I don't expect you to understand.
It's not looking past it exactly. I think it's more not making it a central focus.
A good friend's parents married when the mom was pregnant at 15. Did I judge her dad harshly when I learned he was 21 at that wedding. Yes, I did (as did most of our friends, and my friend and her siblings for a limited time). But at some point, defining someone by a terrible wrong, rather than what's in front of you (in my friend's parents case, the best 50+ year marriage I ever knew), is a big miss.
Here’s my take: the way Woody talks about the beginning of his relationship with Soon Yi, including the things she supposedly said to him, doesn’t past the smell test based on what is publicly known about her.
Frankly, it reminds me a lot of how men who’ve been caught with underage girls talk about their relationships, using phrases like, “she was the aggressor, she came on to me” and “she’s not what everyone thinks, she’s so smart and mature”. It also feels like a vibe of facilitated communication (see previous the BARpod episode or the Netflix documentary “Tell Them You Love Me” for details), where the person supposedly speaking sounds identical to the person transcribing the quote. The Soon Yi in Woody’s recollecting sounds a lot like Woody.
The fact is, Woody met Soon Yi when she was age 7, not when she was 21. They’ve stated that their relationship began when she was in college, that he never realized he was attracted to her before then, that he was barely in her life at all! Okay. Just as many people look at the court records of the Dylan’s/Mia’s accusations with a skeptical eye, I’m extremely skeptical about Woody’s self reporting here.
I don’t think Woody is a pedophile, for what it’s worth. But I do think he’s demonstrated that he’s potentially an opportunistic abuser based on the Soon Yi stuff.
I also don’t think we can draw conclusions that their relationship is a beautiful love story just because of the length of their marriage, as another poster already pointed out, Mary Kay Letourneau stayed married to Vili Fualaau for 14 years. These kinds of relationships with epic power imbalances can be a complete mind fuck for the younger/less powerful people involved.
All that to say, I hope that I’m wrong and Woody has never touched a younger girl since he’s been with Soon Yi, and that his daughters are safe and happy.
It doesn’t track, though, because there was never any evidence, there were two official investigations, there is also no indication he had pedophilic tendencies that surfaced with any other young person. Yes, the Soon-Yi thing was hurtful, improper, icky… but it was not child rape, and it was not illegal.
Why are so many Americans turning in sex-phobic prudes? Allen is a hardworking genius who deserves all the love he receives from his wonderful wife, Soon-Yi.
The thing is they're not really sex-phobic per se. If this guy had a gay relationship with a male with a similar age gap, the same people losing their minds over this would be totally fine with it. Or if he was in a polycule.
In part because this board is in the “gender-critical” orbit, hence radical feminist views about sexuality, which are prudish as all getup, are commonplace here. Albeit, ”TERF Island” Brits can easily out-prude Americans, with fewer barriers for calling in the state to intervene in matters of private morality.
Yeah , he still fucked his stepdaughter (a child found living on the street at age 7 and then adopted by a crazy lady) and took pornographic pictures of her while he was still married to that crazy lady. So yeah, he didn’t have to touch Dylan for me to think he’s morally repugnant and is mostly suffering the consequences of his actions.
I think what they did at the beginning of their relationship was wrong. So do they. And, for clarity, she was never his stepdaughter and he was never married to Farrow and they never lived together and he never spent the night at their home.
Doing something morally repugnant decades ago doesn't mean that person is still morally repugnant, especially absent any evidence whatsoever that the repugnant behavior continued.
ThEY wErEN’T mArRiEd. Allen is the legal father to three children with Farrow. He came to the house every day, many days at 6:30 am with breakfast. They were partners for 10 years. Call that what you will. I’ve read everything you have posted and years ago at that. Sometimes they say the relationship didn’t start until she was 21, but other times they say she was 19. And Soon Yi says that he pursued her and that is what she liked, “feeling wanted”. What he did wasn’t illegal. I watched an episode of that HBO show about the whorehouse in Nevada. The main pimp had a girl there the night before her 18 th birthday. He fucked her at midnight and put her to work the next day. Also not illegal. Soon Yi was a street urchin adopted by an abusive woman. Allen did nothing to stop the abuse, but started fucking her when she was 19.
It’s fine that you are ok with it and it’s fine that others are not. That’s one thing about tolerance- you have to tolerate people not agreeing with your moral judgments.
He is living with the fallout of his choice. It wasn’t an illegal choice, but people don’t have to condone it even though you do.
And I still watch woody Allen movies AND I lose no sleep for what he has gone through. Not a miscarriage of justice. Crazy abusive woman he didn’t protect his kids from comes for him and he suddenly cares about her victims. Both he and Farrow reaped what the sowed.
That's a long response when I've only corrected your factual misstatements and I've said (repeatedly) what he did was wrong. No matter how wrong it was and whether or not he deserved professional consequences for that bad behavior, my primary points are that we don't know what kind of a person he is now, decades later, and that it's wrong to accuse someone of pedophilia and child sexual abuse when there's no evidence for it. Pretty simple, really.
Considering I don't excuse Allen for his bad behavior, I don't know how that could lead to excusing Polanski's much worse behavior.
Again, my only points are that what he did was bad (no excusing!), but we don't know what know what kind of person he is today, and there's no evidence that he's a pedophile. That's it, pretty simple.
And let’s leave soon Yi aside. Allen had three children he was a father to. When he had the affair with Soon Yi there was no other possible outcome than his relationships with those children exploding. Imagine if your father chose fucking your sister over exiting his relationship with your abusive mother in a clean way. There is no way that you fuck a woman’s daughter and then you have a functioning co-parent relationship afterwards. No way, and especially if the woman is already abusive to the kids, forget it. He thought shit all about the three kids he was most definitely responsible for. He didn’t care what this crazy woman would do to those kids. The situation itself violated all sorts of family boundaries apart from whether or not he was technically Soon Yi’s step dad. All of the other kids, Dylan, Ronan. It was a massively destructive thing to do. Farrow is also of course responsible. She is just as responsible for everything that happened to those kids. But they both did and it left a stink on them. When we shit the bed it stinks.
Have to kind of agree. I felt dirty watching "Allen v. Farrow" and chose to turn it off, as I felt like it was too much of other people's he said/she said business, given what came of the investigations. And while I do think it's sleazy to cheat on your partner with her daughter, I don't think it's body-of-work cancel-worthy. But I also think it's obvious he's been somewhat of an "uncomfortable lecher" since "Manhattan." And the movie in which Larry David was him by proxy was even worse.
Yeah finding out about that made me have to unsubscribe. There’s a hell of a lot wrong with that man than just being “kinda creepy”. I’d argue that the people who defend him are the ones going mostly off vibes.
Nobody defends how he entered into the relationship with Soon Yi. What he deserves to be defended from are accusations of pedophilia. It's not "vibes" that support that defense, but rather two professional, public investigations that found no evidence that Dylan was abused and evidence that she was coached to make the accusations by her mother.
I'm totally with Hadley on not putting kids on the public Internet. The obvious way the mom *could* incentivize her kid to eat on video would be to record the videos and either not post them at all or post them on a private account for family and close friends.
I have a ton of videos of my kids on my phone going back years, and some of my kids really enjoy watching themselves on video. Grandparents like the videos, too. Kids can get the pleasure of their little performances without being told to read scripts so videos can be posted publicly and their PARENTS' accounts can go viral.
By the way, there are already professionals who work with kids with ARFID, so I definitely wouldn't buy the argument that parents need ARFID influencers in order to help their kids eat.
I'll add one further concern I have, as a non-expert in ARFID: After a parent in my extended family announced that her kid, who has always had serious eating issues, had gotten an ARFID diagnosis, I looked up the diagnostic criteria. They include this criterion: "The eating disturbance is not attributable to a concurrent medical condition or not better explained by another mental disorder." The child in question in my family also has symptoms of mild autism (on the end of the spectrum we used to call Asperger's), which is also often associated with extreme pickiness about food. I genuinely don't know whether ARFID or ASD is a better Dx for this particular child and defer to the parents and professionals involved.
But a worry I have about putting ARFID into online influencer circles is that parents concerned about their children may not be able to discern which diagnosis is most appropriate, and if they guess wrong, some children may not have all of their symptoms addressed.
That girl may genuinely have ARFID through no fault of anyone, and this might actually be the best therapy for her, and I’d still believe her mother is a terrible person and I’d still believe her mother is a terrible person for turning her daughter into an influencer, as opposed to having a private account. Social media is just not safe for young children and there’s no way the mom hasn’t figured that out by now even if she didn’t realize initially.
Nobody mentioned this, and I'm wondering if I should, but here goes:
I'm suspicious about the audience who likes to watch little girls eat pickles. I know there's a massive "feeder" comminity on OnlyFans, etc, who pay to watch fat nude women eat an entire choclocate cake, bucket of chicken, etc. I just can't help but think a significant portion of her audience is getting off on this.
I have ARFID that i work very consciously through, and the mere fact that she took bites of the pickle is seriously so so so good. I often have to be drunk to get myself to try things for the first time. I only start to appreciate food the 2nd or 3rd go around. It's a huge win that they found a way to get her to take this first step, which is by far the scariest, ESPECIALLY for a child that young, and with a food that is both moist and strong-smelling. What a great, positive thing!
But why on earth isn't her insta account private? Why would you choose to add on that additional layer of public scrutiny? How is this young child going to process that as she grows up? Hello, my mom put my personal struggles on display for thousands of strangers before I could understand the repercussions! It's like trading one problem for another.
Hannah and her mother seem like a combination of Munchausen-by-proxy meets Munchausen-by-internet. Mom has crazy eyes, I feel like she's behind all of this. I think the story about her having ARFID as a toddler is baloney. I think she was just a picky eater, and that mom enabled and pathologized it until it truly did become ARFID. Also, toddlers don't "enjoy being on camera"; they enjoy the praise and attention their parents give them while they're filming.
Ok there is something deeply disturbing and unsettling listening to that little girl's food reviews and motivational content - it sounds scripted, unnatural, and exploitative.
The language about “journeys” and so forth was incredibly therapeutic and scripted. I honestly think this might be the darkest thing I’ve ever heard on the pod.
I was wondering that! He's coming to my tiny Utah town in November, and I'm paying an exorbitant amount to see him. Would be nice to know it's going to a fan.
It’s probably the best exorbitant amount of money you’ve ever spent. To be able to hold 2000 people in raptured silence while reading alone on a stage is something I never thought I’d see.
It was worth it last time I saw David Sedaris. He’s still a smart cookie. Felt like there were some layers of meaning. He took some random questions at the end too. OH. And he worse these super cool Japanese style pants. Some gender people would see it as a skirt, but he just said they were comfortable.
Logan? Not so tiny, especially when you consider how many `cultural' activities there are! Would agree that the dining options are rather limited for a town that size, though.
(I lived there for years and am going back soon for work.)
She said it was a very funny author, and while Rowling has bits of humor, that’s not what she’s really known for. And Sedaris seems like exactly the kind of humor Katie would adore.
I actually think the most important line of the episode is where Katie is talking about how when she was in high school being trans "wasn't a thing".
Obviously, there were a few people with lifelong gender issues in any era of history. But it's easy to forget how recently this whole subject wasn't a social or political issue at all.
So in the same age ballpark as J&K. And a lot of the community here, myself included.
I went to a 2000-person high school that was racially and economically diverse and was a special ed center as well and had a lot of students with complex medical issues. I worked in the counseling office for a year because I ran out of classes to take so I saw a lot of people. No one ever discussed this concept in my school.
I was a psych major in college. We covered John Money and the Johns Hopkins case where a boy with a botched circumcision was raised as a girl (and ultimately committed suicide). The idea that someone could intentionally try to change their gender presentation through surgery was never mentioned. I took psychology of women, women's history, and other women's studies courses. I took neuroscience and physiology and covered endocrinology. I went to my aunt's gay commitment ceremony before gay marriage was created. I went to Capitol Hill occasionally to advocate for a variety of left wing causes, including gay rights. Never heard the word transgender or any synonym thereof in any of these contexts. Never met someone who identified as such.
I think the only time before 2016 or so I ever heard of the concept was when Ronaldo (the Brazilian soccer player, not Cristiano Ronaldo) had some scandal in Brazil involving transgender sex workers and I had no idea what the story was talking about so I looked it up. And I thought "huh, that's odd" and forgot about it.
I’m 39, and I didn’t knowingly meet any trans people IRL until after college, though the concept was brought up in my women’s studies classes (this was prior to the “gender studies” rebrand) and the critical theory class I had to take my junior year as an English major. My sister’s six years younger than I am and by the time she was finishing up undergrad, she and multiple members of her friend group were various flavors of trans-identified.
Great episode, love Hadley, appreciated her book very much! But I take issue with something she says about anorexia, something she also says in her book. She stated early in the episode that anorexia is always about not wanting to grow up to be a woman, not wanting to separate from mom. It's not always. I am sure it is that for many girls/women, and maybe its a generational thing (I was anorexic at the end of the 70's/early 80's), but for me it was a murky soup of wanting to be thin like all the magazines, TV shows and movies told me I should be to be an attractive woman (it was like I thought I couldn't be a woman if I wasn't thin); wanting to get my mother's approval (she was a hostile, angry person who rode me from 1st grade on about my body); and equating success and love with being thin. I knew I had to separate from my mom cuz I was sure she had it in for me, and I left home at 19, right in the middle of my first stage of recovery. I couldn't wait to get away from her and to get out in life with my new thin, very under control body. Unfortunately, I was 25 lbs underweight and had to stop starving myself, had to find a new way to relate to food. Living on my own was tough at that time, but it allowed me the space to figure some things out for myself.
Being able to go without eating made me feel euphorically in control and - not proud of this - superior over others who had the nasty, dirty habit of eating 3 times a day. And I got SO MUCH positive feedback when I started to lose weight - from family and friends. It was a very broken way of thinking and behaving, and I am so lucky that I found a way to stop without doing any lasting damage to my body. But I continued to have the thinking and anxiety around food and it took a long time to figure out how to eat and live. And it didn't help that I left home to go to NYC to study acting - physical scrutiny at auditions did not help the healing process. I still struggle a little today, but at 63, I remind myself that it no longer matters because no one is scrutinizing me. And my mother passing away last year took a huge thick layer of this off of me.
Interestingly, when the anorexia failed, i.e. I had to stop, I realized that I wasn't so much trying to get my mother's approval after all: I was actually trying to prove her wrong, probably so I could separate from her more easily. But the habits that came out of years of self-imposed starvation and body distortion had taken hold and its taken the rest of my life to recover.
I found out in my 30s that my mother had been anorexic in college. And she repeated that at the end of her life, starving my Dad at the same time. He was nosediving into Alzheimers at the time so he couldn't really recognize what was happening. When I got up to see them right before she passed, he was easily 20lbs underweight.
It's definitely a mental disease of control - a form of OCD - and certainly with the ubiquity of online porn, hook up culture, social media hyper-sexuality with all of the body enhancements that are so normalized now, I can see how it is now a reaction to not wanting to grow up to be a woman. But that wasn't my experience or motivation at all. Maybe that is what saved me from the worst of it.
I agree that her description didn’t exactly match my experience either, but I got the sense it came from her analysis of her own situation after the fact rather than her felt experience at the time (maybe I’m wrong here though).
1000% agree about the anorexia/OCD connection. To be honest, I think the OCD piece is what connects EDs with the trans stuff (in addition to the autism connection). But I also wonder how much of these diagnoses are expressions of the same underlying cause.
I have read one memoir of anorexia (only because it was the only other work by an author who wrote a novel I thought was brilliant). She describes it more likely you than Hadley. She was a high achiever who suddenly found it harder to be "best" at the things she had been best at before (to be clear she wasn't failing, just not being quite as high ranking over her peers). She found that she could be best at being thin.
The anorexia recovery process for my daughter, now 16, became easier in my household after I read Hadley's book. I have never struggled with any ED's but my husband did when he was young and his mom was a big part of that. The OCD connection was a revelation for me as was the competition to be be the sickest. It changed my communication with my kid and she appreciated that I recognized these aspects of her behavior because it was frustrating for her that people always assumed it was a desire to be thin/society pressure yadda yadda. There are aspects of the book that don't describe our experience, but I am really grateful for her account. It shed a lot of light for me and helped me course correct on some wrong assumptions.
Maybe I misheard her but I don't think so because she says it in the book that way, too, and that is why it struck me when she said it here. I know she has done a lot of research on this and it is likely that her experience is much more indicative of what EDs are experiencing now but just came here to say that its not a one size fits all. If I had not been anorexic myself I probably wouldn't have noticed it but it was really jarring to read and then hear her say again that we all just want to not grow into womanhood and leave our moms. No group is that homogeneous.
I was wearing a full Florence Pugh in Midsommar frown as I was listening to that child influencer segment.
At least children being abused by their parents in the 1990s typically then didn’t have to live with the fact that their abuse would be preserved in the digital archive for the rest of their lives. Really gross stuff!
It’s shocking to me that so many women in their thirties and forties lived through ED and cutting in their youth but will not countenance the possibility that social contagion and mental health comorbidities could have anything to do with the gender issues in girls today.
Right, I wonder this often. I'm in this age group and cutting was *the* thing. Yet, there were zero kids saying they were trans. Don't they think it's strange that so many kids are now saying they identify that way...?
I have a lovely set of neighbours, kind people. They have a 16 year old daughter who is desperately thin, wears the biggest and baggiest clothes possible, tries to disappear into the background whenever you even say hi to her, and in the last year started identifying as non binary. Her parents very pointedly call her "they" whenever they can (which makes conversations extremely confusing if I'm watching the house for parties (as if she would!) when they're away). I feel so sorry for her as she just seems so unhappy.
I know that's only one anecdote but my couple of teacher friends have lots of similar stories.
The kids who cut are also the trans kids now.
Same same same as my small world. It drives me mad to be able to say nothing. But it is so obvious. They moms will see the picky food, eating, and recognize other signs but are perplexed it seems or enthusiastic about the gender or NB stuff.
But, you see, the rise in trans identification is 100% explained by greater societal acceptance, so we need not even ask about the sudden surge.
Amazing how quickly people can slot that answer in and stop thinking.
But they wont “be kind” anymore if they admit it.
Full agreement. I forced myself to accept gender nonsense for years, because I thought that's what I had to do to be a good person. Being gay, I felt doubly obligated to go along; after all, did I want to be a traitor to the community?
I now realize that I have no moral duty to accept untruths, but it was a long road getting there.
I deal with school age kids who are too unwell to attend school. It mostly used to be physical but increasingly is mental health. Every single girl in the past year on my caseload has been autistic with huge levels of anxiety and social phobia and all but one identified as a boy. Ages 12 to 14. It's really alarming. Many also self harm or have disordered eating. But they're just being their authentic selves, right.
The last time I brought up mental health comorbidities as a possible caution to someone on the left IRL, they were like "of course and all those mental health issues are caused by their GD and that is why they need help right away!". There seemed zero willingness to consider that perhaps the causation might be going the other way.
My relative was clinically depressed and also an alcoholic. Therapists told him he had to control his alcoholism before they treated his depression as alcoholism can cause depression. Why don’t activist even consider that treatment of other mental health issues should come before affirming care?
Alcoholism can cause depression, but also people drink to cope with mental health problems. If someone is drinking as a coping mechanism and you take that away without treating the other thing, they will either relapse or find another (often worse) coping mechanism. I think it's hard to determine in each case which problem came first or which one to treat first. And I think the same is true with gender dysphoria.
We see this all the time in the addiction world. People come in with a ton of psychiatric diagnoses but it turns out to be just (and this is a diagnosis in the DSM) "Substance-induced mood disorder". Or "substance-induced psychosis". Take away the substance and the problem goes away. But we also see the other side, where someone comes in with no history of mental health treatment at all and they break down crying immediately because of something they've been holding in for years.
Because activists want as many people to transition as possible. Because they aren't activists for human health and happiness, they're activists for transitioning.
As a sufferer of both those afflictions, those therapists sound horrible and cruel. It's not either or.
Certainly one affliction may limit the extent to which treatment for the other can be successful but we don't start giving diabetics medicine only when they get their diet under control.
There are a lot of people in eating disorder subreddits who also identify as trans/NB. Many of them claim that it is the root of their ED. It very well could just be their stress manifesting in two particularly fashionable ways.
I spent a year at a coed “therapeutic boarding school” in north GA—which ended up being shut down and having its assets seized and various other things because it turns out these people were not on the level; they were fleecing families and mistreating their children, but that’s a story for another day! Lol—and there were a lot of girls (maybe 30% of the girls there, or maybe even slightly more than that) who were there for EDs, cutting, or both. It was my first and still only firsthand, up-close experience of knowing people living through those things. And my God was it an awful, soul-crushing thing to witness. Those were some of the most deluded and broken people I’ve ever seen, and I have *seen some shit*. Most of them were very pretty, very sweet and good-natured, but they were convinced they were fat cows who wouldn’t/couldn’t ever be loved by anyone; they wouldn’t eat even when they were sat down with a plate of plain pasta or chicken soup or whatever and told not to leave the dining hall until they’d at least eaten SOME of it—and they still wouldn’t eat it (or they’d eat it and then immediately go throw it up).
Most—though sadly not all—of the women I knew back then are pretty ok now as far as I can tell, but man I bet they’ve got some fucking scars deep inside. Because frankly, *I* was left scarred just from witnessing it up-close for a whole year like that—some of these girls were friends of mine, after all, so yeah it was impossible not to get psychologically invested in them. I’m not trying to defend their denial about social contagion etc., but maybe I *am* trying to explain it: I think the wounds from that stuff are still pretty raw for some of the women I know, so I’d imagine coming out and “judging” other women for their modern social contagion stuff would cut awfully close to the bone; it’d be like judging their younger selves by proxy, almost, which I would imagine might bring those feelings back. And based on what I saw, one would NOT want those feelings coming back even for a millisecond.
I dunno, that’s my somewhat informed armchair diagnosis of that situation. But I’m a guy, so there’s only so much I can know about female psychology (which is to say: I can “know” what women are willing to tell me about their psychology). Anyway, I’m jabbering on too long now, but yeah, that’s my best guess on that. Curious if other people think I’m full of hot air on that.
This is why the gaslighting around the affirmation model was so important. The people involved in pushing youth gender medicine to the forefront understood that making trans an identity tied to gays and lesbians as well as making transition a necessary treatment to prevent suicide would be crucial.
Otherwise, many people would have made the obvious connections right off the bat.
I think it’s down to the changing social conditioning women and girls are put under. In the 90’s and 00’s eating disorders and cutting were framed as ‘bad’ because they were visibly unbeautiful in a space where the worst thing you could be was unbeautiful. They made you look ill, they made people sad and girls were never ever supposed to do that. Trans ideology is framed as the opposite- to mutilate yourself now means you’re Happy and Joyful, you’ve gone from being a problematic and depressed teen girl to a literal female eunuch. It’s been framed as a sure fire way to ‘cure’ yourself. All your scars are hidden, just smile in public and don’t break the spell
This is a bit of a side note but there was a dude in the mid to late 1990s who wrote a book about the increased incidence of childhood obesity and obesity in adults in the US. It was/is historically unprecedented.
He was doing the rounds promoting the book and he had at least two interview incidents where he responded, I'm not here to talk about anorexia, which impacts a very small percentage of the population, particularly compared to childhood obesity. He would ask why the media was so obsessed with anorexia.
Because ED/cutting weren't social contagion for them, they all just decided to do those things because that's who they really were and how they really felt, haven't you heard?
I didn’t cut or have an eating disorder either, but I knew girls who did. It’s hard to imagine that many women who came of age in the nineties and early 2ks didn’t know someone.
Hearing a child say "like and subscribe" is so creepy and dystopian.
Meh. To me, that’s just like school shootings. Too many to care!
The phrase "8-year-old eating disorder influencer" makes me hope that a large asteroid is headed straight for our planet
We’ve had long enough. It’s been a good run.
I feel like we jumped the shark a few years ago.
I just read that Bennifer might be back ON again? Somebody pull the plug!
They need to just make up their fucking minds! C'mon, guys!
Someone should give the Trisolarans our location. (Excuse the nerdy reference).
Huzzah, new episode! Watching that video of the mom in the show notes made me think. I recently visited a friend with a son who's about 12 and got to meet a bunch of his friends' parents etc. I was really surprised at how common the "picky eater"/"texture issues" complaint comes up. This could be biased/faulty memory, but I don't remember having any friends who were "picky eaters" and if my memory of youth is accurate, saying something like "I can't eat peanut butter I have textural and sensory issues" would have gotten you roundly mocked. It seems like the majority of parents I know have at least one "texture issues" kid.
Can't help but wonder how much of it is permissive/overly deferential parents who tell the kid that that's what they're experiencing when in fact little Jimmy just doesn't want to eat his spinach because it does not taste like candy. People can't have just spontaneously developed an aversion to perfectly edible food en masse in the past 20 years, right?
To add to what you said, it seems very odd that glamorizing this for the views made the child feel more comfortable. What is it teaching her? It's so odd that this "affirming" model is taking hold. The more this little girl listens to how she has this problem, the more it solidifies in her tiny head that she does. I understand it's probably tough but this is doing no favor to this child.
I think it’s relevant that she has an older sibling with autism (and food issues) who no doubt monopolizes much of the mother’s time and attention. The little girl’s food rejection may have originally been genuine or just mimicry of the sibling, but “now I’m special too and have so much of mommy’s attention” is a hard feedback loop to break.
I thought this the whole time watching the video. She’s glowing from the attention. This is common for kids, they want to be the centre of attention. Hadley’s comment about this really made me realise how important this is in anorexia
Kids also get these ideaes from each other. I had one that claimed "texture issues" at some point (middle school?) after an entire childhood of being a normal eater. I felt like kind of a jerk at the time, basically ignoring it because I'm harsh about people cultivating neuroses. I may have even rolled my eyes. At 21, she's a perfectly normal eater. I just don't get the draw. I mean, I hate the texture of bananas. Does it mean I have texture issues? I've never thought about it that way. I'd be embarrassed to say such a thing. I just don't eat bananas.
It’s so funny that you put it this way.
I have realized, after 57 years, that I’m actually a picky eater. I never thought about it before! I announced this to my mom, who laughed. “We’ve always known that!” She told me. She never told me, and I just didn’t eat stuff I didn’t want. More for everyone else!
Maybe it comes from being descended from Irish famine survivors, or living with my grandpa who went hungry during the depression, but complaining about the food put in front of you was a big no no. You’re grateful, you eat it, and you move on.
This was my family totally. Contrast with the way my stepsister was raised; she is 20 years younger. I remember we were driving to a steakhouse for my dad's birthday once and my stepmother announced that her kid needed to get White Castle because steakhouse no good for her; my dad managed to seethe with rage in a manner only detectable by his snappy retort "well there's a dumpster, why don't we just stop there." I don't remember if my stepsister ate anything that night, all I know is that we didn't go anywhere but the steakhouse.
Right, I don't like cherry/grape tomatoes..I guess it's a "texture issue" but I feel like that terminology elevates a matter of taste into some sort of disorder that must be accommodated.
I have found myself using the phrase "texture issues" more often in recent years to justify my dislike of bananas. As soon as I say those words, I feel like people are much more likely to think "OH, it's a real THING." Same with ARFID vs picky eater.
Yes. If you didn’t like what was for dinner you just didn’t eat. No one is going to starve themselves to death.
I'm just going to push back a little bit on that, Molly. Here in Denver we've had a huge influx of Venezuelan migrants, including little kids. The families have had to rely on food banks, which tend to carry wholesome but awful food, like canned green beans. Some subset of the little kids have wound up in the hospital because they just won't eat what's put in front of them, no matter how hungry they are. The food is so different, and so unpalatable, that they really don't eat.
But I'm mostly with you on otherwise healthy kids who are not undergoing the traumatic transition to a new country that doesn't have arepas but does have canned green beans.
This anecdote does not pass the smell test. I can't believe that that's happening without some kind of variable not mentioned here.
I found it credible purely because I sympathize entirely with little Venezuelan kids who dislike canned green beans. Canned green beans are awful.
I absolutely love canned green beans. But I don't believe any truly, genuinely starving-to-death child would not eat them.
I'm a granola crunchy gardener/pickler-type, but there's something about canned green beans that are just delicious. I don't know why.
The way to solve the problem: smother them in butter. It's how my dad got us to eat our veggies when we were kids, haha.
Well, it's probably fair to surmise that having been dragged across seven countries and the Darien Gap and pulled away from everything that's familiar may have been traumatizing and may have contributed to their difficulties with food.
That is exactly the kind variable I meant. There's a bit more to it than "green beans so white."
I have a friend who runs a food bank. Clients are recent immigrants from a variety of countries. My friend surveyed them to find out what they thought of the food and what they preferred. The overwhelming response was that don't eat canned food and preferred fresh. Unfortunately, canned food is what is donated and is of course non perishable. Anyway, my friend worked hard to get some semblance of what they wanted.
This story reminds me a little of the "resignation syndrome" phenomenon in Sweden.
`awful food, like canned green beans'
When did a staple like canned green beans become awful? A little olive oil, salt and pepper, with or without heating them, and you've got a tasty and nutritious side. I mean, if you boil them for more than a minute they start to taste bad but that's an issue with preparation.
Shout out to everyone who had zero sympathy for the kids who ended up in the hospital because they would rather starve than eat green beans.
You're assuming this is a true story.
It's also the abundance culture in the US. If you grew up in a culture where food was scarce or you had to grow it to eat or it was rationed, this just didn't happen. When I first moved to the US and people were saying, oh I hate mushrooms because of the texture, I was shocked, but then I understood it's a privilege culture thing.
As the parent to “picky eaters” I endorse this. We (as a community) give our kids so many snacks that they can afford to be picky. It makes me crazy. Then I’m made to feel crazy when my husband is like “they need a snack”
Well? They just had breakfast 2 hours ago and I want them to eat the nutritious lunch I have prepared so can you not give them the protein bar that happens to have a pile of sugar in it? And on school days, I send them a small snack and good lunch but school serves muffins for breakfast* and other kids give them cookies from their snacks so my kids don’t eat their lunch.
*in California, every child gets a free breakfast at school.
Yes, I could do things differently to make my kids less able to be picky, but I only have so much control over my children’s diets and it’s not the fight I’m willing to tackle most days.
This is actually part of the diagnostic process for this condition though. Lots of children with Autism who have it have to have feeding tubes and stuff. It can be incredibly intense. My little boy is really really restrictive in what he eats and for a year I just gave him what everyone else was having for dinner and didn’t make a fuss either way. The little fucker didn’t crack once and actually reduced his list of foods. We lost pasta due to me giving him some with too much going on. I discussed it with a friend who works with young people with eating disorders and she told me to just give him what he feels comfortable eating and his growth is back up on track. He is only little but listening to him talk about why he doesn’t like things is really interesting. The other day he asked me if the ham in the sandwich I was making him was noisy ham. Wasn’t sure how to answer that one!
Yes! There are absolutely kids who will starve themselves, the idea that you can just send the kid to bed without dinner one night and they’ll become perfect eaters is insane. Kids with legit mental conditions can have insanely high resistance and parents have to balance making sure the kid gets adequate nutrition (we always made sure to have either kasha or quinoa at every meal since we knew our kid would eat it).
The key with this anxiety stuff is that the kid needs to be firmly but compassionately pushed into trying new things. If every meal turns into a screaming match with their parents it’s only going to make things worse. The kid needs to be brought onboard with the program and to have good therapeutic help. It’s definitely true that there are parents who are way too accommodating of their kids anxiety but the armchair diagnosticians who declare “in my day we just spanked our picky eaters until they ate properly” drive me nuts.
My older son absolutely would starve himself- his food aversions were that strong. He lived on a very limited diet for many years. We figured out how to expand his diet over years but I just laugh when people say kids won’t let themselves starve. Most kids will not. Some definitely will.
A lot of parents threaten this, but from personal experience (as an exceptionally picky eater and undiagnosed autistic), they'll mostly crack if you really do just refuse to eat things you don't like, commit to it, and follow through. It's brinksmanship.
Yeah, I was very picky as a kid, and while I was sometimes made to eat things I didn't like, my parents mostly left me alone. My mother said I would just refuse to eat if she didn't let me have something I liked, so she decided not to worry about it too much. There were usually some leftovers in the fridge I could have if I didn't like what was served.
I hated things like deli cold cuts, wonder bread, hot dogs, and peanut butter and jelly, so basically all the standard kid lunch foods. My school lunches tended to look like a charcuterie plate— a little salami or summer sausage with brie or gouda, olives, and a piece of fruit.
Wow! Sounds like you just had really good taste!
Do you have a bad sense of smell? I have always preferred really strong flavors like that - stinky cheese, garlic, onions, don't care for overly sweet things like caramel - and as an adult I discovered that my sense of smell is sub-par. I assume the two are related.
My daughter is going through the diagnosis process now and she is very very "picky". Loves Red Leicester cheese but not cheddar. Will eat pasta with Bolognese but not consider any other sauce. She started eating burritos this year (but only if made with beef chili and rice) and it was a total breakthrough. She will eat raw carrots but not any fruit except raspberries and blueberries. Yet she loves olives of any kind but won't even consider broccoli or cauliflower. She used to eat curry but had it too often so it's off the menu now.
She eats a lot of boiled eggs basically
Yeah, it's so weird. My son will eat octopus, but not a peanut.
My daughter would only eat beans as long as she believed they were nuts. Once she found out, she never had one again (though she will still eat green beans). Infuriating.
This is really interesting, and makes me feel a bit jerk-ish for assuming my friend's son was just being dramatic and excessively picky. Is there any rhyme or reason to the choices?
This is a bit of a tangent, but my friend's kid is also really into abominable YouTube channels about fancy rich people that are basically just videos of 20 year olds getting into sports cars, eating at fancy restaurant, and buying expensive clothes and watches. I noticed that the kid seemed to like foods that were coded "fancy" like filet mignon, lobster, Thai food (which is definitely perceived as "cool"), etc., and the things he didn't like to eat all seemed declassé, poor-coded, or mainstream.
I'm probably overthinking this. But seriously watching 20 minutes of that kid's YouTube consumption made me fear for the future and be curious about all kinds of strange youth culture I know nothing about since I don't have kids yet.
I mean, being dramatic and excessively picky can certainly be part of it! But there are foods that will just make him throw up.
I really don't know what the connecting factor is. He loves tuna, salmon, octopus (Spanish ones from a tin), chicken nuggets (but only the ones from McDonalds), grilled cheese (how Dad makes it), fried shrimp (only from Culver's), PB&J, Doritos, and Cheetos. Won't eat pizza with cheese on it (again, has to be Dad's). Everything has an asterisk.
Do you think this has to do with the little bits of peanut residue that linger in the mouth after eating them? I like nuts (and peanuts) but I can imagine that the residue could be an issue.
I guess if you need paint stripped, boiled egg farts will do the job!
That's why you have to not break, which is hard with autistic kids because their myopia gives them crazy unnatural willpower for a child.
It's not myopia-- it's that for us, the unpleasantness of eating (or in some cases smelling, touching or just being near) the food in question outweighs the unpleasantness of being hungry.
It's just utilitarianism with an unusual landscape of utility weights (which are, after all, completely arbitrary).
Or you could be like me and then stay up late and raid the pantry of cereal.
I would also like to push back on that. We all know that there actually are children who would starve themselves to death, children who need to be hospitalized and force fed because they have anorexia. If we can accept that children would starve themselves over body issues why would we refuse to believe that they can do it for other reasons?
Yeah exactly. People get super judgy when it comes to parents. I have two kids, one of them would literally throw up if given something that had the wrong texture until age 2 and yet is not at all a picky eater at age 5. The other ate everything we put in front of him until the age of 3 and then became incredibly difficult to feed. We keep trying different things and over the years we’ve significantly expanded his palate but this idea of “oh you just didn’t scream at your kid enough when he was little” is just not healthy.
The difference between “a picky eater” and an actual mental health condition is pretty huge. The older kid will literally track what you’ve touched and then scream at you to wash your hands if you touch one of the “bad” foods, similar to what you’d do if you saw someone touching raw chicken. That isn’t just being a picky eater, it’s basically a variant of OCD and the kid needs to be a willing participant in the treatment so having an antagonistic relationship with food and parents is not going to help.
FWIW I share the objections to this dumb social media account but I am 100% on board with this kids treatment, it sounds like the therapists know exactly what they’re doing.
Your last point is where I land and it disappointed me that Hadley (who I thought was a pretty good guest host overall) basically copped to thinking that the kid’s condition may have been a phase that the mom exacerbated or indulged despite the pretty detailed account Katie gave of what led to the diagnosis.
Would I be surprised to hear a B&R story where a mom turns her kid’s picky eating into social media fodder and lies about a rare diagnosis to lend the story mystique? Not at all. But that’s not what this seems to be and so there should be more benefit of the doubt to the parent, at least on the diagnosis/treatment front.
This was my parents rule too. If you didn't eat what mum or dad put on the table, you could go hungry! So, none of us four kids were picky eaters.
How did this work on you guys? I was/am very picky but we have 3 meals a day and I am not going to not like everything all three meals.... If I was so picky as to miss a meal, I can make it up in other places.
It worked fine on us as kids...I mean, we were never literally forced to eat anything we really didn't like for reasons of taste and were gagging over, but there were six of us in my immediate family and not a lot of money around, so food waste was a big no no. You absolutely had to eat your vegetables though, or no dessert. If you'd complained about texture I think mum would have laughed you out the room. We do all eat a lot of veg as adults!
I would have no problem not getting dessert to not eat my vegetables.
I have the same thoughts. One of my brothers is “on the spectrum” and another had sensory issues as a kid in the 90s (tags cut out of shirts, sweatpants only, no Halloween costumes, etc.) However we grew up on food stamps so there was no picky eating allowed in our house. You ate what was on the plate—canned spinach, canned beets, generic govt meat crumbles, etc. I remember a few basic childhood disagreements about food but never these meltdowns and outright avoidance that ARFID parents describe.
One theory I have heard is that it could be due to early childhood allergies or intolerances or even foodborne illnesses putting kids off of certain foods at young ages. But again, what has changed since 1993 that is functionally preventing kids from eating?
Also, very noticeable that ARFID folks seem perfectly capable of eating, essentially, junk food.
One of the most amazing statements I heard was a parent claiming that their son was an "extreme supertaster" and therefore couldn't eat chocolate. But he loves extremely spicy Thai food. But eggs are a no-go.
I was just thinking "oh my god the dog has trained you"
My BIL’s mom was a “super taster”. She worked for General Mills for a long time. Her whole job was to taste things!
Dogs are super smellers. It doesn’t make them not want to smell intense things. What a weird idea that mom has.
That sounds like a dream job!
I learned from her that Cheerios have that “almost something” taste for a reason. It creates something called “chasing flavor”, where you keep eating it, trying to intensify the flavor. You never get there, but you eat more than you would have if it had a strong taste.
😮 This explains why the proper mouthful of grape nuts is like 3/4 of a cup in volume....
I always think about that when I hear some of these stories - the people whose dog will only eat if they put the food in a certain dish, or at the table etc. not saying there aren’t kids with neurologic or mental health disorders who have genuine issues with food avoidance or rejection, but a lot of times it sounds like the way the issue is handled maybe reinforces instead of reducing it.
Being a supertaster is specifically about being extremely sensitive to bitter and sulphurous tastes. It doesn't really have anything to do with spice tolerance. So having issues with chocolate and eggs, but not with Thai food, actually seems pretty consistent.
I don't know if I'm a supertaster -- I love dark chocolate, so probably not a full one -- but eggs have always smelled like sulphur to me, even when fresh and no matter how well they're cooked. As an otherwise vegetable-loving kid, I hated cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) for the same reason. I'm otherwise an adventurous eater and have learned to enjoy those as an adult, but eggs still set off my gag reflex as if trying to make myself eat something rotten.
It's honestly a bit embarrassing -- brunch gets inconvenient -- and not something I like to draw attention to, but the aversive response is so intense and visceral that it's not something I've been able to train myself out of despite occasionally trying.
I think your idea about allergies or intolerances may be part of the explanation. Not all food allergies are life threatening or even severe. Food allergies have risen in the US since 2000 thanks to the biggest pediatrician's group in the US telling parents they should delay introduction of foods like peanuts until 18-24 months. Women were even told to avoid these foods while pregnant. The animal and epidemiological evidence showed the opposite at the time, so I'm not sure why they made that recommendation aside from lingering sympathy for Puritanism. Not being exposed to soil bacteria and parasites also probably raises the risk of food allergies (and autoimmune disorders) and that may have played a role now that kids are spending more time in structured activities and less in unstructured activities.
What I find a little off putting is that, typically, eating disorders at their root aren’t *about* food. Being a picky eater is dramatically different than anorexia, and I worry that people are inclined to conflate ARFID (which actually does seem to be food-driven) with other conditions that have deeper causes. Maybe I’m thinking about this wrong though.
But think about the similarities: this child’s ARFID keeps the whole family focused on her. She obtains an illness identity, and everyone is dancing to her tune. That sounds precisely like an eating disorder.
Honestly, that doesn’t sound at all like my experience, though admittedly my experience is entirely subjective and based on unique and non-replicable circumstances. Personally as an anorexia patient I just wanted to be left alone, and that was a common thread among the women I was in inpatient and outpatient treatment with. But that was a long-ago era and different locale so again might not be representative.
It’s probably multi factorial, like most things.
I
I really remember going on a school camping trip and two of the children having a list of foods they ate including which type of crisps etc. and that was 30 years ago. I think we just have a name for it now and we are all just aware of the minutiae of each other lives because of social media. Of course that’s making it worse probably but I’m sure in 1993 parents were quietly buying safe foods for their children and not making a fuss about it. The autistic children I know who have this condition are both non verbal and their families are very offline. It’s just another thing they deal with.
My father was a picky eater well into adulthood.
He agreed to eat his first pizza in middle age when we were actually in Italy on holiday.
He was born in 1951. As a child he refused cheese, most veggies, baked beans… and loads more I can’t remember.
He doesn’t have any diagnoses. My nephew (his grandson) is autistic, though, so there may be something genetic going on.
Haven’t listened yet but I do think kids were always picky eaters. My own mom said I once said ‘I’ll eat it if you don’t make it again’. Kids have different taste bud receptors so don’t enjoy bitter tastes the way adults do. This is said to be why kids (generally) hate vegetables. I know I’ve also never liked the texture of raw tomatoes even tho I love the taste. Eating a tomato in a salad causes me to wretch. Whether that’s a gag reflex from some associative disorder (like the way the smell of oysters can make some people feel sick) or something else I don’t know.
I think now people are just prone to put labels on things whereas before it was ‘I don’t like it’.
I think your last sentence nails what bothers me about this - "I don't like it" is a me problem, "I have a texture issue" is a you problem that implies that you must provide me with something that does not agitate my serious texture based condition.
Mate, my ma was never providing me with anything other than the 10-12 recipes she knew. 😂 That woman had a full time job dealing with the very worst in society, her kids were getting what was on the plate and that was it.
Good point for my fave ‘it’s a you problem’ food story. University (london), going to Brussels for an EU institutions trip. All day travelling, arrive at this big city centre / conference hotel. About 80 students. Students had declared ‘regular diets / vegetarian / vegan’ (that was it - no nut allergy / halal / I don’t like corn options available. I’m sitting with a girl who is vegan. The waiters come out and serve the normal diet folk first - a slice of cold beef, a piece of lettuce and a slice of cheese. Shitty but the hotel is t going to care. Then they serve the vegetarians - they get the lettuce leaf and cheese. The vegan beside me gets the same, she starts complaining in bad French that she is vegan, can’t eat the cheese. The waiter looks at her, looks at the plate… just lifts off the cheese and walks away. Gal had a single slice of unseasoned lettuce for her dinner.
Yeah the idea that picky eating is some kind of new phenomenon is... bizarre. Nonsensical, really.
It's exactly the same phenomenon as people who want to gatekeep the definition of autism. "Back in my day, autism meant you were beating your head bloody daily! None of this social anxiety crap!" That kind of thing. The reason there are more people diagnosed now is that we're actually looking for it and have recognized that there's a spectrum of developmental issues here.
Don’t mention the A word…. It’s like beetlejuice to some round here.
Oh no-- I already did it!
Your last sentence is the answer. Everyone has a few foods they don't like and texture is a very common reason not to like something. It's just that now we have this quasi-medical label for it that's permeated our culture. Same thing with diagnosing people as narcissists rather than just calling them self-involved assholes. Language has shifted towards describing everything in medical and therapy terms.
As a child I couldn't eat anything with a jelly texture or fat, especially on a meat, there was always fat on it. Or anything like a pulled pork texture, meat strings. And I am 45 and grew up in Soviet Union where they weren't all that permissive. My mom once managed to buy a crab I think and it was a huge deal, but I couldn't eat it. There was some screaming and crying, she was literally trying to push that crab meat into my mouth, didn't succeed though.
But I did get over it, eventually, so now I am a vegan and never ever tried any seafood other than fish, so all good lol
I have a very strong aversion to bananas, as does my sister. As in we will vomit if we eat it. When we were growing up in the '80's and '90's this was a bit extreme, but we were allowed to pass up bananas because it if the kid is vomiting it's not worth making them eat it. Aside from that, we were basically told that if we didn't like what was served, we didn't have to eat it but we weren't going to get anything else. Some of this may be that people are more comfortable talking about food aversion. I also wonder if some of it is that parents didn't get the helpful tips about getting kids to try new foods and overcome aversion.
The other thing that may be going on is a change in the types of stress. Right now a lot of kids whose early years were in the pandemic (in the West Coast we didn't go back to normal until early 2023) and it simply wasn't possible for the parents to protect their kids from all of the social dysfunction in that time. There also seems to be a trend toward talking to kids about threats that are existential or far away rather than immediate and that may be driving it.
I have a similar policy with my kids: I try to serve several different items at family meals, and hopefully the kids will like some or all of them, but if they ask for food that isn't on the table, I say, "That's not on the menu." I do wonder if this approach--old-school and borrowed from my own mom!--might eradicate a large amount of the "picky eating" in the culture.
I say this with humility because there are other possibilities. My moody kid used to have huge tantrums around food that vanished after we finally got the mood disorder adequately treated. So I don't think pickiness is always the parents' fault.
100% right on that last point. I was a somewhat picky eater, but part of it was an extreme reluctance and resistance to one of my parents and refusing to eat new foods and having strong reactions to them was a way of fighting back and having some control. It’s not always about the food.
All of my kids have mild sensory preferences around clothes, which I accommodate because it's no big deal and I'd rather fight other battles. For their cousin who's an extremely picky eater (as in, the kid eats about 6-8 foods), I think both that the kid really does have sensory issues and that those issues can be accommodated and magnified much more easily in our modern American culture than they could have been even in my parents' childhoods, when groceries were a much larger proportion of a family's household expenses.
I did know kids (mostly adolescent girls) who were picky eaters when I was growing up, which is perhaps unsurprising, since I grew up in the heyday of eating disorders.
Culture can really exacerbate underlying tendencies.
I think that’s fair enough, but I have to admit that I grew up in one of those households where I hated eating meat, but had to eat it every night and eat it all. And if I didn’t like it, my stepfather would give me something to cry about, which is also a whole bullshit belief that I’m glad has gone by the wayside.
No I don’t believe in bending over so backwards that a household can’t function but being aware that food shouldn’t make somebody feel uncomfortable on a daily basis and there should be some attempt to be mindful of peoples preferences. I think it’s good thing. And I did have some sensory and texture stuff that made me really uncomfortable and I could never literally discuss it because it would just be mocked. I guess the thing is is that it wasn’t so great before this and maybe we should find something in the middle which happens mostly, just not on social media or in wealthy communities.
One of my closest friends has/had a daughter who is just rail thin and was always falling off the bottom of the growth charts and would just never eat anything unless it was just so from about the age of 2 or 3.
Eating there is always this weird production where everyone else is eating normal food and she is getting strawberries and string cheese.
And while on the one hand I can understand how when you child is eating so little they are unhealthy you are desperate to do anything to get them to eat. On the other hand how their whole house revolves around her eating definitely does not help the problem. I think in some sense they took a temporary problem and made it a permanent problem by their reaction to it.
When you say, the whole revolving around it and it was a production do you just mean she was eating different food? Cutting up a few strawberries doesn’t sound like a big deal if your child isn’t growing
I don't live there, we are close friends but I have eaten lets say only 20-30 meals there over the past several years (we live on opposite sides of the country).
No its not about the level of effort, obviously string cheese is easy! It is about how the whole house there revolves around the kids and their drama. Bedtime was this huge production with her and their other son, long past the time my kids grew out of it (my wife still spends a lot of time on our kid's bedtime, but it is a choice, they will absolutely just go to bed if you tell them to with no production and that happens regularly). Meals there always needs to be an alternate plan for what she is eating, or literally the whole meal needs to be crafted around her.
I think one time I was visiting I don't think I ever saw her eat one "normal" thing. We are having bread and green beans and chicken, she is eating cut up strawberries and string cheese. Another time we are eating salad bar and shrimp and cut up fruit, and she is eating macaroni and cheese. Or whatever.
Just a lot of discussion about her needs and her pickiness etc.
It doesn't seem like there is any unifying theme to her behavior than playing absurd power games for attention with her parents. And she has been doing it for 10! years. And now their younger kid is in therapy too and has an ADHD and other diagnoses.
I don't know maybe I am just blessed with sane kids, it is so hard to know. But I detect this real pattern among parents I know where the ones where they let the kids push them around, the kids are just a mess. And possibly that causation is "bad kids make bad parents", and it isn't really the parents fault.
But there is some decent part of me that strongly, strongly believes that if she had just come and lived with us for a month when she was 3 or 4 none of this would have happened because we simply wouldn't have put up with her shit. Kids live inside the boxes you craft for them, particularly at that age.
IDK parenting it hard, and it is dangerous to be judgy because different children are different. And yet I detect pretty clear patterns among whose kids are "normal" and whose are a "handful" (or in therapy at 7) and it definitely isn't about how conscientious and well adjusted the parents are. Or how nice or good of people they are. To me instead seems to be more about how willing the parents are to for lack of a better word "let your kids know who is boss".
Don't let your kids win a fight with you ever. It is fine to recognize your are wrong and apologize, to have them reason you out of your position. But they should never bully you out of your position, or wear you down emotionally so you give in. Once they understand they can manipulate you, you are setting yourself up for failure.
To add to this, I know many families who have dealt with weird sensory issues and whose kids have mostly overcome them by the time they are about 5/6 years old, and the unifying theme among all of them is that they never made it their whole personality. They just did the PT/OT/whatever kind of therapy and didn't adjust their entire family dynamic around it and their kids learned to cope and got better. I have also been blessed with normal kids and have a hard time judging families who haven't, but it seems to me like there is a sweet spot in between, "we just parent old school and don't take any shit from our kids" and, "little Johnny only eats buttered noodles and grapes cut into eighths" where the issues are real but can be overcome with a bit of outside help and no-drama consistency.
You have just described my parenting style as well. In fact, my husband and I used to joke that our friends should give us one of their sons (being a whiny, picky eater was the least of his issues) for a week, and we would return a new person. With him, it was definitely a way to manipulate his parents and make the household revolve around him. Fun fact: As an adult, he is STILL unlikeable.
My sibling is autistic and was an extremely picky eater growing up. Mom worked around this by coarsely chopping the offending foodstuff while meal-prepping so he could easily pick it out at dinner. As we got older our parents would ask him to try one or two bites of whatever side vegetable he had left on the plate before moving on to dessert.
I feel like there was usually a back-up meal to microwave if he tried a couple bites and couldn't handle it. We helped out in the kitchen a lot and I think knowing exactly what was going to be in a meal, and knowing he wasn't going to starve if it freaked him out, made it easier for him to try new things.
I feel like it worked well! He's a fairly adventurous eater as an adult.
I was an extremely picky eater, and so is my son. His friends seem to have no such issues. I think there will just always be some kids who are shitheads about food.
Now, I would never have him diagnosed with whatever acronym that was. I just get him to eat what we can and know that he will probably grow out of it, like I (sort of) did.
You also don't know what foods his friends obstinately refuse at home....
I just know I'd die of happiness if my son ate a tenth of the things I see the other children eat. There are no fruits or vegetables he will willingly eat, and he throws up if he eats rice. He's pretty much an ideal child in every other way though, so I guess I'll keep him.
Also just to follow up, I'm willing to admit that people frequently have "texture issues" with various ethnic foods - Konjac, the big chunk of fat on a caribbean pork chop, the weird bite of liver, etc., but that kind of stuff just gets put in the "I don't like it" bucket whereas the "texture issue" bucket is mostly comprised of foods that are commonly eaten in America.
Everyone in my immediate family has some kind of texture issue with certain foods, and yet I wouldn't describe any of us as picky eaters.
It’s probably not as black and white. I’m a moderately picky eater from a long line of picky eaters. My 80 year old aunt (who grew up in very modest circumstances with no candy at all) won’t touch tomatoes, cucumber, poultry or anything she’s never eaten before with a ten foot pole. She lives alone now and only cooks what she likes so it’s not a problem for her any longer. My wife, who would have met the criteria for ARFID as a child, had her restrictive eating issues beaten out of her by her (physician) parents. She will now eat anything but doesn’t really know what she likes any more and can’t tell when she’s full, so tends to overeat. So yes, permissive parenting does affect how we deal with it, but restrictive eating itself is definitely not a new phenomenon.
It's really cruel to tell kids that they "can't" do something because they find it unpleasant.
To Hadley’s point about professionals who have kids identifying as trans causing a chilling effect in their own workplaces about addressing the issue, I was recently told by a literary agent that he couldn’t ever represent me if I wrote a book about trans issues because he had colleagues whose kids identify as trans.
Really enjoyed that. I’ve always loved reading her whether in the Guardian or the Times, and she’s just as funny in podform. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her in audio form before. Nice to hear her voice!
I’m impressed that she can be so sanguine about the whole Guardian debacle - she was really screwed over by the management team who should have stood up for her.
Has anyone heard any of Julie in Genderland yet? It’s a 10 part podcast that’s just out, featuring Julie Bindel talking to parents, detransitioners and others. I’m 3 eps in and it’s eye popping even for someone who thought they were fairly well versed in trans issues. The overstep of UK social services alone ought to be a national scandal.
Had no idea this podcast series existed, thanks for the tip!
Ohhhh. That sounds fantastic!!
been saying this for years, adopting a nonbinary identity is just the newest way for girls to try to “opt out” of going through female puberty. i literally bound my chest for years in the early 2000s, i didn’t want breasts or hips because those things represented fat to me (along w everything else that sucks about being a woman.) you can see a lot of these kids have ED as well anyway, i really think it’s all the same root problem in many cases
Yeah IMO nonbinary actually makes a lot of sense when viewed as a way for girls to escape being female without necessarily committing to hormones and surgery.
Being fine with what happened to Woody Allen is probably my most divergent opinion from K&J on the pod. Dude is a creep who gives off the vibes of someone who would do gross exploitive things and everyone near him said, ya, absolutely it tracks. Sorry skeezy 80 year old rich guy, you have to retire instead of making another movie about an older getting with a younger woman.
Everyone's entitled to their "vibes," of course. But I do hope that facts matter more than vibes when it comes to judging other people to have done terrible things. Otherwise, we're all just religious fundamentalists or QAnon devotees by some other name.
He violated the rule about getting involved with multiple members of the same family. It’s an old rule, but a good one.
I agree! And (because) it usually ends in disaster. In this case it ended in what 2 investigations determined were false accusations likely coached out of a small child by a vindictive and abusive mother. Fortunately, it also ended in a long, happy marriage and two grown, healthy kids.
I’m old school, I guess. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t end up as badly as it might have, because if he’d followed the rule she might have been happily married to someone else, her mother would not have found nude polaroids of her on her own mantel, and Woody Allen might not be even now be being called a creep on a podcast comment thread (he’s a creep). He did a bad thing. I don’t care that it worked out for him in the end.
Considering that her mother physically and emotionally abused her, I doubt Soon Yi cares too much that she found those pictures, but I know that Allen wishes they hadn't entered the relationship the way that they did. I don't know if he's a creep, anymore (maybe he is, but absent evidence, we don't know). I don't think what someone did decades ago should define them if they don't do that thing anymore. The idea that "once a (X), always a (X)" is for people who don't believe in parole or the human capacity to evolve and improve.
It’s definitely messy behaviour, but as long as messiness in your personal life doesn’t interfere with your work and doesn’t escalate to illegality, I don’t think it should destroy someone’s career. If making messy, stupid (but legal!) decisions in your personal life is to be a career-ending sin, we’ll have to write off most creatives, artists, and performers.
I did not say his career should be destroyed. I said he’s a creep who broke an old and good rule.
Nah, like I said, not interested in your “well akshually” defenses of him. The vibes are backed up by a little thing called getting involved with a step daughter once she was legal age after building a career on self portrayal where of being a creep.
I don't think what they did was the right thing to do, but she was never his step-daughter. Not that facts would matter, as a devotion to "vibes" tends to deprioritize anything which might create nuance.
I dislike the affair with Soon-Yi and don't care that it's been 30 years. Gross.
That doesn't mean he sexually abused a child. Lots of people do some bad things but not every possible bad thing.
Listening to this podcast was the first time I have ever thought that Woody Allen may have gotten a raw deal.
I don’t think many people have ever believed the pedo thing. It was just too thin and out of character. Particularly since it has been wildly obvious since Manhattan that his thing is older teenaged girls. He was inappropriate with the actress Hemingway around the time the movie was filmed.
I just think going for the daughter of your girlfriend is gross, so it hasn’t bothered me that people have wrongly branded him as a pedo. But I guess that’s wrong.
For anyone interested, there's a very interesting, important, and relatively unheard perspective here:
https://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html
I've interacted with several of Mia Farrow's many, many children on various different occasions and they are universally very strange. I feel like no one has ever questioned how she's able to get an endless supply of kids to adopt and how that living situation could possibly be functional.
Moses Farrow's account should absolutely shame anyone who joined the mob to destroy Allen. Required reading.
I believed Dylan's accusations when they were published in the NYT, as did a bunch of my friends and family at the time.
Having read more about the case since, I think I was credulous and wrong to believe the accusations on the basis of a newspaper column. I bet a lot of people didn't read more and still believe the accusations.
I believe that Dylan herself thinks that it happened. That doesn't mean that it did.
That's my best guess, too. So sad.
Yeah, marrying his step daughter is creepy as shit NO MATTER WHAT CONTEXT. A good person would never do it- it’s like the Louis CK thing. CK is very funny and I used to enjoy his material, till I realised it wasn’t surrealist “what if” it was a confessional.
Mia Farrow was 21 when she married Frank Sinatra, age 50, in 1966. I've never heard of a woman gasping and fainting over that relationship. This is sexist hypocrisy.
Yes, but Farrow was a grown adult and not getting together with someone from her extended family. But that said, she’s been kind of inconsistent about her views on the subject, considering she was friends with Roman Polanski long after her accusations against Woody Allen in the early 90s.
Plus her own brother is a convicted paedophile. They’re still close. She never mentions that
And Farrow's long been a defender of Polanski as well.
Thing is, he didn't marry his step daughter. He never even lived with Mia Farrow and didn't have even a friendly relationship with Soon Yi until she was an adult.
I think it's very important to have a firm grasp of the facts if one is going to judge another person as having done something terrible.
They kept separate apartments, but they were very much together for years and years. They have two bio kids together! They didn’t just meet for coffee a few times and casually date.
As for a friendly relationship with Soon Ye, he regularly picked her up from High school and spent a lot of time with her. I’m sorry, it’s gross behavior.
I don’t give him bonus points for waiting until she was 21 before banging her.
The fact that they are still together could point to it being true love.
Remember Mary Kay Letourno and the middle school student she had sex with? They stayed together too, for many years, and it was just a testament to how much she fucked up that poor kid.
I don't mean to imply that they entered into the relationship in a healthy way. They've both said as much. I only mean to push back against claims that he's a pedophile. It was a bad situation made worse by bad, impulsive choices and I'm glad to see that their relationship has been better/healthier than most would have been in those circumstances.
He did get out, finally. What a thing to have to reconcile in your adulthood, as you raise the kids you had with your abuser.
There is nothing remotely "gross" about two adults, of any age variant, have a loving relationship. Your anxiety is Victorian nonsense.
Listen here bigot, you haven't considered power differentials. A man who dates a woman even a single day younger than him is clearly engaging in abuse! It's gross and makes me feel ikky and so that means it's bad. He has way more power and in a fair and equal society a women would never willingly accept this. The same is also if he earns a single dollar more than her and while I'm at it we should consider race too. White people have all the power so we can't just let them date non-whites either.
I think there's a bit of a difference between 12 (Vili Fualaau) and 21 (Soon-Yi Previn).
I remember Mary Kay Letourno and that in the end, they stayed together and even had a family. And, no, I don’t consider that a symptom of long-term damage, even if the circumstances where they first got together are rightly considered an abuse of power. But at a certain point, busybodies need to step the fuck aside and not second-guess other people’s consensual relationships or sexual practices.
They divorced and the husband gave a statement to People Magazine saying that he now recognized that the relationship wasn't healthy.
https://people.com/crime/mary-kay-letourneau-vili-fualaau-splitting-up-after-reconciliation/
He didn't exactly turn around and hate on her or call her an abuser, either. It sounds like a situation that was, to use Jesse's favourite word, complicated. In stories like this, many folks tend to cherry-pick out only the most damning details.
He had a sexual relationship with his son's sister which also involved cheating on his son's mother. That is a huge violation of family boundaries. Even setting aside the allegations of abuse (which are just about impossible to unravel at this point), that's behaviour that shows he has no concern for the emotional security of his own child, let alone anyone else in that household.
Besides the fact that the allegations of abuse were unraveled by two separate, professional and public investigations which both concluded that there was no evidence that abuse occurred and much evidence that Dylan was coached by her mother, and that the son whose sister he cheated with has a very good relationship with them both (see the link below), yes, he absolutely did a very bad thing 33 years ago, I completely agree. What does this tell us about who he is today?
How has Allen behaved in the last 30 years? The last 20 or 10 years? Certainly, no one here knows for sure, and there's been no evidence of similarly irresponsible and unhealthy behavior.
It's reasonable to judge behavior and actions, especially when someone is harmed in one way or another. But, *absent any relevant evidence*, I don't believe it's reasonable to judge the character of person decades after they behaved in irresponsible and even harmful ways.
Yes,those investigations did take place, as you say, but Dylan Farrow continues to maintain as an adult that the abuse happened. That doesn't make me jump to the belief that Woody Allen is definitely an abuser but it does make think, combined with his willingness to trample over normal family boundaries in a way that I consider abusive to his child, that he might be. I don't think anyone will ever be able to know at this point.
I agree with you that none of us knows how Allen has behaved for the last 30 years but does that really mean we can't make a judgement about his character based on what we do know? I mean, as far as I'm aware, Roman Polanski hasn't sodomised any more 13 year old girls but I still think he's a bad person.
I very much understand and respect your perspective, but I don't know these people, so I don't expend any energy having any opinions as to whether or not they're good or bad people. I only know what they did decades ago. This could be partly because I often work professionally with folks who have been released from prison and try to help them start over. I always tell them that I don't care what they did so much as I care what they're doing.
I think the very worst thing about all of it is that Dylan sincerely believes she was abused. I have nothing but sympathy for her. My opinion is that, based on the investigations and our growing understanding of false memory syndrome over the last 25 years (along with the physical and mental abuse endured by her siblings), Mia Farrow is primarily responsible for the pain Dylan experiences. Of course, I'm old enough to have been mistaken about many things and I could be mistaken about this.
Well, if you buy into Elizabeth Loftus theories on memory, even a small suggestion that an event happened during childhood can trigger a false memory, never mind being raised in a family situation where you’ve been told since you were 7 that this happened to you. I’m sure Dylan Farrow believes this happened to her, but that’s not enough to make it an open and shut case, imo.
As to Polanski, on one hand, his victim, Samantha Geimer has long since forgiven him and wants the case dropped and the press to just leave her alone. On the other hand, there are several other allegations against Polanski, some for even a more serious degree of sexual assault than the Geimer case.
Sorry, but Soon-Yi is no victim, as much as busybodies want to force her into that role. That said, it was a pretty horrible thing to do to his ex-wife. I don’t think that rises to anything remotely criminal (though I suppose there’s a kind of victim feminism that sees hurting a woman’s feelings in any capacity as abuse), but I wouldn’t blame someone for seeing that as a negative judgement on his character. I also wouldn’t blame someone for being relatively indifferent - “that’s between him and his family”, etc.
Half agree. Do I think he's a pedophile or a criminal? No. Do I think he's a disgusting slimeball for cheating on his wife with her newly-legal daughter? Hell yes, and for that reason I have zero interest in him or any of his work. However, I understand that some people are able to look past that, and that's their prerogative.
It's reasonable to dislike how they entered their relationship (as I do), but I do think it's relevant that he was never married to Mia Farrow, never lived with her, and Soon Yi was never his daughter, legal or otherwise. I totally get the "creepy" vibe, and very much respect your prerogative to ignore him and his work. On the bright side (!), they've been together for over 30 years, married for 27, raised two grown daughters and seem to be very happy together.
Good for them. Still don't like him. I never called Soon Yi his daughter. Cheating on a woman with HER daughter is nasty enough on its own. I don't care what their relationship was like afterwards, that's creepy as hell.
Allen never cheated on Farrow. Farrow screwed Frank Sinatra and lied about the pregnancy. She was, and still is, despicable. Woody Allen is still a genius with a wife who loves him dearly.
Yes, he did. The divorce was initiated after the affair came to light. And I never defended Mia Farrow or her cheating. What she did was wrong, too, but not as wrong as banging your girlfriend's daughter. Come the hell on.
Yeah, I think trying to figure out who in the Farrow-Allen relationship was a better person morally is kind of a bum angle.
Woody Allen makes better movies so I like him more.
Sadly he hasn't made a great movie since, I'd say, Manhattan Murder Mystery
I think they were both pretty messed up in their own way and it’s questionable whether they were fit to raise a family. That said, being a train wreck in your personal life isn’t enough for me to judge someone negatively as an artist. In fact, “Husbands and Wives” is a good example of a great film coming out of bad personal circumstances.
I don’t consider “creepy” to be a serious moral judgement. I only judge someone if they’ve crossed the line into real abuse.
Your standards are different than mine, and that's fine if it works for you. Avoiding "creepy" men is a survival skill for women, I don't expect you to understand.
It's not looking past it exactly. I think it's more not making it a central focus.
A good friend's parents married when the mom was pregnant at 15. Did I judge her dad harshly when I learned he was 21 at that wedding. Yes, I did (as did most of our friends, and my friend and her siblings for a limited time). But at some point, defining someone by a terrible wrong, rather than what's in front of you (in my friend's parents case, the best 50+ year marriage I ever knew), is a big miss.
Here’s my take: the way Woody talks about the beginning of his relationship with Soon Yi, including the things she supposedly said to him, doesn’t past the smell test based on what is publicly known about her.
Frankly, it reminds me a lot of how men who’ve been caught with underage girls talk about their relationships, using phrases like, “she was the aggressor, she came on to me” and “she’s not what everyone thinks, she’s so smart and mature”. It also feels like a vibe of facilitated communication (see previous the BARpod episode or the Netflix documentary “Tell Them You Love Me” for details), where the person supposedly speaking sounds identical to the person transcribing the quote. The Soon Yi in Woody’s recollecting sounds a lot like Woody.
Here are some excerpts from his autobiography that dip into what I’m talking about: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/woody-allen-soon-yi-previn-affair-memoir-220941443.html
The fact is, Woody met Soon Yi when she was age 7, not when she was 21. They’ve stated that their relationship began when she was in college, that he never realized he was attracted to her before then, that he was barely in her life at all! Okay. Just as many people look at the court records of the Dylan’s/Mia’s accusations with a skeptical eye, I’m extremely skeptical about Woody’s self reporting here.
I don’t think Woody is a pedophile, for what it’s worth. But I do think he’s demonstrated that he’s potentially an opportunistic abuser based on the Soon Yi stuff.
I also don’t think we can draw conclusions that their relationship is a beautiful love story just because of the length of their marriage, as another poster already pointed out, Mary Kay Letourneau stayed married to Vili Fualaau for 14 years. These kinds of relationships with epic power imbalances can be a complete mind fuck for the younger/less powerful people involved.
All that to say, I hope that I’m wrong and Woody has never touched a younger girl since he’s been with Soon Yi, and that his daughters are safe and happy.
It doesn’t track, though, because there was never any evidence, there were two official investigations, there is also no indication he had pedophilic tendencies that surfaced with any other young person. Yes, the Soon-Yi thing was hurtful, improper, icky… but it was not child rape, and it was not illegal.
“…and everyone near him said, ya, absolutely it tracks…”
http://mosesfarrow.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-son-speaks-out-by-moses-farrow.html?m=1
Why are so many Americans turning in sex-phobic prudes? Allen is a hardworking genius who deserves all the love he receives from his wonderful wife, Soon-Yi.
I wish Substack had a dislike button
The thing is they're not really sex-phobic per se. If this guy had a gay relationship with a male with a similar age gap, the same people losing their minds over this would be totally fine with it. Or if he was in a polycule.
In part because this board is in the “gender-critical” orbit, hence radical feminist views about sexuality, which are prudish as all getup, are commonplace here. Albeit, ”TERF Island” Brits can easily out-prude Americans, with fewer barriers for calling in the state to intervene in matters of private morality.
Yeah , he still fucked his stepdaughter (a child found living on the street at age 7 and then adopted by a crazy lady) and took pornographic pictures of her while he was still married to that crazy lady. So yeah, he didn’t have to touch Dylan for me to think he’s morally repugnant and is mostly suffering the consequences of his actions.
I think what they did at the beginning of their relationship was wrong. So do they. And, for clarity, she was never his stepdaughter and he was never married to Farrow and they never lived together and he never spent the night at their home.
Doing something morally repugnant decades ago doesn't mean that person is still morally repugnant, especially absent any evidence whatsoever that the repugnant behavior continued.
ThEY wErEN’T mArRiEd. Allen is the legal father to three children with Farrow. He came to the house every day, many days at 6:30 am with breakfast. They were partners for 10 years. Call that what you will. I’ve read everything you have posted and years ago at that. Sometimes they say the relationship didn’t start until she was 21, but other times they say she was 19. And Soon Yi says that he pursued her and that is what she liked, “feeling wanted”. What he did wasn’t illegal. I watched an episode of that HBO show about the whorehouse in Nevada. The main pimp had a girl there the night before her 18 th birthday. He fucked her at midnight and put her to work the next day. Also not illegal. Soon Yi was a street urchin adopted by an abusive woman. Allen did nothing to stop the abuse, but started fucking her when she was 19.
It’s fine that you are ok with it and it’s fine that others are not. That’s one thing about tolerance- you have to tolerate people not agreeing with your moral judgments.
He is living with the fallout of his choice. It wasn’t an illegal choice, but people don’t have to condone it even though you do.
And I still watch woody Allen movies AND I lose no sleep for what he has gone through. Not a miscarriage of justice. Crazy abusive woman he didn’t protect his kids from comes for him and he suddenly cares about her victims. Both he and Farrow reaped what the sowed.
That's a long response when I've only corrected your factual misstatements and I've said (repeatedly) what he did was wrong. No matter how wrong it was and whether or not he deserved professional consequences for that bad behavior, my primary points are that we don't know what kind of a person he is now, decades later, and that it's wrong to accuse someone of pedophilia and child sexual abuse when there's no evidence for it. Pretty simple, really.
This sounds like the same bullshit that leads people to excusing Polanski. There are levels to past behavior, and his was pretty damn low.
Considering I don't excuse Allen for his bad behavior, I don't know how that could lead to excusing Polanski's much worse behavior.
Again, my only points are that what he did was bad (no excusing!), but we don't know what know what kind of person he is today, and there's no evidence that he's a pedophile. That's it, pretty simple.
And let’s leave soon Yi aside. Allen had three children he was a father to. When he had the affair with Soon Yi there was no other possible outcome than his relationships with those children exploding. Imagine if your father chose fucking your sister over exiting his relationship with your abusive mother in a clean way. There is no way that you fuck a woman’s daughter and then you have a functioning co-parent relationship afterwards. No way, and especially if the woman is already abusive to the kids, forget it. He thought shit all about the three kids he was most definitely responsible for. He didn’t care what this crazy woman would do to those kids. The situation itself violated all sorts of family boundaries apart from whether or not he was technically Soon Yi’s step dad. All of the other kids, Dylan, Ronan. It was a massively destructive thing to do. Farrow is also of course responsible. She is just as responsible for everything that happened to those kids. But they both did and it left a stink on them. When we shit the bed it stinks.
I'm with you.
Have to kind of agree. I felt dirty watching "Allen v. Farrow" and chose to turn it off, as I felt like it was too much of other people's he said/she said business, given what came of the investigations. And while I do think it's sleazy to cheat on your partner with her daughter, I don't think it's body-of-work cancel-worthy. But I also think it's obvious he's been somewhat of an "uncomfortable lecher" since "Manhattan." And the movie in which Larry David was him by proxy was even worse.
Yeah finding out about that made me have to unsubscribe. There’s a hell of a lot wrong with that man than just being “kinda creepy”. I’d argue that the people who defend him are the ones going mostly off vibes.
Nobody defends how he entered into the relationship with Soon Yi. What he deserves to be defended from are accusations of pedophilia. It's not "vibes" that support that defense, but rather two professional, public investigations that found no evidence that Dylan was abused and evidence that she was coached to make the accusations by her mother.
I'm totally with Hadley on not putting kids on the public Internet. The obvious way the mom *could* incentivize her kid to eat on video would be to record the videos and either not post them at all or post them on a private account for family and close friends.
I have a ton of videos of my kids on my phone going back years, and some of my kids really enjoy watching themselves on video. Grandparents like the videos, too. Kids can get the pleasure of their little performances without being told to read scripts so videos can be posted publicly and their PARENTS' accounts can go viral.
By the way, there are already professionals who work with kids with ARFID, so I definitely wouldn't buy the argument that parents need ARFID influencers in order to help their kids eat.
I'll add one further concern I have, as a non-expert in ARFID: After a parent in my extended family announced that her kid, who has always had serious eating issues, had gotten an ARFID diagnosis, I looked up the diagnostic criteria. They include this criterion: "The eating disturbance is not attributable to a concurrent medical condition or not better explained by another mental disorder." The child in question in my family also has symptoms of mild autism (on the end of the spectrum we used to call Asperger's), which is also often associated with extreme pickiness about food. I genuinely don't know whether ARFID or ASD is a better Dx for this particular child and defer to the parents and professionals involved.
But a worry I have about putting ARFID into online influencer circles is that parents concerned about their children may not be able to discern which diagnosis is most appropriate, and if they guess wrong, some children may not have all of their symptoms addressed.
My first thought listening to this without having seen the visual was "let me guess, the mom is conventionally attractive."
It's the opposite, the ARFID influencers will reify their children's decision to not eat.
That girl may genuinely have ARFID through no fault of anyone, and this might actually be the best therapy for her, and I’d still believe her mother is a terrible person and I’d still believe her mother is a terrible person for turning her daughter into an influencer, as opposed to having a private account. Social media is just not safe for young children and there’s no way the mom hasn’t figured that out by now even if she didn’t realize initially.
Nobody mentioned this, and I'm wondering if I should, but here goes:
I'm suspicious about the audience who likes to watch little girls eat pickles. I know there's a massive "feeder" comminity on OnlyFans, etc, who pay to watch fat nude women eat an entire choclocate cake, bucket of chicken, etc. I just can't help but think a significant portion of her audience is getting off on this.
Sadly that was my first thought too. I'd never put images of my kids online - doing anything.
Thanks for that thought (you’re not wrong though)
I have ARFID that i work very consciously through, and the mere fact that she took bites of the pickle is seriously so so so good. I often have to be drunk to get myself to try things for the first time. I only start to appreciate food the 2nd or 3rd go around. It's a huge win that they found a way to get her to take this first step, which is by far the scariest, ESPECIALLY for a child that young, and with a food that is both moist and strong-smelling. What a great, positive thing!
But why on earth isn't her insta account private? Why would you choose to add on that additional layer of public scrutiny? How is this young child going to process that as she grows up? Hello, my mom put my personal struggles on display for thousands of strangers before I could understand the repercussions! It's like trading one problem for another.
Hannah and her mother seem like a combination of Munchausen-by-proxy meets Munchausen-by-internet. Mom has crazy eyes, I feel like she's behind all of this. I think the story about her having ARFID as a toddler is baloney. I think she was just a picky eater, and that mom enabled and pathologized it until it truly did become ARFID. Also, toddlers don't "enjoy being on camera"; they enjoy the praise and attention their parents give them while they're filming.
Ok there is something deeply disturbing and unsettling listening to that little girl's food reviews and motivational content - it sounds scripted, unnatural, and exploitative.
It was absolutely scripted. Didn’t she score the pickle 4.8 out of 10? That’s not eight year old behaviour.
The language about “journeys” and so forth was incredibly therapeutic and scripted. I honestly think this might be the darkest thing I’ve ever heard on the pod.
I agree. I work in an elementary school, and the way this girl spoke just raised red flags for me.
Is the author David Sedaris? I know Hadley’s interviewed him.
I was wondering that! He's coming to my tiny Utah town in November, and I'm paying an exorbitant amount to see him. Would be nice to know it's going to a fan.
It’s probably the best exorbitant amount of money you’ve ever spent. To be able to hold 2000 people in raptured silence while reading alone on a stage is something I never thought I’d see.
It was worth it last time I saw David Sedaris. He’s still a smart cookie. Felt like there were some layers of meaning. He took some random questions at the end too. OH. And he worse these super cool Japanese style pants. Some gender people would see it as a skirt, but he just said they were comfortable.
Hmm, so I could ask "hey, what's your favorite podcast?"
Wore not worse, my autocorrect is confused.
Logan? Not so tiny, especially when you consider how many `cultural' activities there are! Would agree that the dining options are rather limited for a town that size, though.
(I lived there for years and am going back soon for work.)
I got free tickets to see him like 15 years ago! Not a rock concert or anything, but it was fun.
My guess too.
This was also my guess!
That was my guess.
Ohh good guess!
My guess was Jon Ronson, but Sedaris does seem more plausible.
So not J. K?
She said it was a very funny author, and while Rowling has bits of humor, that’s not what she’s really known for. And Sedaris seems like exactly the kind of humor Katie would adore.
And they’re both from North Carolina. I can see her being a big Sedaris fan.
I actually think the most important line of the episode is where Katie is talking about how when she was in high school being trans "wasn't a thing".
Obviously, there were a few people with lifelong gender issues in any era of history. But it's easy to forget how recently this whole subject wasn't a social or political issue at all.
Yeah… I’m friends with a trans woman who says to her knowledge she was the first out “trans youth” in our local school district. She’s 37.
So in the same age ballpark as J&K. And a lot of the community here, myself included.
I went to a 2000-person high school that was racially and economically diverse and was a special ed center as well and had a lot of students with complex medical issues. I worked in the counseling office for a year because I ran out of classes to take so I saw a lot of people. No one ever discussed this concept in my school.
I was a psych major in college. We covered John Money and the Johns Hopkins case where a boy with a botched circumcision was raised as a girl (and ultimately committed suicide). The idea that someone could intentionally try to change their gender presentation through surgery was never mentioned. I took psychology of women, women's history, and other women's studies courses. I took neuroscience and physiology and covered endocrinology. I went to my aunt's gay commitment ceremony before gay marriage was created. I went to Capitol Hill occasionally to advocate for a variety of left wing causes, including gay rights. Never heard the word transgender or any synonym thereof in any of these contexts. Never met someone who identified as such.
I think the only time before 2016 or so I ever heard of the concept was when Ronaldo (the Brazilian soccer player, not Cristiano Ronaldo) had some scandal in Brazil involving transgender sex workers and I had no idea what the story was talking about so I looked it up. And I thought "huh, that's odd" and forgot about it.
I’m 39, and I didn’t knowingly meet any trans people IRL until after college, though the concept was brought up in my women’s studies classes (this was prior to the “gender studies” rebrand) and the critical theory class I had to take my junior year as an English major. My sister’s six years younger than I am and by the time she was finishing up undergrad, she and multiple members of her friend group were various flavors of trans-identified.
Great episode, love Hadley, appreciated her book very much! But I take issue with something she says about anorexia, something she also says in her book. She stated early in the episode that anorexia is always about not wanting to grow up to be a woman, not wanting to separate from mom. It's not always. I am sure it is that for many girls/women, and maybe its a generational thing (I was anorexic at the end of the 70's/early 80's), but for me it was a murky soup of wanting to be thin like all the magazines, TV shows and movies told me I should be to be an attractive woman (it was like I thought I couldn't be a woman if I wasn't thin); wanting to get my mother's approval (she was a hostile, angry person who rode me from 1st grade on about my body); and equating success and love with being thin. I knew I had to separate from my mom cuz I was sure she had it in for me, and I left home at 19, right in the middle of my first stage of recovery. I couldn't wait to get away from her and to get out in life with my new thin, very under control body. Unfortunately, I was 25 lbs underweight and had to stop starving myself, had to find a new way to relate to food. Living on my own was tough at that time, but it allowed me the space to figure some things out for myself.
Being able to go without eating made me feel euphorically in control and - not proud of this - superior over others who had the nasty, dirty habit of eating 3 times a day. And I got SO MUCH positive feedback when I started to lose weight - from family and friends. It was a very broken way of thinking and behaving, and I am so lucky that I found a way to stop without doing any lasting damage to my body. But I continued to have the thinking and anxiety around food and it took a long time to figure out how to eat and live. And it didn't help that I left home to go to NYC to study acting - physical scrutiny at auditions did not help the healing process. I still struggle a little today, but at 63, I remind myself that it no longer matters because no one is scrutinizing me. And my mother passing away last year took a huge thick layer of this off of me.
Interestingly, when the anorexia failed, i.e. I had to stop, I realized that I wasn't so much trying to get my mother's approval after all: I was actually trying to prove her wrong, probably so I could separate from her more easily. But the habits that came out of years of self-imposed starvation and body distortion had taken hold and its taken the rest of my life to recover.
I found out in my 30s that my mother had been anorexic in college. And she repeated that at the end of her life, starving my Dad at the same time. He was nosediving into Alzheimers at the time so he couldn't really recognize what was happening. When I got up to see them right before she passed, he was easily 20lbs underweight.
It's definitely a mental disease of control - a form of OCD - and certainly with the ubiquity of online porn, hook up culture, social media hyper-sexuality with all of the body enhancements that are so normalized now, I can see how it is now a reaction to not wanting to grow up to be a woman. But that wasn't my experience or motivation at all. Maybe that is what saved me from the worst of it.
I agree that her description didn’t exactly match my experience either, but I got the sense it came from her analysis of her own situation after the fact rather than her felt experience at the time (maybe I’m wrong here though).
1000% agree about the anorexia/OCD connection. To be honest, I think the OCD piece is what connects EDs with the trans stuff (in addition to the autism connection). But I also wonder how much of these diagnoses are expressions of the same underlying cause.
Yes, a very personal analysis that is not universal.
I have read one memoir of anorexia (only because it was the only other work by an author who wrote a novel I thought was brilliant). She describes it more likely you than Hadley. She was a high achiever who suddenly found it harder to be "best" at the things she had been best at before (to be clear she wasn't failing, just not being quite as high ranking over her peers). She found that she could be best at being thin.
The anorexia recovery process for my daughter, now 16, became easier in my household after I read Hadley's book. I have never struggled with any ED's but my husband did when he was young and his mom was a big part of that. The OCD connection was a revelation for me as was the competition to be be the sickest. It changed my communication with my kid and she appreciated that I recognized these aspects of her behavior because it was frustrating for her that people always assumed it was a desire to be thin/society pressure yadda yadda. There are aspects of the book that don't describe our experience, but I am really grateful for her account. It shed a lot of light for me and helped me course correct on some wrong assumptions.
I'd have to relisten, but I thought Hadley said that anorexia was "almost always" wanting to escape from womanhood (but not, like, 100% that).
Maybe I misheard her but I don't think so because she says it in the book that way, too, and that is why it struck me when she said it here. I know she has done a lot of research on this and it is likely that her experience is much more indicative of what EDs are experiencing now but just came here to say that its not a one size fits all. If I had not been anorexic myself I probably wouldn't have noticed it but it was really jarring to read and then hear her say again that we all just want to not grow into womanhood and leave our moms. No group is that homogeneous.
I was wearing a full Florence Pugh in Midsommar frown as I was listening to that child influencer segment.
At least children being abused by their parents in the 1990s typically then didn’t have to live with the fact that their abuse would be preserved in the digital archive for the rest of their lives. Really gross stuff!
(For reference, this is the frown: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FenbSZEzcA_VSDufvcWpijZZd9esoVLXLwOBHoggONng.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D463e9b209a4404dc03ae91c94567abe0a31c9666)
This expression is known in our family as "mad-dog face"